Christoph Waltz Is Still Discovering Himself

Some people have the type of palpable energy where every room they enter becomes a party. They’re loud, they’re laughing, everything is wilder when they’re around. But when Christoph Waltz enters the room, things get quieter. That's not because he’s unfriendly, mind you; it's merely because it's immediately apparent that he is here, on earth, to take things in. He seems to be constantly smizing.

Waltz has made a name for himself in the past decade as Hollywood's most brilliant bad guy, and when he speaks, it's clear why he's so good at booking those roles. He speaks with the same precision and thought as any of his villains, but rather than a desire to destroy the world, he seems to want to know it better. He is excited to share his passions and opinions, like his love for opera, a love that's driven him to try his hand at directing them. He clasps his hands with excitement when he realizes you’re on the same thought train as him. There is no casual banter—he launches right into a consideration of the hubris of the wealthy, and makes an argument for how music can touch the soul. And at the end of the conversation, he helps me with my coat and smiles like we’re long-lost friends who’ve finally caught up.

He's currently starring in Robert Rodriguez's Alita: Battle Angel, based on a Japanese manga series that takes place in a cyberpunk future, in which Alita, a cyborg, tries to regain memory of her past life. Waltz plays Dr. Ido, an ingenious scientist who builds the CGI Alita from scraps, and has his own dark past to reckon with. He’s not a villain, but he’s not a clear-cut hero either, and that’s exactly who Waltz wants to play. Because who wants to be the hero anyway?

How has it been so far in New York?
It wasn't that long ago that I was here, and now everything's different. There are these actually weird towers on Central Park south. There is a town in Chianti in the Toscana, it's called San Gimignano. And in the Renaissance, the Burghers tried to outdo each other by building towers. And it very much looks like that, only they are from the 15th or 16th century. And they're huge. Or high. They're not huge, they're just high, and they're equally obelisk like. I wonder whether the Renaissance hubris of the Chianti—it kind of comes back full swing.

Most of those penthouses are empty, I'm pretty sure.
Now what does that do to the regular New Yorker who tries to live here? You can build a school for kids who can otherwise not go to school for that money.

This ties in very well to the elitist thing of a floating city in Alita
I'm glad you're making the connection. That was the main attraction to me. I like action as much as the next person. But I don't consider action raison d'etre. But observation of society I do!

And the great thing about the story is that it really works on all these levels. It drives the story. It energizes the narrative. And that is, I find—not that I'm a specialist for these movies—something new in this connection. And it's clearly for that very reason I find it's clearly not a superhero movie.

The film has this amazing technology, with a floating city and everything. But it felt not so futuristic, and not so far off. It was very relatable that way.
That's why our conversation about the towers is really, really relevant. So what else can you expect from a movie if it works on every level? It tells about our world and us. And it's emotional on top of it, it even gives you the soppy, puppy love thing. If you're a sentimentalist, why should you not have fun in the movies?

What drew you to Dr. Ido? Because I feel like he's not so directly a paternal figure. He's got this dark side.
It's more the mentor thing and yes, of course there are these paternal streaks or elements. They are very important. But it's interesting, a mentor does not necessarily have to be a good and boring person, the daddy, in order to be useful, especially in a story. But even in our lives. Sometimes people become our mentors whether we want it or not, and I find that says something about their mentoring. Just a good guy is probably the most boring thing there is, and also the most boring thing there is to play. Amongst your friends, I'm sure there are people who are very, very good. They're not lesser friends for that, but they're not the most exciting ones. They're very reliable.

All of your really good friends are gonna read this and be like, wait, what is he saying about me?
Well I hope so!

Were you familiar at all with the anime or the manga before this script?
It's not my area. My domain. It's not even, let's say, within my horizon. I knew nothing about the manga. I knew that manga existed, but it's certainly a mode of telling a story that needs a little education and getting used to. It's not difficult to read a story from right to left. But within the page, I needed to work out an order, out of which the story doesn't make sense. So for a while I needed to look at every picture and every section of the page and sort of create an order according to what I expected the narrative to be. Now, semiotically, so to say that was quite an interesting experiment, because sometimes I rearranged it not as an experiment, just to make sense. And of course it was a different story. But after a while, I got a little more fluent.

I think a lot of people will be sort of excited to see you as a complicated, but still very kind character. Was that something at all that was important for you to play given how good you've been at being a villain and how much people maybe know you as a villain?
It's not that it escaped my attention, but it was not an objective. Because I really try to go for the best parts I can get, and I'm not any different to any other actor in that. It just happened so that what you would call a villain is usually more interesting. In this case it's great because we still don't really know what drives [Dr. Ido]. We have a vague idea where he's coming from, but more or less geographically, and not so much in terms of his intentions and his plan.

It's been basically the last 10 years that you've been more known to an American audience, and a larger film audience. Do you think that's changed the way that you work?
A little bit. Before, I occasionally crept along; now I kind of notice a strut once in awhile. But that's just on the self-indulgent level. It makes it easier to work if it's being appreciated. I'm not necessarily referring to success on a grander scale, just specific appreciation about certain things. Of course they're flattering and all that, but reassurance is not always the worst thing. It can turn into something negative and detrimental if it results in over-confidence and lack of self-criticism and self-check—proper calibration and attention to details. [There's] a sense of responsibility because we want what we do to be seen by many people. That puts some responsibility on you. But if you have that reassurance to a degree that it is being appreciated, to me it meant alleviation of certain trepidations, and I feel it gave me a little bit of a wider wing span. But essentially I do the same thing.

To me that sounds a lot like having a good editor.
Exactly. It's useful to the whole. Because that's in the end what it's all about. You've got to be useful to the story. And if the story's not interesting and the people who are working on the story aren't interesting... and these people are appreciative of what you do, that doesn't mean that they like it or that they're overly enthusiastic or gushing. Gushing is embarrassing. You don't do anything with it. But just that there is a productive collaboration with an appreciative spirit. That's something that I encountered here. [Gestures toward Europe] Not so much over there.

Do you think this has made you more passionate about acting?
No. It's not really about the essence of what I think I should be doing as an actor. It's really more the collaboration and communication with the others who are crucially important to the movie.

I know that you were getting into opera work and directing opera. Tell me about that.
That's something I must admit is entirely egotistical.

It's nice that you get to do something entirely egotistical in your life.
How true. How true. But I’m very much convinced that music is much more than something that you just consume. That's why musical pollution drives me insane. There's music playing everywhere and anywhere, and usually at a volume that is unbearable and makes every other form of communication impossible. But I consider that pollution, because it's not played to be listened to. So I'm not referring to that. I'm referring to sitting down and trying to wrap your mind around what it is that you hear. And that's what music can do. Or does. It expands our earthly existence into a sphere that some people claim that can enter via meditation or religion, be that as it may. Music does that. Music is something that humans need to survive. And that's why my respect and admiration of real musicians—be it instrumentalists, or singers, or composers mostly—is literally unlimited. And I am not one of them, which hurts me.

Do you play any instruments?
Well the way I play instruments makes it even more apparent, so I kind of usurp that position to pretend that I am at least peripherally part of it.

Were there any challenges about directing an opera that you didn't foresee?
Yeah. I don't know enough about music! Seriously. There's so much to be known and when I speak to the conductors, what these people know about music is staggering. It's phenomenal. Even the bad ones! And the good ones are miraculous. They can really open this world up to you.

Look, a note of music is a vibration, but if it goes through a human body, that vibration can touch your heart directly. The connection can be so direct and so intimate and so complete that the individual vanishes and in that vibration, in the music, that's an experience you cannot have in any other art form or life form.

Do you have a favorite opera?
I'm very fickle in that respect. You tend to merge with the composers where something happens in your life, in your development, and you discover that Brahms is the composer for that, and then it vanishes. We move on. It's a constant flow that's beautiful. I refer to Brahms because I have a hard time with Brahms.

How so?
I have no clue. I'm still waiting for that period of my life where all of a sudden it opens up to me.

With any type of art it's amazing to see what hits at different points in your life.
Exactly. Exactly. And not that Brahms didn't write a single opera, it's just such an important element of musical history and I have no connection to it.

Is there anything that you want people to know about how you work?
No. It's none of their business. Absolutely not. This whole behind the camera fascination, I understand it. The fascination should take place in the auditorium. I think being an audience is another responsibility, meaning looking at what I see. Or rather, looking at what's there and not what I think should be there, or I know how it got there, or I think in the interest of the art as a whole it should look differently. No. Sit. Look. Open your eyes and ears and your mind and if you have a heart, then you will perceive what's there on the screen. You can't do that at home. Because in a way there is no place to be yourself like in the presence of others.

That's why this movie is a real experience. You leave your stuff and you also leave the stuff you amassed erroneously thinking that you know how movies are put together. Don't interfere with your own experience. Go and see. It's a nice arc for our conversation, isn’t it?