11 Awesome Actors Who Broke Into Hollywood Late

8. Christoph Waltz

To be completely fair to Christoph Waltz, he enjoyed a prolific career long before he got his big break in Hollywood.

The German-Austrian actor appeared in almost 100 movies over more than 30 years before being plucked out of (relative) obscurity by Quentin Tarantino, who cast him in the iconic role of SS Colonel Hans Landa in his incredible war thriller Inglourious Basterds.

Waltz was 52 years old when the film was released, with the part netting him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar the very next year and instantly making him the toast of the town.

Proving himself more than a flavour-of-the-month foreign fluke, though, Waltz scooped another Oscar for his fantastic supporting role in Tarantino's follow-up Django Unchained in 2012, before tackling the role of legendary Bond villain Blofeld in 2015's (admittedly disappointing) Spectre.

The fact that an actor of Waltz's insane talent was able to elude Hollywood through more than three decades of consistent work is just insane, and it makes you wonder how many other potential Hollywood breakouts are just waiting for the right phone call from the right director.