God bless Quentin Tarantino for bringing this brilliant actor into the world's spotlight. For a role that the director himself described as "unplayable", one can certainly say that Mr Waltz made a pretty good go at it - especially seeing as how the polar opposite Leonardo Di Caprio was initially sought for the part (ha! Can you imagine him in a Tarantino film?). From the very first scene, we got a sense that SD Standartenführer Hans Landa wasn't your average Jew-hunting Nazi from 1941. He had a smooth, calming accent (how misleading is that?), he drank milk (milk!), and his smoking-pipe was big enough to hold a small bonfire. He behaved in a way that no human being (fictional or otherwise) has ever behaved before - carrying out the chilling task of slaughtering innocent Jews with the boundless glee of an infant child. Despite that, I found myself harbouring an emotion towards the character that was akin to guilty fondness - the deliverance of his dialogue littered with dark humour, the undertones of menace accompanying every word and action, the downright shamelessness of (SPOILER ALERT!) switching sides at the end and demanding to be known as a war hero - he was a man that lived by his own rules and demanded everyone he came across to follow suite. If ever there was a man to like and loath in equal measure, it was Hans Landa. Christoph Waltz went on to appear in Tarantino's Django Unchained as King Schultz, who was pretty much the same soul as Landa only with a beard and on the good side. We don't blame you though, Christoph - your unique style has so far made both movies I've seen you in worth watching, and so I reward you with the number 6 spot on this list.
