Having already won best actor at Cannes last year, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and 29 other awards for his role as the devilishly devious Colonel Hans ‘The Jew Hunter” Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s bravura box office blockbuster, Inglourious Basterds, Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, is a dead cert to pick up an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor on Sunday.
“You gave me my movie,” said Tarantino to Waltz at the Cannes Film Festival press conference. “Hans Landa is one of the greatest characters I have ever written, and one of the greatest characters that I will ever write.”
“Quentin wanted a certain degree of authenticity from the very beginning and did not budge from this," explained Waltz. “He wanted American actors play the American parts, French actors play the French, and Germans play the Germans. And it was the right thing to do. I was the lucky guy on the end of that whole process. And I got busy right away. I put everything in. I dug up everything there was.”
“But, it is the part of the century,” he continued. “From the very beginning Landa is one of the great villains in dramatic literature and not just on film. The first scene where Landa goes to the French farm is like a classical one act play, which transposed onto film impressed me to the bone when I first saw it.”
By own admission, Waltz, from the off, was sucked into QT's world like a moth to a flame. “The first thing they did was send me the script,” he remembered. “The cover page was handwritten. It was Quentin’s handwriting, and it said, ‘Inglourious Basterds, by Tarantino, 2008 ‘ and below, ‘Look here’s something that I’ve written,’ So, seeing his handwriting was already something personal – not industry standard form – so we were on a completely a different level from the very first moment. And of course I knew all of his films before I went to his casting, and I really admire his truly original approach.”
On set Tarantino (who despite having cast Pitt in the lead said the picture would never have been made if it wasn’t for Waltz) deliberately kept his actors apart just in case they became too friendly. “We kind of agreed that it might be a good idea not to establish this buddy-buddy situation,” recalled Waltz. “And to keep everyone on their toes a little bit, because if you get too acquainted, familiarity breeds contempt. Not that it would’ve been contempt, but that somewhat awkward distance they kept from me made it easier to do my job, let’s put it that way.”
Now that the job in question has yielded such magnificent rewards how does he feel about it all? “Well the part reminded me of why I became as actor in the first place and it has given me back my confidence. And now, let me tell you: it’s wild. It really is sort of overwhelming right now, what is happening at the moment. I would say, ‘Wow!’ is the word. “Wow.” It really is.”
And up against, Woody Harrelson (The Messenger), Stanley Tucci (Lovely Bones) Matt Damon (Invictus) and Christopher Plummer (Last Station) certain pundits, such as yours truly, believe that Waltz may as well make room on his mantelpiece for the statue now because, the competition is scant.
"It took me a long time to say the word Oscar,” said Waltz in a recent interview with Peter Travers of ABC. “ But after the nomination I thought I might as well start… It's not only a circuit, it's also a circus and as much fun… The accolades, the appreciation and the acknowledgment is overwhelming but one huge constant compliment – may I confess, I love it!"
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