Video:Christoph Waltz Interview - The Green Hornet

Transcript:Christoph Waltz Interview - The Green Hornet

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con.

Christoph Waltz - The Green Hornet

I heard that you helped refashion the character, that you were instrumental in working on that.

Christoph Waltz: "Well I hope I do that every time I play a character."

Did you really go in and work with them on the script and develop this?

Christoph Waltz: "Well, development...I don't know if it's development in the original sense of the word, but it develops because it has no other choice. The moment you get an actor doing something it develops for good or worse."

It's interesting how you approach a villain because you never look at him as the bad guy. So how do you get into his head?

Christoph Waltz: "Well, you know, that's why I also don't talk about the characters I play. You know, you have to make up your mind whether that's a villain in your book or not. I disagree with labels and cliches because that's not something I can do as an actor. Villain - you buy yourself a book that says how to play a villain and then you need to go page by page: 'Done that, done that, check it off.' It doesn't work that way and even if it did, it would bore me. So it's far more interesting and entertaining to kind of find the interesting qualities. And actually in a way it's a challenge to find a redeeming quality in something or somebody who shoots double-barrel guns."

And was that fun to do?

Christoph Waltz: "Yeah, it's a heavy object. Seth was making fun of me before. He said, 'Well, you're the specialist in acting with heavy objects.' I considered giving a seminar on acting with heavy objects."

Were you at all familiar with the Green Hornet? Was this something you knew about at all before taking it on?

Christoph Waltz: "Nothing whatsoever. I knew so little, my ignorance was so big that I just kind of decided to make that the point of departure because had I started to get into the whole comic book culture and something that I'm just not familiar with, I'd still be sitting at home trying to research the details."

So that means that people who don't know it at all will also be able to understand it, right?

Christoph Waltz: "That I don't know because that's really up to the director and the producer and how they put together the movie at the end. I was just there. I just worked on it."

More on The Green Hornet:

Another Interview with Seth Rogen

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