For Christopher Walters in Quentin Tarantino’s “inglorious bastards‘ played the character Hans Landa, at least he was an international blank slate. But his first Hollywood role earned the German-Austrian actor an Oscar (the second was for the next Tarantino project “Django Unchained”) and marked his big break. No wonder: Tarantino himself considers Landa one of the best characters he’s ever written (via ) – and if he hadn’t found the perfect actor in Waltz, he would have even preferred to put his war satire on hold for the time being.
So Tarantino was convinced of his star’s talent from the very beginning. But the director initially wanted to hide from the other cast members how good Christoph Waltz really is…
In the podcast Tarantino told The Moment why he initially hid Waltz’s talent from Brad Pitt and Co. The Kill Bill director wanted to capitalize on the fact that no one on set knew who the now 66-year-old was – and create maximum surprise as the rest of the cast was exposed to the actor’s talent and charisma. But only when the cameras are rolling – and not during rehearsals.
“Be good enough, only good enough,” Tarantino told Waltz before reading the script together. “And that’s going to be hard. I don’t want you to compete with anyone. And if you compete with anyone, I want you to lose. I don’t want them to know what you’ve got, and I don’t want them to be able to grab Landa .”
Tarantino even forbade Waltz from going to rehearsals together. Instead, the actor rehearsed his scenes alone with the director. With one exception: the opening scene. Denis Ménochet, who played French farmer Perrier LaPadite, was the first to learn just how frighteningly good his opponent can be.
“I really thought I wrote a character you can’t play,” Tarantino admitted on the podcast. “And then to see someone ride that horse and do it perfectly. I mean absolutely perfect. It just blew me away.”
It wasn’t just Tarantino who saw it that way. In addition to the Oscar, Waltz also received a Golden Globe for his performance and has starred in numerous other major Hollywood productions, including the James Bond villain in Spectre.