I'm very much interested in water and women in water. I've been photographing that for years although I didn't really know it at the time.
Usually people just do their own work. But I want to deal with the place and what it means to show in a mental hospital.
One of the fashion things I ever did was for Helmut Lang for Visionaire magazine and I used people from all genders. People from the age of 18 - like James King - to people like my friend Sharon [Stone] who's about 50 or older. People of all different shapes and literally all different genders and my boyfriend at the time and his daughter who was 11.
My work is received more intelligently in Europe.
[John] Cassavetes, "Killing of a Chinese Booker", "Opening Night" are my favourites.
I start to paint my walls. And I'm heavily influenced by films.
That's where I got the idea to paint the walls of the gallery with varied colours [at the Whitechapel show]. I tried to figure out how all these Renaissance paintings manage to work together.
At the same time as the UK Vogue one, I did a shoot that took about 40 days of friends and people I admired in Paris, for French Vogue. This is how I met Maria Schneider in June and which began our friendship.
I also met Dominique Sanda, who I always worshipped.
I also photographed Maggie Cheung - but these didn't develop into a friendship either.
I shot for French and British Vogue. The British Vogue one featured clothes by Chloe and was shot at Highgate and the John Soane Museum. It came out much better in my opinion. I only did one day and was working with my own make-up and hair people and a model who I've known for years.
I used to live with Teri Toye in the '80s - a really gorgeous transsexual. She won Girl of the Year in 1986 [I think] as a Chanel model and she introduced this whole way of slinky, slow-motion modeling. It was amazing that the girl of the year was actually born male.
One of my assistants, a British man, says I should find a platform for [cosmetic industry]. Meanwhile I wear make-up.
The only time this happened to me before was in Jil Sander in Berlin where they said, "We have nothing that will fit you." I said, "Yes, you do." And I found something great. This happens to me in Paris again and again and again. They don't carry anything over size 40 which is nothing, because I wear a size 42 or 44 but that's hard to find in Paris among the designer clothes. All stores are like that.
I never courted that but it's nice when it's people you respect and they respect your work. It's thrilling.
I had said that when the first Bush got elected that I would leave the country. And when the second Bush wasn't even elected properly.
I wasn't there [in U.S] when the city was bombed but it seems to have changed my friends.
Some people have become [in U.S] a lot more conservative but I can't really speak about that because I wasn't there. I feel compassion for their pain but it distresses me to see them all become more patriotic.
In a way, it [my style] is an homage. But I didn't really know about it at first. But then when I started living in Berlin in the early '90s, I started getting ID and Dazed and Confused. I was shocked how close things were to my work.
I'm very flattered when people I respect like my work. It's like a dream of a little kid when somebody I idolised likes my work.
The things that I look at include Renaissance art. I'm obsessed with churches and paintings of saints.
I have the freedom of seeing it [churches and paintings of saints] with a non-Catholic eye without the guilt.
No Jews have our own guilt, that's why we have psychiatrists - the Jewish version of a priest.
She has that kind of baby face, a very young face. So I was interested in working with Kate [Moss].
