Christoph Waltz’s Monster Mash: From Battling ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ to the Process That Won Him Two Oscars — and What Method Actors Are Doing Wrong

From creating one monster to killing another, Christoph Waltz’s winter has been a horror show. 

The 69-year-old Austrian Oscar winner played Henrich Harlander, Victor Frankenstein’s wealthy benefactor, in Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” which received nine Oscar nominations in January. He also stars in Luc Besson’s upcoming “Dracula” adaptation, in which he plays Van Helsing to Caleb Landry Jones’ titular bloodsucker. 

But while there’s kismet to Waltz appearing in two stylish adaptations of classic monster novels, he admits he didn’t grow up reading either book. “I wasn’t into horror,” Waltz says in accented English. “Both ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Dracula’ are not part of the German-speaking literary canon. So they were mostly movies to me. I was duly impressed by them, but I didn’t lose my self-control.” 

There are parallels to be found between Waltz and his scary movies. While Dr. Frankenstein is analytical and ambitious, Dracula is all soul and romance; blend these two, and it approximates how Waltz approaches art and acting. Ask him a question that paints the art of acting in too lofty a light, and he’ll reframe it in workmanlike terms.

“Are there any modern acting trends that interest you?” he’s asked. “No,” he replies.

Every word is deliberate with Waltz. He’s like your sharpest and most daunting college professor, eager to share his sage truths. If you can get on his wavelength, you’ll catch a twinkle in his eye. It’s an energy reminiscent of the scene that made him a star. While Waltz was a regular on German television, he took his first Hollywood role as Nazi Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 war film “Inglourious Basterds.” The movie’s opening scene is a tense interrogation by Landa of a farmer who is hiding a Jewish family under the floorboards. Landa is relaxed in his questioning, considering every word, puffing his ornate pipe, his ease with the disintegrating situation making it more and more unbearable. 

The role won him a best supporting actor Oscar, an award he’d win again three years later for Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.” In the years since, Waltz has taken on roles in high-profile films, often working with auteurs like Tim Burton, Alexander Payne and Walter Hill.

Indeed, what drew Waltz to his current projects was the writer-directors behind them. Del Toro is known for his awards-friendly monster movies, like 2006’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” and 2017’s “The Shape of Water” — yet the Mary Shelley adaptation has long been his dream project. French filmmaker Besson is best known for bold, effects-laden blockbusters like 1997’s “The Fifth Element” and 2017’s “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.” His version of “Dracula” is filled with lush, expansive, blood-soaked visuals and leans into the erotic romance between the vampire and his young victim, Mina (Zoë Bleu). 

“I thought, ‘If anyone’s going to do Dracula with a new perspective, it’s Luc Besson,’” Waltz says. “I always want to work with great people. I was very flattered when he asked me. I didn’t really expect ‘Dracula’ to be up his alley, but it turned out to be a wonderful collaborative process.” 

In turn, Besson says he’s equally im­pressed with Waltz’s technique and kindness on set. 

“He’s very minimalist in the role,” Besson says. “He doesn’t overact or anything. He’s very specific, very precise. The only way to get to this kind of performance is if you are so full of information and character that you don’t have to play it. And he’s so sweet with everyone. He’s helping everybody on the set; he’s a generous actor with others. That’s not always the case, so he helped me a lot.” 

Jones agrees with Besson’s sentiment and says Waltz gives actors a blueprint to work with on set. “He’s prepared and ready in a way that I strive to be,” Jones says. “I feel like when I come to set, I’m still figuring so much of it out. When I look to Christoph, I feel like if I can get out of my own way and join him in the place that he’s at, then we might have something. I think when acting with someone of that caliber, you can’t help but rise, or you end up climbing up there without realizing it.” 

Despite the many adaptations of the novels, Waltz didn’t revisit any to keep his interpretation true to the originals. “I use the background, not other people’s foreground,” he says. “Sometimes it’s a little difficult. If you have an iconic performance like Bela Lugosi’s, that should not direct your thinking. So you take the script and then you go from there.” 

In both films, Waltz lands huge moments in a supporting role, something that’s been a constant throughout his career. Yet he doesn’t care to categorize gigs that way. “Every part is a leading part,” he says. “It may be for a second or two only, but when you have something to contribute, you’re leading. Categorizing for award reasons makes sense. Supporting a main part — especially if you get to play the antagonist — is a fantastic task.” 

Waltz has often played antagonists, facing classic protagonists like Tarzan, Pinocchio and James Bond. Much like the character that brought him instant fame, Waltz loves the gamesmanship that comes with a villainous turn. “It’s a conversation,” he says. “It’s like in life, in a relationship, in politics — the contradiction is an indispensable part of the whole. That’s one of the problems we’re living through right now. We refuse to accept contradictions. The contradiction makes the dynamic possible. It energizes.” 

Waltz’s thoughts about acting started at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, an elite drama school in Vienna. He later took classes in New York with legends Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. Strasberg is largely seen as the father of Method acting, a practice that sometimes inspires actors to spend the entirety of their time on set in character, never letting their co-stars meet the performer underneath. Yet Waltz finds that behavior to be a misinterpretation of Strasberg’s teachings. “Frankly, everything is being ripped out of the context and inflated beyond recognition, and it’s acquired a completely different quality,” he says. “Strasberg himself said, ‘It’s just a method,’ meaning an approach to what you have to do with yourself. You’re not a robot programmed to follow ‘the Method.’ No, you learn basically what actors have been doing for hundreds of years.” 

Waltz keeps things simple when talking about his own method. How did he prepare to play the priest in “Dracula”? “I get up on time,” he says. “I show up on time. I have learned my lines, and I’m informed as to what the whole thing is supposed to be. Everything else follows from there. If you don’t know what it is that you’re doing, your urge to find out how to do it is going to be a lost cause.” 

That focus on the fundamentals was what allowed Waltz to jump from European projects to his Hollywood start in “Basterds.” The actor knew the part could change the course of his career, but he kept focused on the process. “After a while, working in this business, you get a little bit of a feeling,” he says. “But I don’t strategize. Do I get a notion? Sure. Am I then acting on it — or acting even worse by acting out that notion? No, definitely not. I make a conscious effort not to do that.” 

Waltz transitioned to mostly English-language work because of the new opportunities afforded him. “Part of the reason why I wanted to venture out is because I thought, in the 20th century, you shouldn’t be confined,” he says. “If you can take an airplane and be on the other side of the world within half a day, you should be able to incorporate this experience into your development. Not specifically for acting purposes, just as a person. The world is pretty big.” 

Luckily, his accolades have allowed him to focus on scripts that speak to him, which Waltz says must have one key moment to spark his interest: “When an exchange is energized by real thought and insight into a topic,” he says, “it doesn’t have to be deep and philosophical; it can be quick and then flat and superficial. But it needs to have the thought and consideration behind it. As soon as I read that in a script, I’m interested.” 

Waltz balks when he’s asked to consider his career and its place in storytelling. “With increasing age, I get away from metaphysics. There is no truth, as such, hovering behind the world as we perceive it,” he says. 

But pressed on the matter, he gestures to the heavens, searching for the perfect words to get close to an imperfect truth. “The job at hand is to make the story experience-able,” he says, “not just believable. You go to the movies to experience a momentary transformation of your existence. You need bodies for that. The actor is that body.”