Waltz on his middle-aged breakthrough in ‘Basterds’

When I committed my considerably negative thoughts on Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” last week, I made it a point of indicating a true diamond in the rough, Christoph Waltz’s unsettling performance of Col. Hans Landa, the quietly sadistic “killer of the Jews” who owns the screen every time he graces it.  “Waltz definitely deserves the high marks he received out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival,” I wrote at the time.  “It’s a vivid new spin on a classic villain persona, the still-waters-run-deep kind of stomach-twisting presence that takes real skill to pull off.  Waltz makes it look pretty easy.”

It is therefore refreshing to read this brief profile of the actor in The New York Times, revealing a humble, grounded, blue-collar actor who is happy to get the recogniztion but has clearly been around the block enough times to know you keep looking forward.

In the piece, Waltz discusses, rather honestly, his opinions on the acting profession, an awareness of future pitfalls that could await his late-blooming Stateside career and, of course, the process of working with Tarantino.

On the latter, Waltz had this to say:

I’ve tried to analyze why actors are often better in Quentin’s films than in other films, and I think it’s because he doesn’t expose them to the necessity of bad acting…He doesn’t specify the intended effect or ask you to show motivations. And he makes it easy for you to be on the character’s side.

And a taste of the actor’s overall disposition:

As far as Mr. Waltz is concerned, middle age is not a bad time for a career breakthrough. “It helps to have done time,” he said over dinner at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan recently, referring to his long, busy, but not especially fulfilling career as a journeyman character actor, mostly in German television. He is taking in stride his newly raised profile and the talk of a possible Oscar nomination that started at Cannes and is likely to intensify in the coming months. “It hasn’t burdened me at all,” he said.

Mr. Waltz admitted to being initially bewildered by Mr. Tarantino’s script, a five-chapter behemoth filled with lengthy, sinuous conversations that snake their way through an intricate series of bluffs, reversals and mind games. “I was completely thrown by it, having been conditioned to these formulaic three-act structures,” he said. “And in front of me I had this thing that blows that all to smithereens.” After a pause, he added: “I love that word: smithereens.” (No less than Colonel Landa, Mr. Waltz seems to relish wordplay and the musicality of words.)

Great interview.  Read the rest here.