Dave Bautista Learned Specific Lesson from Christoph Waltz During Spectre Filming

Christoph Waltz has made quite a career. The actor has over one hundred credits over a thirty-plus year history. He has an Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globes – and as the primary villain in Spectre, he also had lessons to teach. His character teaches James Bond lessons throughout the film, but the actor also inadvertently taught his peers a trick or two.

Dave Bautista, who plays a classic-style henchman named Jinx in the film, said that watching Christoph Waltz’s performance while shooting the movie was “such a learning experience.”

“When you watch Christoph, he’s almost hypnotic,” Bautista told ComicBook.com during a phone interview. “You just get absorbed in what he’s saying.” Bautista said that he felt like he was constantly learning things on set from director Sam Mendes, and other actors he worked directly with on the film like Daniel Craig and Lea Seydoux, but one thing Waltz did in particular stuck with him.

The actor said that one of his most “terrifying” moments is when someone on set yells action and you just have to turn it on. “It’s like a gun goes off, it’s when my heart starts pumping,” he said. But Waltz helped him through that.

“I watched Christoph in the Rome meeting scene, they’d say action, and there was a very long, uncomfortable silence before Christoph began to speak. He was on his own time, and I thought that was just genius,” Bautista said. “It takes away all the pressure, all the stress, when you do things on your own time and become comfortable.

“I took that and I’ve used that in films since then, and it’s made all the difference in my performance! It’s something I never would’ve put my finger on until I witnessed him do it.”

Of course, some people might think that sitting and watching someone in silence when filming is going on would get old, but not so, says Bautista.

“The cool thing about Christoph is that no matter how long he took, you couldn’t wait for him to speak. It was never ‘Oh, what’s this guy doing?’ He made you wait for it and you loved it! That in particular was a very important lesson that I walked away with.”

Spectre opens in theaters in North America November 6, 2015.