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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Brad Pitt gets top billing in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," but Austrian actor Christoph Waltz may have turned in the most memorable performance as a Nazi "Jew Hunter."
Christoph Waltz attends a special screening of "Inglourious Basterds" in New York. Waltz, a 52-year-old veteran of German television, was hardly known outside of Europe, until now.
Tarantino, insisting on actors with geographic origins similar to their characters, chose Waltz to play a complex and unforgettable villain: Nazi Col. Hans Landa.
Landa mixes charm, humor and intelligence with great cruelty and opportunism as he travels through Tarantino's unpredictable screenplay.
Waltz calls Landa "one of the great villains in dramatic literature."
His performance earned Waltz the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, but the actor credits the writer for creating a "multifaceted and layered" character.
"It's what Quentin [Tarantino] has written, and let me tell you, that's plenty," Waltz said. "Because I could still be sitting there trying to figure out what else is in there. And it's bottomless."
The opening scene of "Inglourious Basterds" is itself a short film in the style of a spaghetti western, starring Waltz as "The Jew Hunter."source: cnn.com