<P> Waltz was born in Vienna, the son of Johannes Waltz and Elisabeth Urbancic, set and costume designers, from Germany and Austria respectively . His maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychiatrist and psychologist who wrote the book Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness . His maternal grandmother was Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step - grandfather was actor Emmerich Reimers . His great - grandparents also worked in theatre . </P> <P> Waltz studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna . In the late 1970s, Waltz spent some time in New York City where he studied method acting with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler . He started as a stage actor, performing at venues such as Zurich's Schauspielhaus Zürich, Vienna's Burgtheater, and the Salzburg Festival . He became a prolific television actor in the years 1980 to 2000 . In 2000, he made his directorial debut, with the German television production Wenn man sich traut . Before coming to the attention of a larger audience in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds he had played Dr. Hans - Joachim Dorfmann in the British TV series The Gravy Train in 1990 . The show is a story of intrigue and misdeeds set in the offices of the European Union in Brussels . </P> <P> In Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, Waltz portrayed SS - Standartenführer Hans Landa, aka "The Jew Hunter". Clever, courteous, and multilingual--but also self - serving, cunning, implacable, and murderous--the character of Landa was such that Tarantino feared he "might have written a part that was un-playable". Waltz received the Best Actor Award for the performance at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and received acclaim from critics and the public . In 2009, he began sweeping critics' awards circuits, receiving awards for Best Supporting Actor from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Boston Society of Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and for Best Supporting Actor at the 67th Golden Globe Awards and the 16th Screen Actors Guild Awards in January 2010 . </P> <P> The following month, he won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor, and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor . He is the only actor to have won an Academy Award for playing a character in a Tarantino film . Tarantino acknowledged the importance of Waltz to his film by stating: "I think that Landa is one of the best characters I've ever written and ever will write, and Christoph played it to a tee . It's true that if I couldn't have found someone as good as Christoph I might not have made Inglourious Basterds". </P>

Who plays the jew hunter in inglourious basterds
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