Career: In 1990, Tarantino sold the script for True Romance for $50,000 and he was going to use most of this money to make a low-budget version of his screenplay for Reservoir Dogs. However, a friend of a friend showed a copy to Harvey Keitel, who raised the extra money needed to increase the budget to $1.5million. The film was released in 1992 to critical acclaim. Tarantino's second film as a director, Pulp Fiction, was a huge commercial success, winning the Palme D'Or at the Cannes film festival and an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Projects since then include From Dusk Till Dawn, Jackie Brown, the Kill Bill movies, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained. He has also directed work for TV, notably earning an Emmy nomination for directing an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Career: For 30 years, Waltz made a steady living as an actor on German TV but struggled to find English-speaking roles. His big break came when he met Quentin Tarantino and played Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009). It catapulted him to international recognition and he won a number of awards for his performance, including an Academy Award. Since then, Waltz has been a bona fide Hollywood star and appeared in The Green Hornet (2011), Water for Elephants (2011), The Three Musketeers (2011) and Carnage (2011). In 2012 he teamed up with Tarantino again for the critically acclaimed Django Unchained, for which Waltz won his second Academy Award. He now has a number of Hollywood films in the pipeline.