As actor Christoph Waltz talks earnestly about working with Quentin Tarantino on the imminent “Inglourious Basterds,” he knows that it’s already starting to happen.

A stalwart of German film, television and stage, Waltz has lived in London for 20 years – but he’d never really made a dent in English-language films, until he won the best actor award at May’s Cannes Film Festival.

“Now that’s about to change,” Waltz says. “The change is happening.”

The change, the moment: when an actor comes seemingly out of nowhere and dominates a movie so completely and unexpectedly that it launches him to a whole new career level. It’s starting to happen to Christoph Waltz, overnight international movie star at 52.

Since Cannes, even as anticipation has built for the release of Tarantino’s World War II epic, casting agents – and serious offers – have been chasing Waltz.

“I’ve got two, maybe three, conflicting offers and I have to make up my mind because I can only do one at a time,” Waltz says in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, after a recent press junket. He seems particularly pleased that, of the roles he’s been offered, “not a single one is a villain. That would be boring to repeat. This was one of the best parts ever. I don’t like repetition. In this case, it would be impossible.”

Col. Hans Landa, the deliciously self-satisfied Nazi commandant who swaggers through Tarantino’s movie, stealing every scene he’s in, is the role of a lifetime, one that Waltz plays with great panache: “The thing that really surprised me was that it was all in the script,” he says. “What you see on the screen is in the script, although not everything in the script is on the screen.”

Waltz wasn’t convinced he was even being considered for the role when he met with the casting agent: “They sent me a script, where usually they just send a few pages and you don’t know what it’s about. But this was a fat envelope with Quentin’s script. But even though I was reading that role, I thought it was just to test me for something smaller.”

It was all in the script – even that massive calabash pipe that Landa pulls out in an early scene?

“The pipe is in the script,” Waltz says. “In fact, there was more of it in the script. It was such an effective prop and a tool for the first negotiation scene that we decided to leave it at that. We didn’t want to make him an eccentric calabash smoker. Who else smokes a calabash? Sherlock Holmes. End of story. Although Quentin started smoking it. He appeared on the set smoking a calabash.”

Waltz and Tarantino discussed the character during dinner conversations during production: “We had extensive discussions about the character. Well, that’s not the right term. We had conversations where we would fantasize about this character, play with his history, his psychology. It was fantastic; we were talking about this character as if he were a mutual friend.”

Tarantino offered Waltz books and films as reference material for the period and the character. But Waltz wanted to draw his inspiration from Tarantino himself.

“I’m always very keen to find out what’s in the script,” he says. “Quentin wanted to give me reference material; I did read around a little and watched a few documentaries. But I like to take it all from the source, which is the script.”

Waltz grew up in Vienna, the fourth generation of actors in his family: “For me, acting was the path of least resistance. There were a few occasions that it was not entirely the right choice for me. But this movie – I’m so grateful that he reminded me of the reason I wanted to become an actor.”

Though he makes his home in London and is fluent in German, French and English, Waltz has found that the best work is still most available to him in Germany.

“Once I was established, that’s where the best offers came from,” Waltz says. “I’ve lived in London for 20 years and work a little there. But for steady work, I go back to Germany. I didn’t have to queue up or get in line for the good stuff.”

Now the good stuff will be lining up for him. Waltz can’t begin to express the gratitude he feels toward Tarantino for making it possible. The Cannes award was just the start – and Waltz nearly missed his moment: “I’d gone home before I won the award at Cannes. They called me back. I almost missed the last plane back.”

To create a character like Landa, Waltz says, you need both a great director and an outstanding screenwriter. Tarantino provides both.

“What I need from a director is support and security,” Waltz says. “Quentin supplies that more than anywhere I’ve ever been. He provides an enormous level of security. And he’s a constant source of inspiration. He clears the obstacles so you can surf through. He let me do my work. He showed me the way so I could go for it. For me he was the ideal director.

“I can’t emphasize enough that he created this script and it really is on the page. It was fantastic – a dream. It was everything I had wished and hoped for for a long time.”

 Print This Post