Primarily active in the United States,[1][2][3] he gained international recognition for his portrayal of villainous and supporting roles in English-language films.

After a substantial career in German television and theatre, Waltz's American breakthrough role came in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, in which he played Hans Landa, for which he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award.

He collaborated with Tarantino again in Django Unchained (2012), for which he earned his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, this time for his performance as a bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz.

[6][8] Waltz's maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychiatrist of Slovene descent[5][a] and a student of Sigmund Freud.

[19] In 2007, Waltz narrated the audiobook of Robert Sapolsky's German version of A Primate's Memoir, Mein Leben als Pavian.

[20] In Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, Waltz portrayed SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa, also known as "The Jew Hunter".

Clever, courteous, multilingual—but also self-serving, implacable and murderous—the character of Landa was such that Tarantino feared he "might have written a part that was un-playable".

[24][25] Tarantino acknowledged the importance of Waltz to his film by stating: "I think that Landa is one of the best characters I've ever written and ever will write, and Christoph played it to a tee.

[26] Waltz played gangster Benjamin Chudnofsky in The Green Hornet (2011); that same year, he starred in Water for Elephants and Roman Polanski's Carnage.

[28] His role garnered him acclaim once again, with Waltz winning the Golden Globe, the BAFTA, and ultimately the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

[31] He starred as Walter Keane in Tim Burton's Big Eyes, which opened on 25 December 2014,[32] and appeared as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Spectre, the 24th film in the James Bond franchise.

[35] In 2019, Waltz directed and starred in the crime film Georgetown, in which he portrays a man suspected of murdering the wife he married in order to raise his social status.

"[42] He received American citizenship by naturalization in 2020 noting that he strongly believed "in this old dictum of no taxation without representation" as he was living in Los Angeles since 2010.