LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "The better the dog, the busier you have to keep him."

That was the advice a dog trainer, of all people, gave Christoph Waltz, the Vienna-born actor who won the top acting prize at Cannes for his role as the eerily deliberate Col. Hans Landa in "Inglourious Basterds."

Now he's keeping busy. Very busy. Sporting a beard for his new role as the villain in "The Green Hornet," the 53-year-old actor is co-starring in a major studio film and fielding offers for everything from star parts to A-list parties.

He appears somewhat bemused to be invited to events and roundtables with the likes of Nicolas Cage and Morgan Freeman, but his confidence in his own skill is apparent.
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Now he's found that ideal with Landa. It was a piece of casting that director Quentin Tarantino considered so essential for his film that he was almost ready to give up on the whole project, having spent more than $1 million of his own money to develop it, after weeks of failing to find the right actor. Then Waltz walked in and Tarantino knew he could make his movie.

"I consider myself one of very few who get the chance to have that experience," Waltz says. "(But) it would be completely presumptuous, or, in a way, childish, or rather infantile to expect that could happen again and again."
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Waltz is relishing the other new opportunities "Basterds" has brought about. "It opens doors I didn't even know existed. All interesting directors end up here, and I'd be thrilled to work with the greats. I'm a great Tim Burton fan and an admirer of Martin Scorsese. This is how different my interests are."

Thanks to the richness of Landa's character, those directors probably have him on their list of actors to watch. Luckily for Waltz, he isn't simply fielding offers to play SS men.

"Nobody's talking about that. I get interest coming my way from many different directions. I'd hate to pigeon-hole myself. The variety is what's interesting."

No, he says, he won't be playing any more Nazis. But he does hope to make more Hollywood films. "In Europe, everybody would say, 'Well, they just want to squeeze you like a lemon.' Well, yeah! But, you know, if I have the juice, why shouldn't they?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091116/people_nm/us_waltz_1