Christoph Waltz

“You know, I don't talk about the characters that I play. Years ago, I was a little timid about it and I kind of squirmed when I was asked, 'Could you tell us something about your character.' Now with a little self-confidence that comes with the grey beard, I just flatly refuse.”

“I've always been able to work as an actor and support my family and did great jobs, and more often than not, I got to turn down jobs that I didn't really want to do for various reasons or refuse to work with people I didn't like - and there are quite a few.”

“Our hubris needs to be downsized, thinking that profiteering on Earth, on whatever level - environmentally, economically, culturally - is unlimited and everybody should get as much as he wants or she wants. Humans need to be shrunk again to their actual size.”

“I think Stephen Sondheim is a - and I hardly ever use this word - but this is as close as it gets to a genius.”

“I've done so many jobs because I've had to, not because I've wanted to. And it's honourable to do a job because you need to feed your children, and maybe there is also something in it for your development as an actor. But only up to a point.”

“I only do what I like to do.”

“Ten flashing lights are a nuisance but 500 are fantastic.”

“I have always been so interested in film as a medium.”

“My agent is the quickest, sharpest man on earth.”

“I take praise as not just a reward and a result but also as the beginning of a new process.”

“You get hit over the knuckles enough, you don't stick them out anymore.”

“There is one thing I do miss in L.A. I love autumn.”

“There is no such thing as pure art. It's a bourgeois conceit.”

“I'm not really all that familiar with comic book culture.”

“The thing about 'Spectre' is that it is not the work of hack writers. It does not have a hack director. The actors are not hams.”

“Praise is nothing that accumulates. Praise is a sequence, especially if you've toiled for a long time. Praise does not pile up. So in a way, you can't get too much. I don't consider it to be a quantity that you can measure by volume.”

“For a while, I couldn't decide whether or not I should pursue singing in the opera or acting. And I'm glad that I chose the latter because I wasn't a very good singer.”

“The fact that Facebook presents facial recognition programmes as a desirable development, well, that in itself is a decisive step toward fascism, as far as I'm concerned.”

“I know from my experience in theater that the crowd is different every night; the reactions, the tension. But it's true for film as well, going from country to country and culture to culture. The difference between California and New York responses, for example. It's really fascinating.”

“It's a wonderful narrative device to bring someone from the outside and look through his eyes if you want to describe the absurdity and preposterous reality that is accepted amongst the ones who are inside.”