12 Best Old School Hollywood Feuds

Filmmaker Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski were lifelong frenemies until Kinski’s death in 1991, collaborating on five critically acclaimed films over their careers. Although their partnership was fruitful, theirs was a volatile friendship typified by fallings out that went above and beyond bickering between buddies.

During the shooting of their first film together Aguirre, the Wrath of God the notoriously unpredictable Kinski threatened to quit the production so Herzog naturally pulled a gun on the actor and informed him he’d kill him and then turn the gun on himself if he did.

Amazon-set epic Fitzcarraldo, their fourth collaboration, featured yet more drama when Kinski’s volatile behaviour – which included Kinski upsetting native tribes so much that a chief offered to kill him – incensed Herzog so much that he almost offed him (again) by setting his sleeping quarters on fire.

It seems the tension between them reached boiling point while shooting their final film together, Cobra Verde, when Kinski – who had thus far mostly managed to avoid trying to murder Herzog back – attempted to strangle the director in front of a crowd of extras.

Before his death, Kinski threw a few backhanded compliments at his frenemy calling him “a highly talented guy” but also “sick” and “obsessed”, while Herzog has similar sympathies calling Kinski “the greatest film actors of the century” but also “a monster and a great pestilence”.

There’s admiration in those statements however begrudging so it seems not all love was lost between the pair. Kinski probably best summed up their relationship when he said, "We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder". BFF goals, indeed.