Ernst Stavro Blofeld or is heard in three novels: "Thunderball", "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"; and "You Only Live Twice"; as well as seven films from Eon Productions: "From Russia with Love" (1963); "Thunderball" (1965); "You Only Live Twice" (1967); "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969); "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971); "For Your Eyes Only" (1981) (the pre-title sequence of which shows an unnamed character resembling him fall to his death); and "Spectre" (2015). He also appears in "Never Say Never Again" (1983), the non-Eon remake of "Thunderball". Blofeld has been played on screen by Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Max von Sydow,
Christoph Waltz film "The Zero Theorem" (2013), American plagiarist Walter Keane in the biographical film "Big Eyes" (2014), and James Bond's nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld in "Spectre" (2015), the twenty-fourth Bond film. Waltz was born in Vienna, the son of Johannes Waltz and Elisabeth Urbancic, set and costume designers, from Germany and Austria respectively. His maternal grandfather, Rudolf von Urban, was a psychiatrist and psychologist who wrote the book "Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness". His maternal grandmother was Burgtheater actress Maria Mayen, and his step-grandfather was actor Emmerich Reimers. His great-grandparents also worked in theatre. Waltz studied acting at the Max Reinhardt