Werner Herzog has two faces, both wearing the same expression of grave forbearance. To some, he is the formidable adventurer-auteur whose cinematic odysseys, such as Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God, doubled as life-imperilling expeditions for cast and crew. Millions of others know him only from his work in front of the camera, as a villain in Jack Reacher or as the mysterious Client in the Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian.
Herzog turns 82 tomorrow, but ask him how he feels about a career spanning more than six decades and he will protest. “I had no career,” he says, squinting into his webcam from a book-lined office in his Los Angeles home. “I had a wild slalom at way too high a speed and temperature, with rocks and trees that I didn’t collide with – and I didn’t perish.”
