Christoph Waltz

Style »

Follow Christoph Waltz Updates:

. . .

« PREV NEXT »

Christoph Waltz talks Django Unchained and how he became best friends with Quentin Tarantino

By David Bentley on | From coventrytelegraph.net

Christoph Waltz Inglourious Basterds.jpg

AUSTRIAN-BORN actor Christoph Waltz finally found Hollywood fame at the age of 55.

His expressions are able to suggest a simmering undercurrent of menace that could erupt at any moment. It made him perfect as a nasty Nazi in Inglourious Basterds, the gangster villain in Green Hornet, a cruel circus owner in Water For Elephants and the scheming Cardinal Richlieu in The Three Musketeers.

His latest role is in Roman Polanski's Carnage, an adaptation of Yasmina Reza's hit play God of Carnage, which is released in cinemas this weekend.

It centres on two Brooklyn couples - played by Waltz, Kate Winslet, John C Reilly and Jodie Foster - who meet to discuss a fight between their sons in a park. Slowly, and under the influence of alcohol, the adults' decorum disintegrates into an all-out showdown.

Waltz, whose role has been described as a gleeful ringmaster delighting in the savagery beneath everyone's civilised veneer, told The Sunday Times: "It's my comedy. I consider this character the only one I've played with his two bits together. Kate's, too, a little bit. She's more erratic. But he's the only one who doesn't sway. He sticks to his reality."

Next he is reuniting with Inglourious Basterds director Tarantino for Django Unchained, which he resumes shooting this month.

It follows an escaped slave (Jamie Foxx) who set out to free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from a sadistic plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Waltz plays a bounty hunter called Dr King Schultz who helps Foxx with his mission.

"I'm trying to be very aware of not repeating myself," Waltz said in the newspaper interview. "It's a different story, a different character, a different movie. I've played that other character. I'm not going to slip it under the door just because it was successful. But I have to be a little careful that I am not going too far the other side - too restrained."

As is usual with Tarantino, it will be a long shoot. "It's not like Carnage," says Waltz. "That was two weeks of rehearsal, then we started shooting, four actors in one room, come rain or shine.

"With this it's the opposite. We need snow - there is no snow. So the whole operation shuts down and moves to Wyoming."

He reveals that during rehearsal for one scene (a "rodeo-like situation") he came off a horse and broke his pelvis and was put back together by a surgeon he describes as a genius.

Christoph Waltz as villain in Green Hornet.jpg

Waltz says his work in Inglourious Basterds succeeded because his obscurity meant even the other actors didn't know him and weren't aware of what he could do; he was asked by Tarantino to tone things down when rehearsing with his co-stars and those rehearsals were kept to a minimum. This meant the cast didn't get too relaxed with each other and the film kept its memorable tension and unpredictability.

The plan worked and gave the actor his big break, not to mention a best supporting actor Oscar and several similar awards at other ceremonies. As a result he moved to Los Angeles and, not surprisingly, he says he's a great fan of Tarantino.

"I revel in his writing, I really do," he says. "You can really play. You don't just have to say it, you can do all things with it, turn it upside down. It will not fall apart. It does not require one singular delivery on which it depends. He's a genius. I am completely, unconditionally devoted."

He reveals that the two have now become good friends, meeting at the director's Mulholland Drive mansion to watch rare 35mm prints of old films salvaged from closed-down cinemas, with Tarantino afterwards offering his expert insights and observations.

On other occasions they will "meet for dinner without a single sentence being uttered about movies", says Waltz. In LA, and in Tarantino's home especially, that's known as a 'comfortable silence.'

Django Unchained is released on December 26, 2012. Among the cast is Tom Savini, as we exclusively revealed in October 2011.