Christoph Waltz facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Christoph Waltz
Waltz in 2017
Born	(1956-10-04) 4 October 1956 (age 68) Vienna, Austria
Citizenship	Austria Germany US (since 2020)
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1977–present
Works	Full list
Spouse(s)	Jacqueline Rauch ​ (divorced)​ Judith Holste
Children	4
Relatives	Rudolf von Urban (grandfather)
Awards	Full list

Christoph Waltz (born October 4, 1956) is a famous actor from Austria and Germany. He is well-known for playing bad guys and important supporting characters in movies, especially in English. He has won many big awards, including two Academy Awards (also known as Oscars), two Golden Globe Awards, and two BAFTA Awards. He also has two Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Critics' Choice Movie Awards.

Before becoming famous in the United States, Christoph Waltz worked a lot in German TV and theatre. His big break came in 2009 with the film Inglourious Basterds, directed by Quentin Tarantino. In this movie, he played a character named Hans Landa. For this role, he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. He worked with Quentin Tarantino again in the 2012 movie Django Unchained. In this film, he played a bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz. This role also earned him his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Christoph Waltz has also appeared in other popular movies. These include Carnage (2011), The Zero Theorem (2013), and Big Eyes (2014). He was also in Downsizing (2017), Alita: Battle Angel (2019), and The French Dispatch (2021). He played the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond films Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021).

Early Life and Education

Where Christoph Waltz Grew Up

Christoph Waltz was born on October 4, 1956, in Vienna, Austria. His father, Johannes Waltz, was a set designer from Germany. His mother, Elisabeth Urbancic, was a costume designer from Austria.

A Family of Performers

Christoph Waltz comes from a family deeply involved in theatre. His grandmother, Maria Mayen, was an actress at the Burgtheater and in silent films. His step-grandfather, Emmerich Reimers, and his great-grandfather, Georg Reimers, were also stage actors. They appeared in silent films too. Waltz's grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychiatrist.

Early Passions and Studies

When he was young, Waltz loved opera. He saw his first opera when he was about ten years old. As a teenager, he would go to the opera twice a week. He wasn't very interested in theatre at first. He wanted to become an opera singer.

After finishing school in Vienna, Waltz studied acting at the famous Max Reinhardt Seminar. At the same time, he also studied singing and opera. He attended the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. However, he later decided his voice wasn't strong enough for an opera career. In the late 1970s, Waltz spent time in New York City. There, he trained with famous acting teachers Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. He learned how to understand scripts deeply from Stella Adler.

Christoph Waltz's Acting Career

Starting in Europe

When Christoph Waltz returned to Europe, he began working as a stage actor. He performed in cities like Vienna, Salzburg, and Hamburg. From the 1980s to 2000, he became a very busy actor on television. In 2000, he also directed his first TV show in Germany.

Breakthrough in Hollywood

In 2009, Christoph Waltz starred in Quentin Tarantino's film Inglourious Basterds. He played a character called Hans Landa, also known as "The Jew Hunter." Landa was a very smart, polite, and multilingual character. But he was also very cruel and self-serving. Quentin Tarantino even worried that the role might be too difficult for anyone to play.

Waltz won the Best Actor Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for his performance. Critics and audiences loved his acting. He then started winning many more awards for Best Supporting Actor. These included awards from the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Waltz in 2010

The next month, he won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. Finally, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Quentin Tarantino said that Waltz was very important to his film. He said that Landa was one of the best characters he had ever written. He also said that if he hadn't found someone as good as Christoph, he might not have made Inglourious Basterds.

More Notable Roles

In 2011, Waltz played a gangster named Benjamin Chudnofsky in The Green Hornet. That same year, he was in Water for Elephants and Carnage. In 2012, he played a German bounty hunter named King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. Tarantino wrote this role especially for Waltz. Waltz won many awards for this role too. He received another Golden Globe, BAFTA, and his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 2014, he played Walter Keane in Tim Burton's film Big Eyes. He also appeared as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Spectre. This was the 24th film in the famous James Bond series. In 2016, he played the main villain, Captain Leon Rom, in The Legend of Tarzan.

In 2017, Waltz was in the movies Tulip Fever and Downsizing. In 2019, he appeared in the action fantasy film Alita: Battle Angel. He also directed and starred in the crime film Georgetown in 2019. In this movie, he played a man suspected of murdering his wife.

In 2020, Waltz starred in the web series Most Dangerous Game. For this role, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination. In 2021, he played Ernst Stavro Blofeld again in the James Bond film No Time to Die. He also starred in the Amazon Prime series The Consultant in 2023.

Christoph Waltz received an Icon award at the Newport Beach Film Festival on October 17, 2024. This award recognized his amazing career. The festival also showed the premiere of his movie Old Guy.

Personal Life

Waltz and his wife, Judith Holste, at the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010

Christoph Waltz was born in Vienna to an Austrian mother and a German father. He has citizenship in both Austria and Germany. In 2020, he also became an American citizen. He explained that he believed in the idea of "no taxation without representation." He had been living in Los Angeles since 2010.

Waltz has three children with his first wife, Jacqueline. She was a dance therapist from New York. They lived in London and were married for 17 years. Waltz later married his second wife, Judith Holste. She is a costume designer from Germany. They have one daughter together. They live in Berlin, Vienna, and Los Angeles.

Filmography

Waltz at the UK premiere of Inglourious Basterds, Leicester Square, 23 July 2009

Selected Filmography

See also

In Spanish: Christoph Waltz para niños

• List of Austrian Academy Award winners and nominees
• List of German Academy Award winners and nominees
• List of European Academy Award winners and nominees
• List of actors with Academy Award nominations
• List of actors with more than one Academy Award nomination in the acting categories
• List of actors with two or more Academy Awards in acting categories