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sisterbliss007 · 7 years

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Translation Die Zeit interview Christoph Waltz

Hey everyone,

I have been also working (together with the support of @makamu-a-tumbling), on the translation of Die Zeit man interview from last year. I’ve finally finished it, as it was quite a long and difficult interview to translate. I apologize for uploading it so late but hope you enjoy it! (As said it was quite difficult and if anyone finds any mistakes and/or has questions please let me know!:) I still have the original scans of the interview in German as well for those interested).

I am a “Traditionalist”

The actor Christoph Waltz and his remarkable way to happiness Actor Christoph Waltz lives in Los Angeles. We have met up with him in his chosen homeland. The timing is special as Waltz is standing right before his 60th birthday. He aims towards balance, talks about the strong and weak characters he played during his career and the decisions he made that made him a happy man.

On a spring morning, Actor Christoph Waltz is standing in the elevator of the Barclay hotel in Los Angeles, when an old man enters the lift. The Barclay isn’t used as a hotel anymore, and now serves as a sort of retirement home for Downtown LA, which also can be rented for photo and film shoots. The old man recognizes Waltz immediately and addresses him, questioning, where Waltz originally is from. "From Austria" he answers. "I was there during the War!" the man tells him. Waltz goes on, looks at the man with a skeptical look and asks:" The War was a long time ago, when were you there?"-"In the sixties!"- "In the sixties?"-Small pause-"Oh," Waltz says "do you mean Vietnam?"-"Ah yes, right, Vietnam!" the old man says.

An hour later Christoph Waltz is sitting in a restaurant close to the Barclay hotel, and can only laugh about the encounter in the elevator. The striking chin outstretched, like you would recognize from his movies. Peter Lindbergh photographed him today for DIE ZEIT magazine MANN, while both of them walked through Downtown (LA), Waltz in front (of him), (and) Lindberg with the camera behind him. At one moment, a Mexican construction worker recognizes him, and winks and shouts to him: "The Latinos love you man!" He shows his famous Christoph Waltz grin, of which you can never be sure if he really is happy or if he is hiding something; he winks back. When later a woman on the street asks him for an autograph, he signs (the autograph). When she also asks for a picture, he briefly lays his hand on her arm and tells her, smiling but firm, in perfect English: "You know what, I would prefer if we didn't take one. I've been photographed the whole day. Maybe on another occasion."- 'I understand that" the women says, at the same time perplexed and pleased, even though she didn’t get a picture, she wishes him a good day and walks on. "You see," Waltz says, when the women is out of earshot, "when you are friendly here, people understand.”

Christoph Waltz lives in Los Angeles, and loves it here. He loves going to the opera, and he has seen the whole Ring (cycle) from Wagner here, the Mannheim production. He can't really agree with the general criticism of European, mostly German actors, on the shallowness and misconstrued image (of LA). "Of course, there are more foolish people here then with us (in Europe). But there is more of everything here. Therefore, more silly people as well.”

In the restaurant he orders a cappuccino and a croissant. Even in this everyday moment he uses his speech as an instrument: "Do you want something to drink?” The waiter asks. And Waltz answers, back stretched straight, the menu like a script in his hands: "Absouuuuuutely. I'll have a cappuccino for the moment. And a croissant or something of that kind would be great." Then, you understand the luck, Quentin Tarantino must feel when he hears Waltz speaking his lines: "The way, Christoph Waltz speaks my dialogue, the ways he sings it, he is saying it like poetry." In Tarantino's Western Django Unchained, Waltz played the German dentist and bounty hunter Dr. Shultz, and the detail that he comes from Düsseldorf, has everything to do with the fact that, according to Tarantino: "It just sounds so good, the way he speaks the word Düsseldorf."

His love for words was something that he developed very early on during his school time. "I have had six years of Latin and a nice Latin teacher, Elfriede Fiela, who was more interested in the mater itself and not being a teacher as such. That, she carried on to her students. "I find it regrettable that Latin is being labeled as a dead language, and usually…“ He makes a grant gesture, "…I get asked where they then, still speak Latin.” Again the Christoph Waltz grin. "My answer is: in your head.” He smiles.

A former classmate from Vienna, journalist Axel Meister also remembers his love for speech. "Waltz always shone with his ingenious linguistics". At his 'Feier zur Matura', the Austrian Arbitur (the party at the end of your college school years), Waltz gave the closing speech, which contained a subtle sense of deeper meaning.

"I love words" Waltz once told the London Times. Does he have favorite words? "Fiammiferi" he says without having to think about it, matches in Italian. "Or maybe even better: Uova strapazzate!" That is Italian for scrambled eggs. Waltz sneezes every syllable, while he is talking. Can he speak Italian well? "Totally not." And again ‘The Grin’. Then he speaks better in English, as he already from the late seventies on, while he lived in New York for a while, started refining it. He is proud of that, and you can also see that during his American Late-Show appearances. "I am someone else when I am talking English" he says. "And at that, I am not a mere translator. If you ask me for a specific English word, that I use all the time, then I don't have a clue.” How does the English speaking Christoph Waltz distinguish himself from the German speaking one? "I don't analyze it, as I would be just halfway translating it. It is really pleasant that I don't have to translate. English is like an additional way of expression.” Those who have seen the (late night) show(s), the way he is telling the American public Austrian stories, and then hear him tell in LA, how well the English language suits him, understand: it is also a mask. During those regular appearances, in this chosen homeland (the USA), Christoph Waltz can be the persona 'Christoph Waltz'; the two-time Oscar winner from the far away Europe, who holds something exotic to the American spectators, matched with a twitch of diabolic enjoyment. It is an extraordinary role. It is the role of his life, of which he has waited so long- in vain- for.

Christoph Walt was born on the 4th of October 1956 in a Viennese theater family. His grandfather (which I think should be his grandmother right?) was a famous actor at the renowned Burgtheater, his German father Johannes Waltz was stage builder, his Austrian mother Elisabeth Urbancic costume designer. At the beginning, Christoph didn't want to be an actor. "It didn't interest me. Even now it doesn’t really interest me. But when it does (interest me), then totally". He did attend the famous Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, but actually he wanted to do film, if possible in the US. As a youngster Christoph Waltz met Senta Berger, who just came back from Hollywood, and who was a friend of the family, and often visited. The glamour excited him. So, at the end of the seventies, he goes to New York, and enrolls into the Lee Strasberg institute, while he works as a waiter. Full of hope, he meets up with the legendary agent Paul Kohner, who worked with Marlene Dietrich. But, he (Paul Kohner) warns him: does he really wants to play roles in which he has to yell "Heil Hitler!" all the time? Waltz returns to Europe, goes into theater, in Switzerland and Germany, and also works for TV meanwhile becoming more and more miserable. His American dream did not come true, and in contrast, (he) experiences a German nightmare: He must play supporting parts in krimi series, just so he can act. This is how the eighties and nineties play out for him. In an episode of the krimiseries Der Alte, he shoots the commissioner; played by Siegfried Lowitz, "that was maybe culturally-wise a heroic deed" he says and laughs. Only rarely he can shine: in 1996 as Roy Black in a TV-movie about the tragic life of the shlager- singer. Waltz receives multiple awards, but the problems stays. The director Peter Keglevic, who wants him for bigger roles, is being held back by producers and directors. "On and on again he hears: no, no not Waltz, for minor quirky parts yes, but not for the main character.”

(He takes) Another piece of the croissant, and a sip of the water. "There is a certain narrow-mindedness which you cannot fight against (the literal translation would be for which no powder exist to fight it). And in some cultures, this is more the case than in others." He says:" In Germany, there is a precise distinction between E and U. E for Ernst (seriousness) and U for Unterhaltung (pleasure). E can't really be U and U definitely can't be E. It always ends in lecturing. Even in schools they understand now that only lecturing does not work, so why would you then do it in movies or on TV?" In the nineties, Waltz often sits at the Munich Shumann's bar, when he has to be there to be another rogue in a ZDF-krimi. He then tells his friends at the bar about (his) German TV (experience): "They really can't do anything with me." "In hindsight, one can recollect these miserable times (without feeling worse)", he says, "but it was mostly frustrating. They weren’t all like that, Reinhard Schwabenitzky and Peter Keglevic, those directors, did always believe in me." He doesn't name any other people.

Wailing did not help, he must work, moreover for his family. Waltz becomes a father early, when he is 24. During his time in New York, he meets his later wife Jackie, a dancer from Brooklyn. With her, he has three children, who now are adults. The family mostly lives in London, as a compromise between New York and Germany. "At that moment, I played parts just to survive, and now I find it honorable. I bit my way through something for a long time that I didn't want to bite through. That was a significant experience. It shows you that as an actor, you have to pay attention to not switch your life with the part you’re playing." "For a life,…" He says, while emphasizing the word life. "…a smaller part can be of a bigger significance than a big part." At the absolute low point of his career, when he hadn't worked for a year, his wife tries to give sincere advice: “You have so many talents; you can do something else then being an actor”. When you speak to Christoph Waltz about this advice, decades later, there is still a glimmer in his eyes, in the sense of: "How can you so wrongly asses me?" "I never thought about doing anything else. I know too much about it. To master a specific matter, you have to do it for twenty years. Hence, older actors are the most interesting. Of course it is interesting; to see a newcomer arrive, but then at least twenty years must pass before it really becomes sensational."

Christoph Walt's first marriage has now ended. A while back, he met the German costume designer Judith Holste, during shooting, with whom he has a daughter. In the beginning, he went back and forth between Berlin and the US. "But the journey was always stressy." Now, the family lives in LA.

After decades of biting trough and suffering, along comes a meeting between two men in the spring of 2008 in Berlin, both which are tattered because of different reasons. Christoph Waltz is still dragging him through German TV, while the American director Quentin Tarantino, Hollywood-prodigy in the nineties, has several problems. His last movie was a flop and for his next production Inglourious Basterds he is still desperately looking for someone to play the part of the antagonist Hans Landa. He already had hundred others read the part, Leonardo Dicaprio also wants to do it, but for Tarantino it doesn't fit. The director fluctuates between knowing that he had written one of the most interesting parts of his life, and the fear, that the part of the multilingual Hans Landa is unplayable. Then the meeting with Christoph Waltz comes, who plays the part of Landa as it he is Landa himself. Very precisely (literately translated it would mean sleepwalking-ly precise) Waltz switches between English, German, French and Italian. His former love for languages, developed during his school time in Vienna, helps him to fulfill his American dream. Shortly after the reading, Tarantino calls him, who is staying in Tuscany at that time. "Christoph, you're my man."-"If you say so, Quentin, I am."

Christoph Waltz also exceeds on set, and shines next to Hollywood stars such as Brad Pitt. Today he says that that shoot saved him. "For me it was about the confirmation that I could do it. Not in vanity, but to confirm for myself that I wasn't going mad." Mad in the sense of: "Look, German TV, German cinema, I didn't just imagine it, I can really do it”. “What would become of him without Inglourious Basterds?” "No idea." Did he ever think about it? "Luckily not." After shooting the movie with Tarantino, but before the world premiere at the Cannes film festival in 2009, Alexander Gorkow, reporter for the Süddeutschen Zeitung, meets him in a Berlin café. Opposite the reporters sits a sad, insecure man. "Who knows if I will be in the movie" Waltz tells him "Quentin is re-cutting everything." He stays in. And how. For the role of Hans Landa, Christoph Waltz wins his first Oscar in 2010. Still in Cannes, in the car to the premier, one of the producers tells him: "Enjoy it. These are the last moments of your old life".

This afternoon, in his new life in Los Angeles, Christoph Waltz notices that his cappuccino didn’t come. When the waiter re-approaches the table and asks if he can bring anything else, your reporter orders a double espresso. Waltz first orders another cappuccino, to be changed at the last moment: “A double espresso as well, please.” The waiter motionless takes this in, and murmurs a “Great.” The first cappuccino which he didn’t bring, totally forgotten. That, then still innervates Waltz. And therefore he puts, in a friendly way, this hard “fact” in front of the waiter: “So I am really happy you forgot the first cappuccino.”

Lack of courtesy, bad behavior and no sense of etiquette, puts Waltz off and he doesn’t care if he offends anyone else. In 2007, while attending the Bambi awards show (German television price show) the Jordan Queen Rania also gave away a price. When she entered the stage, Waltz is the only of 800 guests which stood up. “When a queen enters a room, I don’t have to make any decision” he says “I stand up.” He adds after a small pause: “That kind of negligence, doesn’t only hurt the Queen, but the people that stay seated. That was a painful affair for me”.

That is the old Viennese school. Vienna is and stays his ‘city’, wherever he is living at the moment. His father died when he was very young, Christoph Waltz was seven. What kind of memories does he have of his father? “We have to make a distinction between conscious and unconscious memories. For the unconscious ones I can’t really speak and for the conscious ones I don’t want to”. Here again, Waltz precisely formulates and clearly borders all the lines. “This was always important for me. Seeing all the demarcation points in my live, even as a kid.” He still remembers saying to his school mates: “That is none of your business”. Later on, as an actor, he really understood: “that it is important to make up your own mind about, and decide for yourself, what is private and public”.

To define your own life, and don’t let others define you, was something that he needed. “I wanted this from the beginning, already at school, no, actually already before going to school. I always had this questions of “Where am I?”, “Where are the others?, “How is it positioned?”, “Do I have to agree?”. He always saw himself as separated from the others. Is he a good friend? He thinks for a long time about this question, and for the first time during the conversation, there is a long pause. “I can be a good friend, but I am not automatically one. For all the stability, there also needs to be certain dynamic aspect within a friendship.” He tells about his neighbor, who was really outraged because the tree from Waltz’s property was too high. “Sometimes there are serious storms here, and then the trees move around pretty hard”. What did he tell the neighbor? “Be happy that they move. If they don’t move around, they will break down”. This is also his outlook on friendships, you need to keep on moving, and that is important. He has two best friends, maybe three, not more. Then he takes back on the tree. “I have to admit that now, I did cut the tree, as it became a bit too eerie for me as well.” How would you describe yourself to people that don’t know you? “Totally not, I am not a describer. I recently had a talk about this topic with a befriended director, that an experience is much more important than a description. ”What do you mean?” “To go to the cinema, and experience it all, even when it is not a pleasant one: That is the whole reason why I go to the cinema.” Christoph Waltz has therefore drawn the conclusion –for himself- that he does not speak about his character during the interviews for a movie. “The portrayal of a subject is more important that that subject itself” he rages. “The curator puts himself before the artist, the director puts himself in front of his writer, the painter is standing before his painting and the actor is more important than his character.” He shakes his head. Would he describe himself as conservative? “Gustav Mahler said that: “Tradition is keeping the fire burning and not worshiping the ashes”. When the tradition is genuine, then I am a ‘Traditionalist’.” The great moments in art enthrall him, he just does not want to interpret them. He raves about an essay of Susan Sontags, who has been writing against (this kind of) Interpretation, but without any success. “I am not against the intellectualizing, I am against de-sensualizing. It is all about the experience, in cinema and in theater.” Once, Christoph Waltz was a spectator at the Viennese Burgtheater and saw Otto Sander, an experience which he will never forget. “He was sitting on a cardboard prop of a rock and was telling what the play is about. It is about Oedipus. You saw him and you forgot everything around him. You forgot that the production was from Peter Stein. That Bruna Ganz played with him. That the set design was from Anseln Kiefer. You only saw and heard what he played and said. You could experience what the person goes through, and could identify with his suffering. That is how it should be.”

Christoph Waltz’s hair is longer now, then how we knew him before, and his sharp face features are now even more outspoken. Like most other famous actors, he is small, and when questioned about his height, he answers: “1m72, 1m73” (67.7-68.1 inch) as if every centimeter makes a difference. Two years ago the art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi painted Christoph Waltz for a TV documentary. At a sitting in an old ballroom in Berlin, Beltracchi complains: “You are so slim, darn!” Waltz had reacted to that by outstretching his stomach. The painter then noted different features of his face: “One eye sits higher than the other”. And: “The nose is also not simple”. Waltz reacted to that with his dry humor: “To whom are you saying this, I am having it (the nose)”. After winning the Oscar, the first German speaking one since Maximilian Schell in 1962, a lot of people, colleagues and directors, were happy for him. But here and there comments were heard, also from Til Schweiger. On one hand he congratulated him while on the other, said that this kind of luck, playing a role in such a big movie, which was exactly cut out for him, will not happen again. Unless if Waltz would get another such part.

And exactly that happened again. A couple of years later Quentin Tarantino writes the part of bad-ass dentist Dr. King Shultz in his western Django Unchained for his friend Christoph Waltz. And in 2013 he wins his second Oscar. Since then, the (Oscar) title is adherent to the name of Christoph Waltz. Wherever he shows himself, and is introduced, he is “the two time Oscar winner, Christoph Waltz”.

When he was young, the legendary theater actor Wolgang Reichmann, then already 70 years old, told him that he, in his whole life played three big parts. Waltz was startled. Only three in his whole life? Today he knows how realistic that was. Christoph Waltz emphasizes this multiple times during this day in Los Angeles, that for him, it is all about not standing still. “I can’t sit on that for the rest of my life, I want to keep on working!” He knows, that the Oscars help him with letting the lesser parts pass. There are also flops. “Of course there are bad movies. For my profession, one rule applies: as long as the movie makes enough money, then a flop will not be judged as a failure”. If it happens with three, four movies after another, then it can go quickly. Therefore, Christoph Waltz plays in blockbusters, they also pay very well, he does think that strategic. He tells, that now on set, he can better handle critique than thirty years ago. “Earlier, I would start arguing with the director, and in the end it is was all about who won. Often that was contra-productive.” Nowadays he can listen to critique, and doesn’t react to each of the comments. He learned that, that listing to critique can help. That was also the case when he worked with director Roman Polanski, while filming the Yasmina Rezas play Carnage. Waltz plays, beside Kate Winslet, a cynical lawyer, constantly on his phone, while they are discussing why their son hurt the boy of the other family. It was a showy role, equally funny and brutal.

The first day of filming, he tells, was a real catastrophe: “During the lunch break, Polanski comes to me and says: “Christoph what you’re doing is not funny”. A pretty clear statement. “I understood what Polanski was trying to say. He is a clever and experienced director. He later told me that he knows what he can say, at each moment, during each part of filming. “It was the best and most efficient director’s comment that I ever got”. What Polanski went on to tell him, he doesn’t want give away, (is this) professional secrecy? When Waltz arrives at 8 o’clock sharp, at the morning of our photo shoot, he is making a call, (and goes on to) apologize, pointing to his phone, to say “important”. When he goes back and forth in the hotel lobby while on his mobile, you automatically think about the lawyer in Carnage. About a year ago HIS James Bond came in the cinema. More specifically: THE James Bond wherein he is playing the antagonist Blofeld. Even the announcement that he would play in the new James Bond was greeted with joy under Bond fans. Who, if not Waltz, would follow in the film tradition of German speaking villains, after Gert Fröbe, Curd Jürgens and Klaus-Maria Brandauer. Financially Spectre is a success: it gains 880 million, only one James Bond movie was more successful. And still Christoph Waltz is not happy- with himself, with the result- “I can’t really pretend that I really succeeded at playing Blofeld. It had everything that it needed and all (the requisites) were checked, but it wasn’t what I aspired at”. He already noticed it when filming began, but at the time it was already too late. “An actor can only be really great, when all the possibilities are open.” He doesn’t want to say more about it but what he actually means is this: The chemistry between him and Sam Mendes wasn’t what he wanted it to be.

How does someone survive the PR-spectacle which is a James Bond movie? “I already survived worse”. And he adds: “There is a hint of excessiveness. I understand that with the premier you want to invite lots of guests. But should it really be at the Royal Albert Hall? With that you don’t really do it any good. It is still a movie, and it should stay a movie. The next premier will probably be a national holiday, and this time it was already a couple of days before one. What is so bad about a premiere cinema such as the Odeon in Leicester Square?”

His Blofeld stayed alive at the end of Spectre, would there thus be a next story with Christoph Waltz?” “That I don’t know, nobody knows. Not one word was said about that, except in the press. We don’t even know which studio will produce the next movie, if Daniel Craig will go on.” That also falls on the category of “keep on working”.

And making plans. He wants to direct, and is in the process of making a movie, even has the finances in place as well as filled all the parts with actors, but even in Hollywood an American dream can turn into a nightmare. “It is all very much like an unordered kindergarten” he says and keeps on explaining: “It is not completely dead, but at the moment it is in a condition where people only can say: “Has everyone lost their mind?!” “One of the producers, which wants to finance a big part of the movie, is blocking everything, while it is not arranged yet how big his part in the production is. After six months of work: it is still not moving on. Two actresses-from the Oscar winning category-have said yes, a first class camera man as well, everyone is ready-but at the moment nothing is moving. Then I rather not make it, film history will go on even without my directing contribution.” If you ask Christoph Waltz, who he would like to play in a movie, he answers “Muhammed Ali. I find him one of the great artists of the 20th century, a performance artist, who pays everything with cash and not on credit.” “What do mean with that?” “How he moves, he doesn’t lose his grace, his humor, all under physical treat. How he works through every defeat as an experience. When I think about him, a get a feeling of happiness. There is nothing more beautiful than his fights, even when he gets a hit.” In the eyes of Christoph Waltz, Muhammed Ali was the perfect actor, because he played like it wasn’t all a game. And because even his defeats were made part of his career.

On the 4th of October Christoph Waltz will be 60. When we mention it, he doesn’t move an inch. Will he throw a big party? He looks at his opponent like he is offended. He isn’t someone who likes to celebrate big? “Yes” He says and grins, ”That is how you can formulate it” (The sass is on here). How will he then celebrate his birthday? “Let’s first presume that I will indeed turn 60. So, on my birthday at 1 pm I get the feeling, it would be nice to celebrate tonight. Then I start calling around and see who has the time. When they don’t have the time they are not there and when they do have the time they come. Those are still the best parties.”

He didn’t even imagine what it would be like to turn 60, when a woman around her thirties comes to the table, interrupts and says: “Hello” just to add one more thing: “You’re my favorite actor”. Then she moves away and leaves a smiling actor behind at the table. It bodes well with him, to life here in the capital city of film.

Christoph Waltz, the late movie star, is a man, who has fulfilled his dreams when he was already older, after lots of defeats and doubts. “It is a good thing that everything happened later in my career. All the success it is not only due to my own account”. He grins again: “I don’t want to life my life, believing that I have to suffer in order for my success to happen” Why not? “That is a protestant view, but I grew up catholic” Is he religious? “No, not since my youth”.

Only now and then he still remembers his old life, the former ‘survivor camp’. When the toaster in his kitchen doesn’t function anymore, he still thinks about how to fix it. His wife Judith then has to say to him, to throw the old toaster away; “Buy a new one” she says to her husband, ”You won two Oscars for heaven’s sake”.

#christoph waltz #translation #die zeit mann interview #interview

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