'Old Guy': Christoph Waltz talks about working with Philip Seymour Hoffman's son, Cooper Hoffman
A powerhouse duo, Christoph Waltz and Lucy Liu, team up for the action-comedy movie Old Guy (now in select theatres and on digital). Directed by Simon West (Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), the film also starring Philip Seymour Hoffman's son, Cooper Hoffman.
Waltz plays hitman Danny Dolinski, who's aging out of his career, dealing with arthritis after joint fusion surgery, making shooting a gun tricky, but he still loves to drink and party. Still clinging to his career, his boss reassigns Dolinski to train a young prodigy in the world of hit men, Wihlborg (Hoffman).
Liu plays Dolinski's long-time friend Anata, who ends up joining him and Wihlborg on their assignment, and she seems to be the object of Dolinski's unrequited love.
When asked about collaborating with Liu and Hoffman, Waltz identified that the environment on set was "unusually harmonious."
"I am a very impatient person, so I tolerate no one who gets on my nerves, and people get on my nerves very easily, but Cooper didn't, nor did Lucy, not even Simon," Waltz said. "It was unusually harmonious."
Waltz, who spend a significant portion of the film with Hoffman, described the 21-year-old actor as a "lovely" person, who's ahead many young men his age.
But in terms of what appealed to Waltz about working with West as the director of Old Guy, the two-time Oscar winner said that it was West's collaboration throughout the project.
"Way before ... they even started prepping, we were talking about the script and the characters, and he was extremely open," Waltz said. "And if I sense a gap, I'm happy to fill it."
"So he gave me plenty of opportunity. ... And talking about it and coming up with ideas. ... That's what I found extremely appealing."
Liu echoed Waltz's comments about the Old Guy director, adding that the director wasn't "afraid" to talk about things that could be shifted when filming the movie.
"If there was something that didn't seem true or honest in the moment, he was open to changing it and making it more effective for that time, in that moment," Liu said. "I think oftentimes they're like, ... 'Sure, whatever you want.' And then when you get there, it's actually not that. And in this case, he was really willing to creatively change scenes in order to make them work."
"I think that really helps when you're working on a movie with this length, and also with with a very small cast. And of course there's pressure to get everything done in the certain amount of time and make your day. And he never made you feel like you were rushing. ... And he's obviously worked on very big movies, so it's nice that he wants to do movies that he has more creative control over, regardless of the box office, essentially, which I think that's a wonderful thing."
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