Diane Kruger Says Quentin Tarantino 'Didn't Want to Audition Me' for Inglourious Basterds Role

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Diane Kruger had to prove Quentin Tarantino wrong when they worked together.

Despite earning awards acclaim for her performance in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (including a SAG Award nomination), the German-American actress had to jump through "hoops" to get cast in the 2009 film because Tarantino was skeptical about her abilities, she recently said on the Reign with John Smith podcast.

"He auditioned everyone. He didn't want to audition me because he saw a movie that I was in he didn't like. So he didn't believe in me from the get-go," she said. "Literally, the only reason he auditioned me is because there was no one left to audition."

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"I had to pay for my own flight from New York to go to Germany because he wouldn't, even though, obviously, he's American, but he wouldn't see me in the U.S.," said Kruger, 45. "So I had to jump through all these hoops that definitely put my nose out of joint, but I was like, 'You know what? F— him! I'm just gonna do that and prove to him that I can do it.' And thankfully it all worked out."

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Kruger explained that though something can seem "unfair" at times, "You've gotta change the narrative." She thinks Tarantino, 58, learned from that situation too: "I think for him, too, that must've been a lesson. Sometimes you are the one that puts — and I'm sure I'm guilty of that too — you put people in boxes. You think they're gonna be one way and then they're not at all."

A rep for Tarantino did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

The actress has previously opened up about working with Tarantino. Back in 2018, she came to the filmmaker's defense when some stars spoke out against him at the time for his on-set treatment. Kruger said her experience with him was "pure joy."

"He treated me with utter respect and never abused his power or forced me to do anything I wasn't comfortable with," she wrote.

Jason Merritt/Getty Images Diane Kruger and Quentin Tarantino in 2010

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Those comments came as a scene from Inglourious Basterds in which her character is strangled came under fire by critics of Tarantino, many pointing out the fact that the director insisted on actually choking Kruger himself for on-camera realism — a moment she revealed in 2009.

In February 2018, Tarantino addressed the allegations made against him at the time in an interview with Deadline, including clarifications on the Kruger choking scene.

"When I did Inglourious Basterds, and I went to Diane and I said, 'Look, I've got to strangle you. If it's just a guy with his hands on your neck, not putting any kind of pressure and you're just doing this wiggling death rattle, it looks like a normal movie strangulation. It looks movie-ish. But you're not going to get the blood vessels bulging or the eyes filling it with tears, and you're not going to get the sense of panic that happens when your air is cut off. What I would like to do — with your permission — is just … commit to choking you, with my hands, in a close-up. We do it for 30 seconds or so, and then I stop. If we need to do it a second time, we will. After that, that's it. Are you down to committing to it so we can get a really good look? It'll be twice, and only for this amount of time, and the stunt guy was monitoring the whole thing.' "

"Diane said, 'Yeah sure.' She even said on film in an interview it was a strange request but by that point I trusted Quentin so much that, sure," he added. "... That was an issue of me asking the actress, can we do this to get a realistic effect? And she agreed with it, she knew it would look good, and she trusted me to do it. I would ask a guy the same thing. In fact, I would probably be more insistent with a guy."

Her new film The 355 is now in theaters.