Christoph Waltz wins Oscar for Best Supporting Role

Christoph Waltz has won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his role of a German bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’.

This is the 56-year-old Austrian-German actor’s second Academy award in the same category. He previously won the trophy in 2009 for Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’.

“I thank Tarantino, the creator of this awe inspiring world (Django Unchained),” said Waltz while accepting his trophy.

Waltz saw off competition from Alan Arkin for ‘Argo’, Robert De Niro for ‘Silver Linings Playbook’, Philip Seymour Hoffman for ‘The Master’ and Tommy Lee Jones for ‘Lincoln’.

In ‘Django Unchained’, an American epic western film, Waltz portrayed Dr King Schultz, a German bounty hunter in the pre-Civil War South, who buys a slave to assist him with his work.

Waltz also thanked his co-stars Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington and Samuel L Jackson in his winning speech.

He started as a stage actor, performing at venues such as Zurich’s Schauspielhaus Zurich, Vienna’s Burgtheater, and the Salzburg Festival.

The actor was a prolific television actor. In 2000, he made his directorial debut, with the German-language television production ‘Wenn man sich traut’.

Before coming to the attention of a larger audience in Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’, he had played the role of Dr Hans-Joachim Dorfmann in the English-language TV series Gravy Train in 1990.

In ‘Inglourious Basterds’, Waltz portrayed SS-Standartenfuhrer Hans Landa, aka “The Jew Hunter”.

He is the only actor to win an Academy Award for appearing in a Tarantino film.