Christoph Waltz

Christoph Waltz is an Austrian, German, and American actor born on October 4, 1956, in Vienna. He gained international acclaim for his performances in English-language films, particularly in villainous and supporting roles. Throughout his career, Waltz has earned numerous major accolades, including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and two Golden Globes, as well as a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award.

Waltz was raised in a theatrical family. His father, Johannes Waltz, was a German set designer, and his mother, Elisabeth Urbancic, was an Austrian costume designer. His relatives included silent film and stage actors, as well as his maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, a psychiatrist and student of Sigmund Freud. His father passed away when Waltz was seven years old, and his mother later remarried composer Alexander Steinbrecher. As a youth, Waltz developed a strong passion for opera and initially aspired to become an opera singer. He studied acting and opera at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna's Max Reinhardt Seminar before training in New York City with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler in the late 1970s.

Upon returning to Europe, Waltz started his career as a stage actor, debuting at the Schauspielhaus Zürich and performing across cities such as Vienna, Salzburg, Cologne, and Hamburg. Between 1980 and 2000, he became a prolific television actor, appearing in projects like the 1990 British miniseries The Gravy Train. He made his directorial debut in 2000 with the German television production Wenn man sich traut.

Waltz achieved his international film breakthrough playing the multilingual SS officer Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 war film Inglourious Basterds. His performance earned widespread critical acclaim and swept major awards, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He collaborated with Tarantino again in Django Unchained (2012), starring as the bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz. For this performance, he received his second Academy Award, BAFTA, and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor.

Following his breakthrough, Waltz took on prominent roles in a wide range of feature films, including The Green Hornet, Water for Elephants, and Roman Polanski's Carnage in 2011. He went on to star as Walter Keane in Tim Burton's Big Eyes (2014), Captain Leon Rom in The Legend of Tarzan (2016), and Alita: Battle Angel (2019). He also portrayed the iconic villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond movies Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021), and made his feature directorial debut with the 2019 crime film Georgetown.

In television and recent media, Waltz starred in the web series Most Dangerous Game (2020), the workplace series The Consultant (2023), and joined the fifth season of Only Murders in the Building in 2025 as Bash Steed. His recent projects also include Luc Besson's 2025 film Dracula. In addition to film acting, he directed opera productions of Der Rosenkavalier and Falstaff. Waltz has three children with his former wife, Jacqueline Rauch, and a daughter with his wife, costume designer Judith Holste. He holds citizenships in Austria, Germany, and the United States, dividing his time between Berlin, Vienna, and Los Angeles.