Christoph Waltz (German: [ˈkʀɪstɔf ˈvalts]; born 4 October 1956) is an Austrian-German actor. He is known for playing villainous and supporting roles in English-speaking films since 2009; he has been primarily active in the United States. His accolades include two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Waltz's American breakthrough role came in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, in which he played SS officer Hans Landa. He collaborated with Tarantino again in 2012, when he played bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained. For each performance, he earned an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also received the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Landa.
Waltz has also starred in Roman Polanski's dark comedy Carnage (2011), Terry Gilliam's science fiction film The Zero Theorem (2013), Tim Burton's biographical film Big Eyes (2014), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, Alexander Payne's satire Downsizing (2017), as Dr. Dyson Ido in Alita: Battle Angel (2019) Woody Allen's comedy Rifkin's Festival (2020), and Wes Anderson's comedy-drama The French Dispatch (2021). Waltz also gained acclaim for his performance as James Bond's nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Sam Mendes' Spectre (2015), and Cary Joji Fukunaga's No Time to Die (2021).
In 2020, he starred in the web series Most Dangerous Game, receiving his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series. He also voiced Mandrake in Epic (2013) and Count Volpe in Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio adaptation (2022). In 2023, he starred in a dark comedy series The Consultant.
Early life :
Waltz was born on 4 October 1956 in Vienna, the son of Johannes Waltz, a German set designer, and Elisabeth Urbancic, an Austrian costume designer of Austrian and Slovenian descent. Waltz comes from a family of theatrical heritage: his maternal grandmother was Burgtheater and silent film actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather, Emmerich Reimers, and his great-grandfather, Georg Reimers, were both stage actors who also appeared in silent films. Waltz's maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychiatrist of Slovene descent and a student of Sigmund Freud. Waltz's father died when he was seven years old and his mother later married composer and conductor Alexander Steinbrecher. Steinbrecher was previously married to the mother of director Michael Haneke; as a result, Waltz and Haneke shared the same stepfather.
Waltz had a passion for opera as a youth, having seen his first opera (Turandot with Birgit Nilsson in the title role) at around the age of ten. As a teenager, Waltz would visit the opera twice a week. He was uninterested in theatre and wished to become an opera singer.After graduating from Vienna's Theresianum, Waltz went to study acting at the renowned Max Reinhardt Seminar. At the same time, he also studied singing and opera at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, but eventually decided that his voice was not good enough for an opera career. In the late 1970s, Waltz spent some time in New York City where he trained with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. He studied script interpretation under Adler and credits his analytical approach to her teaching.
