Los Angeles - Christoph Waltz on Sunday won his second Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in four years under the direction of Quentin Tarantino, this time as a German bounty hunter in the slave revenge tale, Django Unchained.
"We participated in a hero's journey, the hero here being Quentin," a choked-up Waltz said as he accepted his award.
The Austrian actor first burst into Hollywood as a charming yet evil Nazi colonel in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, and walked away with the Academy's supporting statuette in 2010.
Waltz's win Sunday gives him an enviable career record of two Oscars for two nominations. He also prevailed this year over veteran Hollywood names like Robert De Niro and Tommy Lee Jones and clinched a nomination while Django co-stars Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio did not.
Until he was introduced to Tarantino, the 56-year-old son of set designers worked for 30 years mostly in German theatre, TV and film, while attempts to cross into English-language production proved unsuccessful.
In Django, Waltz plays the German immigrant dentist-turned-bounty-hunter Dr King Schultz who pairs up with Foxx's freed slave Django to track down and kill outlaws and then rescue Django's enslaved wife.
This month Waltz stirred up controversy as a guest on comedy show Saturday Night Live, playing "Djesus Uncrossed" in a spoof of Tarantino's trademark bloody films. "No more mister nice Jesus," he said, wearing a white robe and holding a machine gun. - Reuters