Christoph Waltz

Christoph Waltz
Waltz at the 82nd Academy Awards in March 2010
Born	October 4, 1956 (1956-10-04) (age 54) Vienna, Austria
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1977–present (34 years)

Christoph Waltz (German pronunciation: [ˈvalts]; born October 4, 1956) is an Austrian-born actor with German and Austrian^[1] citizenship. He has received international acclaim for his portrayal of SS Colonel Hans Landa in the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 and the Best Supporting Actor at the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010. He is the second Austrian actor to receive an Oscar.

Acting 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, or the Salzburg Festival. He became a prolific actor on television. In 2000, he directed his first film, the TV production Wenn man sich traut.

In Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, Waltz portrayed Standartenführer Hans Landa of the Schutzstaffel (SS) aka "The Jew Hunter." For this role, he received the Best Actor Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and has received acclaim for the performance from critics and the public. In 2009, he began sweeping critics' awards circuits, receiving awards for Best Supporting Actor role from the New York Film Critics Circle,^[2] Boston Society of Film Critics,^[3] Los Angeles Film Critics Association^[4] and for Best Supporting Actor at the 67th Golden Globe Awards^[5] and the 16th Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Waltz won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 82nd Academy Awards. He is only the second actor to win an Academy Award for playing a Nazi, following Kate Winslet in 2008's The Reader. He is also, as of 2010, the only actor to win for a Quentin 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."^[6]

Personal life

Waltz was born in Vienna, Austria, to set designers Johannes Waltz and Elisabeth Urbancic.^[7] His grandparents were also actors,^[8] and his great-grandparents worked in the theatre.

Waltz is fluent in German, French and English^[9] and speaks all three languages in Inglourious Basterds. Though his Landa character also spoke Italian in that movie, he stated on the Adam Carolla Podcast that he does not actually speak it in real life.^[10] He is divorced and has four children. One of his children currently lives in Israel and is an orthodox rabbi (Waltz' first wife, a native of New York, was Jewish).^[11][12][13] Waltz currently lives in London and Berlin.^[14][15][16] He recently received the Austrian Citizenship in August 2010. He now holds both German and Austrian ones.

Filmography

References

External links

• Christoph Waltz at the Internet Movie Database