Austrian-German actor Christoph Waltz has a piece of advice for President Donald Trump if the country wants to get back on the right track: “Go away.”
The two-time Oscar-winning Django Unchained star, who holds dual Austrian and German citizenship, told TMZ this week that he believes the United States is headed in a downward direction.
But the actor added that the country could yet recover: “Absolutely. That’s the fabulous quality of this society.”
When asked by TMZ what advice he’d give the president, Waltz only said: “Go away.”
The Vienna-born actor — who won Oscar gold for his roles as the ruthless Nazi killer Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and for playing the Civil War-era bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in the director’s Django Unchained — has mostly avoided discussing U.S. presidential politics over much of the 2016 campaign.
Last summer, he criticized Britain’s exit from the European Union last year as “one of the silliest, most infantile things on earth.”
“It’s like handing someone a gun and telling them to shoot themself in the knee,” the actor told the Evening Standard last year of Brexit.
In a German-language interview with Austrian TV program Zib News in November, Waltz said Trump should not be allowed a grace period to see which of the policies and proposals he discussed on the campaign trail he might pursue.
“You can’t unsay what has been said,” Waltz said on the show, according to a translation by The Independent.
“Obama himself said in the meeting with Trump: We have to work on Trump feeling welcome, and if Trump is successful, the whole country is successful,” he added. “Really? If Trump is successful with what he announced during his campaign, it’s the end of the line.”
Waltz will next appear in the period film Tulip Fever alongside Alicia Vikander and Cara Delevingne, and in Alexander Payne’s Downsizing opposite Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin and Kristen Wiig.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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