Christoph Waltz
☼ Born on 4 December 1956, in Vienna, Austria
Biography
Christoph Waltz is an Austrian-German actor. He is known for his work with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, receiving acclaim for portraying SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained (2012). 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.
Christoph Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria, into a theatrical family, his mother Elisabeth Urbancic, an Austrian-born costume designer, and Johannes Waltz, a German-born stage builder. He has three siblings. His maternal grandmother was Viennese Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was fellow Burgtheater actor Emmerich Reimers. His maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychologist and psychiatrist who wrote the 1949 book "Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness".
Waltz attended the Theresianium and Billrothstrasse in Vienna. Upon graduation, he attended the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar before going to New York to the Lee Strasberg Institute. While in New York, Christoph met his first wife, and moved back to Vienna, then to London.
During the 80s, Christoph worked primarily in theatre, commuting from his home in London to Germany. Slowly Waltz began to work in TV, taking one-off roles in series, and TV movies. Film roles soon followed. Attempts to b
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reak into English-speaking film and TV were, however, unsuccessful. Waltz has expressed his gratitude to have been able to make a living and support his family through acting. For thirty years he worked steadily, tirelessly, in this manner.
It was not until he met Quentin Tarantino that his career in Hollywood took off. The role of Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) catapulted Waltz from a lifetime working in German TV/film to the new life of an international superstar and Academy Award-winning actor. He won 27 awards for his performance as Hans Landa, including the Cannes prix d'interpretation Masculin for 2009, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, the BAFTA Best Supporting Actor award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (which he won again for 2012's Django Unchained (2012)).
He also has portrayed computer genius Qohen Leth in the film The Zero Theorem (2013), American plagiarist Walter Keane in the biographical film _Big Eyes (2014), and 007's nemesis and head of SPECTRE Ernst Stavro Blofeld in _Spectre (2015)_. 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. Waltz played gangster Benjamin Chudnofsky in The Green Hornet (2011). That same year, he starred in Water for Elephants (2011), Roman Polanski's Carnage (2011), and a remake of The Three Musketeers (2011). He played German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), a role Tarantino wrote specifically for Waltz.
Waltz resides in Berlin and Los Angeles. His wife is costume builder Judith Holste.
In the role of actor
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (14/11/2022)
Guillermo del Toro co-directed a new stop-motion version of the classic story with Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Distraught over the death of his young son Carlo, wood-carver Geppetto (David Bradley) carves a pine tree into a puppet made in Carlo’s likeness before collapsing into a drunken stupor. Feeling sympathy for the grieving man, a Wood […]
No Time to Die (29/09/2021)
A retired James Bond is pulled back into action by a new global threat in No Time to Die. James Bond (Daniel Craig) has left MI6 for a life in Italy with Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), though a sudden attack by the criminal organization SPECTRE, somehow run from behind bars by Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), […]
Alita: Battle Angel (17/02/2019)
Writer/producer James Cameron and director Robert Rodriguez brings the manga series to the big screen with Alita: Battle Angel. It is the year 2563 and an event known as “The Fall” has left Earth devastated, save for the wealthy sky city of Zalem, which floats above the desolate Iron City. While savaging parts is a scrapyard, Dr. […]
Downsizing (31/12/2017)
A man gets shrunk down in the hope for a better life in Downsizing. Norwegian scientist Dr. Jorgen Asbjørnsen (Rolf Lassgård) has discovered a method to shrink the human body down to a height of only five inches, in an effort to combat overpopulation. Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) is a cash-strapped man living in Omaha, who decides […]
Spectre (07/11/2015)
Agent 007 faces his greatest adversary in Spectre. Going against orders from MI6, James Bond (Daniel Craig) tracks down a criminal organization, whose members wear rings with the insignia of an octopus. Bond finds that this organization, known as SPECTRE, is lead by Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), a presumed dead man from Bond’s past. Bond tracks […]
Big Eyes (28/12/2014)
From Tim Burton comes this biopic about artist Margaret Keane. Margaret (Amy Adams) is a divorced single mother and aspiring artist, who paints portraits of big eyed girls inspired by her daughter. Margaret meets another artist named Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) and the two end up quickly getting married. As a much more charismatic person, […]
Django Unchained (28/12/2012)
Quentin Tarantino fully embraces his love of Spaghetti Westerns (with a Southern twist) with his latest film Django Unchained. The film stars Jamie Foxx as the title character, a slave who is freed and trained by a German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Together they set out to free Django’s wife Broomhilda […]
Carnage (06/01/2012)
Roman Polanski‘s latest film, based on the play God of Carnage, is a very simple and hilarious film about how a simple conversation can quickly blow out of proportion. The whole film is one giant coversation between two couples. The son of Nancy and Alan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) hit the son of Penelope […]
The Green Hornet (16/01/2011)
I never ever watched The Green Hornet TV series (with the exception of the character crossing over to the Batman series, which was by the same producers) and I only really knew the basics of the character. In fact, it was only recently that I found out that the character began as a 1930s radio […]
Inglourious Basterds (28/08/2009)
It took more than a decade for Inglourious Basterds to get made and I have to say that it is quite possibly the best film Quentin Tarantino has directed since Pulp Fiction. While the marketing for the film focuses on Brad Pitt and his band of Nazi-killing soldiers, the film is really an ensemble piece […]