Björk vs Lars von Trier

Björk...

...and Lars

Lars von Trier has often talked about his arguments with Björk during the production of "Dancer in the Dark". He has said that Björk told him to rewrite the whole script and that she frequently suffered from nervous breakdowns during the filming. There is a confirmed rumour that Björk got so angry when Lars told her to wear a blouse, which she didn't want to wear, that she tore it to pieces and put it in her mouth. Now Björk, aged 34, gives her own story about what really happened during the filming.

 - The acting wasn't really the biggest challenge for me, says Björk, who received the acting price in Cannes for her part in "Dancer in the Dark".
- The biggest problem was when I found out that the filming theme had re-composed my songs, without my permission.
Björk started working on the songs, which describe Selma's inner feelings, already a year before the filming.
 - The movie was an expansion of my songs, she says in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
Björk was about to leave the project when she found that Lars von Trier had changed the songs, to make them fit more with the plot.
 - These people, with no musical knowledge, started to change compositions, that I had been working on for months.

All of a sudden Björk dissapeared from the filming. She was gone for four days, which upsetted her co-actress Catherine Deneuve, who thought the Icelandic singer was "behaving like a little girl who was running away from school."
Björk came back after four days, when she had written a "manifest" for Lars von Trier to read.
 -  My manifest said that no changes in the music were allowed, without my confirmation. It also gave me the right to decide what music to be on the soundtrack.
 - I showed it to Lars and I said that I would leave the project if he didn't agree.
Lars von Trier had no choice but to agree since the whole film is based on Björk and the fate of Selma. And now he says that he will not allow any females to cast in his next film. And Björk says that she will never act again.