At 68, #ChristophWaltz is enjoying life, an overnight sensation in silvered middle age. He has won an Oscar for his devilish performance in Quentin Tarantino’s #InglouriousBasters and another for playing the good guy in the same director’s #DjangoUnchained. Before that, there were decades in the doldrums and a supply of cheap acting roles, much of which he sent back, and some of which he choked down, because what else could he do? “There was no alternative,” Waltz says ruefully. “Or, rather, the alternative was a very deep river. And a heavy stone around my neck.”
Waltz: “My career has contained more downs than ups. I once spent nine months unemployed after quitting a theatre because I hated my colleagues. I left on very bad terms, I guess you can say I was very prickly and exacting. My face didn’t fit and my accent stood out.”
“I think success has made me more understanding,” he says. “I mean, I’m just as intolerant as I was before, but I am infinitely more understanding. Because there are so many good actors who would love to work on good projects and apply their considerable talents to a great text. And yet they have to make a living. They have to exist in some form of dignity, if possible – and maybe it isn’t even possible. And my God, I’ve been there. I’ve done so many jobs because I’ve had to, not because I’ve wanted to. And it’s honourable to do a job because you need to feed your children, and maybe there is also something in it for your development as an actor. But only up to a point. Frustration can get the better of anyone. And I dread to imagine what would have happened to me had it not been for Quentin.”