Christoph Waltz steps up for Tarantino

0 Comments | USA TODAY, May, 2009 | by Anthony Breznican

Without this star, Quentin Tarantino says, Inglourious Basterds would never have been made. And it's not Brad Pitt.

It's Christoph Waltz, an Austrian actor who has done few English-language films but who dominates the wild World War II saga as Col. Hans Landa, a charming, gregarious and especially verbose SS officer.

"I realized I was writing a pretty impressive character fairly early on when I was still with pen and paper," Tarantino says. "One of the things about the character is the fact that he's a linguistic genius. I knew whatever actor I cast to play this has to be as much of a linguistic genius as Landa is or he would never come off the page."

Whether the coy colonel takes his place alongside Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader in the villain hall of...