Top 85 Quotes & Sayings by Christoph Waltz

It bothers me that people who should know better believe a glossy magazine fantasy.

I am almost neurotically private myself. Because I think it's an important distinction to make between privacy and public sphere.

The villain is usually the most interesting part. But it has to be a smart thing. Just dumb cliche villains with a Russian accent and big muscles and a mean face, I don't know. My Russian accent isn't that great, and the muscles aren't that big and the mean face is not enough. You know what I mean? It gets very boring. Tedious stuff.

There is one thing I do miss in L.A. I love autumn.

There is no such thing as pure art. It's a bourgeois conceit.

My agent is the quickest, sharpest man on earth.

You can't always do the extraordinary, in between you have to do the ordinary. Because if you didn't, what would constitute the extraordinary?

A James Bond film can be artistically fulfilling. Absolutely it can. It can be complex, and it can be interesting. I consider Bond movies to be an extension of popular theatre, a kind of modern mythology. You see the same sort of action in 'Punch and Judy' or in the folk theatre of various cultures, like 'Grand Guignol.'

I only do what I like to do.

As a motivation in itself, celebrity is foolhardy and stupid.

Cary Grant is really the master of not taking himself so seriously.

Something that is very special today might not be special tomorrow, but to hold it, to grasp it, to keep it, to make it special, to elevate it from the ordinary, that's when you open up the champagne. To make it sparkle.

I've done so many jobs because I've had to, not because I've wanted to. And it's honourable to do a job because you need to feed your children, and maybe there is also something in it for your development as an actor. But only up to a point.

I think in Europe, movies are made like a commodity and then sold as art.

The thing about 'Spectre' is that it is not the work of hack writers. It does not have a hack director. The actors are not hams.

You know, I don't support esoteric approaches to acting.

Praise is nothing that accumulates. Praise is a sequence, especially if you've toiled for a long time. Praise does not pile up. So in a way, you can't get too much. I don't consider it to be a quantity that you can measure by volume.

I know from my experience in theater that the crowd is different every night; the reactions, the tension. But it's true for film as well, going from country to country and culture to culture. The difference between California and New York responses, for example. It's really fascinating.

'The Philadelphia Story' is one of my favorite movies.

Ten flashing lights are a nuisance but 500 are fantastic.

The bohemian artist who exists only for his art, it's a myth. OK, it might have been true for Giacometti, but it certainly wasn't for Picasso or Mozart.

Europeans still believe that working is for living. Americans often have that the other way around.

It would be completely laughable if I claimed I was always motivated by the pure craft of acting and that recognition doesn't play a part. Of course it does - that's human nature.

It's a wonderful narrative device to bring someone from the outside and look through his eyes if you want to describe the absurdity and preposterous reality that is accepted amongst the ones who are inside.

Everything that happens later in life is appreciated in a different way. You can appreciate the thing for what it is, which you couldn't if you were 25 and had never experienced much else. You would take it all for granted and think that's what life is like.

Stephen Sondheim I am in awe of.

It took me a lot of times watching it that I started to appreciate 'Pulp Fiction.'

I'm very bad with improvisation. I hate it.

Sometimes I do stuff where people say, 'Why did you do that?' And you know, it's very simple. I do it because I've never done it before.

By looking into more details of American history, we can make more sense of what's happening today.

It's easy to not feel misplaced if this tidal wave of appreciation is coming your way.

Our hubris needs to be downsized, thinking that profiteering on Earth, on whatever level - environmentally, economically, culturally - is unlimited and everybody should get as much as he wants or she wants. Humans need to be shrunk again to their actual size.

It's a misconception that you don't have seasons in southern California. They are just very subtle. The vegetation is very different. Plants react differently. You just have to be a little more observant.

I wouldn't really, realistically speaking, know the difference between wearing an S.S. uniform and a U.S. Marine uniform. To me it's all a uniform.

I've always been able to work as an actor and support my family and did great jobs, and more often than not, I got to turn down jobs that I didn't really want to do for various reasons or refuse to work with people I didn't like - and there are quite a few.

I'm open to working anywhere, but not on anything.

I take praise as not just a reward and a result but also as the beginning of a new process.

I used to hate exposure situations. What is generally referred to as 'red carpet.'

The fact that Facebook presents facial recognition programmes as a desirable development, well, that in itself is a decisive step toward fascism, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not really all that familiar with comic book culture.

Look at ISIS - without the Internet, they wouldn't exist in the same form. The Internet didn't create them, but the Internet facilitates them. And as we know from history, the facilitation is more dangerous than the cause, because the cause can be dealt with, but the facilitation is elusive.

The actor is there to translate what's on the page onto the stage or the screen. So I find it important that an actor manages to actually get out of the way, vanish as a person behind the character, never to be seen or talked about again. That's my philosophy.

I think Stephen Sondheim is a - and I hardly ever use this word - but this is as close as it gets to a genius.

You get hit over the knuckles enough, you don't stick them out anymore.

I have always been so interested in film as a medium.

You see, my version of why anyone would want to become an actor is that it's some psychological fixation, something that happened in puberty that you didn't outgrow in time, which is normal. Nevertheless, if you make it a profession, it can be really neurotic.

Becoming an actor is like becoming a father. It's not hard to become one. Making a life of it is the challenge.

Well, you need the villain. If you don't have a villain, the good guy can stay home.

You know, I don't talk about the characters that I play. Years ago, I was a little timid about it and I kind of squirmed when I was asked, 'Could you tell us something about your character.' Now with a little self-confidence that comes with the grey beard, I just flatly refuse.

You're always being cast for what you've been in last.

For a while, I couldn't decide whether or not I should pursue singing in the opera or acting. And I'm glad that I chose the latter because I wasn't a very good singer.

When a new book comes out or becomes accessible in whatever form, I get it and I read it.

I'm trying to be very aware of not repeating myself.

It's not the number of trucks parked outside that make a movie interesting but if you have more money, you have more time. More time enables you to try out other possibilities or follow an interesting lead. I don't like indulgence, but to have more possibilities is always more interesting.

What it really is and what I now have experienced is that, people who take enormous pride in what they're doing - not in their person - that their work ethos is as high as nowhere else.That they love their jobs, they love to do their jobs properly as best they can. And coupled with the financial umph, you know, you get decent results.

A silly comedy needs a straight guy, and that guy needs to be as straight as possible. The moment you start playing straight you're not straight anymore, you're bent straight, so it really requires the usual serious, straight-forward analysis and research, looking into it and finding the dramatic function, all of what you do until you feel you've collected enough points to safely and securely play the part.

If the shoe fits, you must wear it.

Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing.

You need the villain. If you don't have a villain, the good guy can stay home.

That's exactly what I'm driving at. 'Basterds' was interesting because it was, in a way, unfamiliar. I thought well, OK. Let's leave the comfort zone and just risk it. Why not? Because, exactly as you said, in a way, by taking that risk, I make up a little bit for my ignorance in the subject, or rather, the genre.