Christoph Waltz
The son of a costume designer and a stage builder, and the grandson of actors, Christoph Waltz grew up in a theater family and worked for 3 1/2 decades in Europe before finally breaking through in the U.S. and winning two Academy Awards.
Waltz studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna in the 1970s and briefly lived in New York, where he studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute. He started his career as a stage actor in Europe, in places like Zurich, Cologne and Hamburg, and he made his screen debut on a German TV show playing a bumbling thief in Weimar Berlin. Over the years he worked steadily in theater, films and television, including a stint in London.
Director Quentin Tarantino plucked Waltz from relative obscurity to star in his revisionist World War II movie "Inglourious Basterds" in 2009. Waltz stole the show as the multilingual, multifaceted Nazi villain Col. Hans Landa and won the Oscar for supporting actor. Tarantino and Waltz would reunite for the 2012 neo-spaghetti-western "Django Unchained," which led to the actor's second Oscar trophy, also for supporting actor.
Waltz's other Hollywood movies include "The Green Hornet," "Water for Elephants," "Carnage," "Horrible Bosses 2" and "Big Eyes."
Off screen, Waltz directed his first opera in 2013, Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier."
Waltz has three adult children from his first marriage and a young daughter with his second wife, costume designer Judith Holste.
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Points of interest
Academy Awards
| Year | Category | Work | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Best Supporting Actor | Inglorious Basterds | Win |
| 2012 | Best Supporting Actor | Django Unchained | Win |
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