Christoph Waltz is an Austrian and German actor.
He is best known for his works with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, receiving acclaim
for portraying SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and bounty
hunter Dr. King Schultz in Tarantino's Django Unchained.
For each performance, he won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award for
Best Supporting Actor.
Additionally, he received the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Screen Actors
Guild Award for his portrayal of Landa.
Early life Waltz was born in Vienna, the son of German-born
Johannes Waltz and Austrian-born Elisabeth Urbancic, set and costume designers.
His maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychiatrist and psychologist who wrote
the book Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness.
His maternal grandmother was Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was
actor Emmerich Reimers.
His great-grandparents also worked in theatre.
Career
Waltz studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna.
He also attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York.
He started as a stage actor, performing at venues such as Zurich's Schauspielhaus Zürich,
Vienna's Burgtheater, and the Salzburg Festival.
He became a prolific television actor.
In 2000, he made his directorial debut, with the German television production Wenn man
sich traut.
Before coming to the attention of a larger audience in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds
he had played Dr. Hans-Joachim Dorfmann in the British TV series The Gravy Train in 1990.
The show is a story of intrigue and misdeeds set in the offices of the European Union in
Brussels.
In Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, Waltz portrayed SS-Standartenführer
Hans Landa, aka "The Jew Hunter".
Clever, courteous, and multilingual, but also self-serving, cunning, implacable, and murderous,
the character of Landa was such that Tarantino feared he "might have written a part that
was un-playable".
Waltz received the Best Actor Award for the performance at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
and received acclaim from critics and the public.
In 2009, he began sweeping critics' awards circuits, receiving awards for Best Supporting
Actor from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Boston Society of Film Critics, Los Angeles
Film Critics Association, and for Best Supporting Actor at the 67th Golden Globe Awards and
the 16th Screen Actors Guild Awards in January 2009.
The following year, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and won the BAFTA
for Best Supporting Actor.
He is, as of 2013, the only actor to win an Academy Award for appearing in a Tarantino
film.
Tarantino acknowledged the importance of Waltz to his film by stating: "I think that Landa
is one of the best characters I've ever written and ever will write, and Christoph played
it to a tee.
It's true that if I couldn't have found someone as good as Christoph I might not have made
Inglourious Basterds".
Waltz played gangster Benjamin Chudnofsky in The Green Hornet; that same year, he starred
in Water for Elephants and Roman Polanski's Carnage.
He played German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.
During a training accident prior to filming, Waltz injured his pelvis.
His role garnered him awards acclaim once again, with Waltz winning the Golden Globe,
the BAFTA, and ultimately the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
His Oscar victory made him one of only three actors to win two Oscars for a supporting
role under the direction of the same person.
Waltz has been cast as the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, in the movie Reykjavik,
based on the 1986 peace talks between the United States and USSR.
In April 2013, he was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes
Film Festival.
In late 2013, he directed a production of the opera Der Rosenkavalier at the Vlaamse
Opera in Antwerp, Belgium.
In 2014, he was selected as a member of the jury for the 64th Berlin International Film
Festival.
He will star in Tim Burton's Big Eyes, which will open on Christmas Day 2014.
Personal life
Waltz has three children – Miriam, Leon, and Rachel – from his first wife, Jackie,
a psychotherapist.
He is raising a young daughter with his wife, German costume designer Judith Holste.
They divide their time between Berlin, London, and Los Angeles.
Waltz is fluent in English, French, and German, and speaks all three in Inglourious Basterds
and Django Unchained.
Although his character in Inglourious Basterds also spoke Italian, Waltz stated on the Adam
Carolla Podcast that he does not speak it fluently.
He is his own voice actor for both the French and German dubs of each film.
Waltz was born to a German father in Vienna, who applied for him to become a German citizen
after his birth.
He received Austrian citizenship in 2010, thus holding citizenships of both Austria
and Germany, but considers his German passport a "legal, citizenship law banality".
Asked whether he felt Viennese, he responded: "I was born in Vienna, grew up in Vienna,
went to school in Vienna, graduated in Vienna, studied in Vienna, started acting in Vienna
– and there would be a few further Viennese links.
How much more Austrian do you want it?"
Filmography Film
Television Awards and nominations
See also List of German-speaking Academy Award winners
and nominees References
External links Christoph Waltz at the Internet Movie Database
Christoph Waltz Fans, Official Fan Website Christoph Waltz interviews on Charlie Rose