Sgt. Donny Donowitz

Played by: Eli Roth

Nationality of actor: Jewish-American

Nationality of character: Jewish-American

Roth on Donowitz: “Going to Germany I never quite fully understood how the current generation of Germans had the exact same fantasies of killing Nazis the way that I did, because I assumed, well, it's their grandparents so why would they?

"I never really understood the way that they were burdened the same way we were, and I think the movie is so much about confronting that, confronting the past, just destroying it and moving forward in a positive direction. 

“It was an incredibly healthy experience. In the scenes when I would kill the Nazis, the actor, whoever was dying, would look at me and go, yeah we get to kill these motherfuckers today, with the biggest smile on their face. 

“And they wanted the death to be as violent as possible. It wasn’t like my character's killing yours, it was that we were burying the past together because it was something that had indirectly affected our lives.”

QT says: “I wanted to avoid the war movie clichés that I’ve never liked, the little things like they hit a Nazi on the head and then they take his uniform and put it on and infiltrate somewhere, and it just magically fits. 

“Or the way when you see one of these guys come up behind some Nazi guard and they grab them and they knock them out and nobody dies or screams.

“It would never be that easy. Donny knows that. So he cuts their throats so they can’t scream.”

Next: Hugo Stiglitz