Christopher Walken (born March 31, 1943) is an
American film and theatre
actor. In 1979, Walken won the Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Deer Hunter, where he played a
disturbed Vietnam veteran alongside Robert De Niro.
Walken was nominated again in 2002 for Catch Me if You Can. He won the
Clarence Derwent Award for his performance in The Lion in Winter in 1966[1] and an Obie for his 1975 performance in Kid Champion. He
has played the main role in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and
Juliet, and Coriolanus.
Walken is a prolific actor who has spent more than 50 years on stage and screen.[2] He has appeared in over 100 movie and television roles, including The Deer Hunter, The Dead Zone,
A View to a Kill, At Close Range,
King of New York, Batman Returns,
True Romance, Pulp Fiction,
The Funeral and Catch Me If You Can, and in TV's Kojak and
The Naked City. Walken gained a cult
following in the 1990s as the Archangel Gabriel in the first three The Prophecy movies, as well as his frequent guest host appearances on Saturday Night Live. In the United States, his films have
grossed over $1.8 billion.[3] He rarely turns down movie roles, regarding each role as a learning experience, and has stated in
interviews he would only turn one down when he is simply too busy on other projects.
Walken debuted as a film director and script writer with the short five-minute film
Popcorn Shrimp in 2001. He also wrote and acted the main role in a play about
Elvis Presley titled Him in 1995.[4]
Early life
Walken was born Ronald Walken (named after actor Ronald Colman) in
Queens, New York. His father, Paul Walken, was a German
immigrant, and his mother, Rosalie, was a Scottish immigrant;[5] both of his parents were bakers. Walken worked in the family bakery,
Walken's Bakery, which was situated on Broadway and 30th Street in the Astoria Section of Queens, NY after school. He was raised in the
Methodist religion.[6]
Influenced by their mother's own dreams of stardom, he and his brothers Ken and Glenn were child actors on television in the 1950s. He studied at Hofstra University in Long Island but did not graduate.
Walken initially trained as a dancer in musical theatre before moving on to dramatic roles in
theatre and then film.
Career
Early roles
Walken first appeared on the screen as a child extra in numerous anthology series and variety shows during the Golden Age of Television. After appearing in a sketch with Martin and Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour,
Walken decided to become an actor.[7] He landed a regular
role in the 1953 television show The Wonderful John Acton as the show's narrator. During
this time, he was credited as "Ronnie Walken".
Over the next 20 years, he appeared frequently on television, landed an experimental
film role in Me and My Brother, and had a thriving career in theatre. In 1964, he changed his name to "Christopher"
at the suggestion of a friend who believed the name suited him better.[8] He nowadays prefers to be known informally as "Chris Walken".[9]
1970s
Walken made his feature film debut with a small role opposite Sean Connery in Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes in 1971. In 1972, Walken played his first starring role in The Mind
Snatchers.[10] He plays a sociopathic American soldier stationed in Germany, in a
science fiction film which deals with mind
control and normalization.
Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall has Walken
playing the suicidal brother of Annie Hall (Diane
Keaton);[11] In 1978, he appeared in Shoot the
Sun Down, a western filmed in 1976 and co-starring Margot Kidder.[12] Along with
Nick Nolte, Walken was considered by George Lucas for
the part of Han Solo in Star
Wars.[13][14] The part eventually went to Harrison
Ford.
Walken won an Academy Award for best supporting actor in the controversial 1978 film,
The Deer Hunter.[15] He plays a young Pennsylvania steelworker who is
emotionally destroyed by the Vietnam War. To help achieve a gaunt appearance for the role,
Walken ate nothing but bananas and rice for a week.
1980s
Walken's first film of the 1980s was the controversial Heaven's Gate,
helmed by Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino. Walken also starred in the 1981
action-adventure The Dogs of War directed by Jack Cardiff. Walken then
played schoolteacher-turned-psychic Johnny Smith in
David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of Stephen
King's The Dead Zone. That same year, Walken also starred in
Brainstorm alongside Natalie Wood
and, in a minor role, his wife Georgianne.
In 1985, Walken played a James Bond villain, Max Zorin,
in A View to a Kill. Walken dyed his hair blond to befit Zorin's origins as a
Nazi experiment. He also played the
leading role of Whitley Strieber in 1989s Communion, an autobiographical film
written by Streiber and based on his claims that he and his family were subject to alien
abductions.
At Close Range starred Walken as Brad Whitewood, a rural Pennsylvania
crime boss who tries to bring his two sons into his empire.
1990s
The Comfort of Strangers, an art
house film directed by Paul Schrader, had the distinction of providing a role for
Walken that disturbed even him. He plays Robert, a decadent Italian aristocrat who lives with his wife (Helen Mirren) in Venice, in addition to having extreme sexual tastes and murderous tendencies.
King of New York, directed by Abel
Ferrara, stars Walken as ruthless New York City drug dealer Frank White, recently released from prison and set on reclaiming his criminal territory.
In 1992, Walken again played the leading villain in Batman Returns as millionaire
industrialist Max Shreck. Walken's next major film role was opposite Dennis Hopper in True Romance, scripted by Quentin Tarantino. His so-called "Sicilian scene" has been hailed by
critics as the best scene in the film, and is the subject of four commentaries on the
DVD. [citation needed] Walken has a supporting role in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, as a Vietnam veteran giving his dead comrade's son the family's prized possession,
a gold watch, while explaining in graphic detail how he had hidden it from the Vietcong by smuggling it in his own rectum.
Later in 1994, Walken starred in A Business Affair, a rare leading role for him in a
romantic comedy. Walken manages to once again feature his trademark dancing scene, as he performs the tango. In 1995, he appeared in Wild Side, The Prophecy, and the modern vampire flick The Addiction
(his second collaboration with director Abel Ferrara and writer Nicholas St. John).
In the 1996 film Last Man Standing, Walken plays a sadistic gangster. That year, he played a predominant role in the video game Ripper, portraying Detective Vince Magnotta. Ripper made extensive use of real-time
recorded scenes and a wide cast of celebrities in an interactive movie.
In 1999, Walken played Calvin Webber in the romantic comedy Blast from the
Past. Webber is a brilliant but eccentric Cal Tech
nuclear physicist whose fears of a nuclear war
lead him to build an enormous fallout shelter beneath his suburban home. The same year, he appeared as The Headless Horseman in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci.
Walken also starred in two music videos in the 1990s. His first video role was as the
Angel of Death in Madonna's 1993
"Bad Girl" video, the second appearance was in Skid Row's "Breakin' Down" video.
2000s
In 2000, Walken was cast as the lead, along with Faith Prince, in James Joyce's The
Dead on Broadway. A "play with music", The Dead was directed by
Richard Nelson. The show featured music by Shaun
Davey, conducted by Charles Prince with music coordination and percussion by
Tom Partington. James Joyce's The Dead won a Tony
Award that year for Best Book for a Musical.
Walken had a notable music video performance in 2001 with Fatboy Slim's
Weapon of Choice. Directed by Spike
Jonze, it won six MTV awards in 2001 and also won best video of all time in April 2002, in a
list of the top 100 videos of all time, compiled from a survey of musicians, directors, and music industry figures conducted by a
UK music TV channel VH1. In this video, Walken performs a
tap dance around the lobby of the Marriott
Hotel in Los Angeles. Walken also helped choreograph the dance. Also in
2001 Walken played a gangster in the witness protection
program in the David Spade comedy Joe Dirt
and an eccentric film director in America's Sweethearts.
Walken played Frank Abagnale, Sr. in Catch Me If You Can, a film directed by Steven
Spielberg. It is inspired by the story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. (played by
Leonardo DiCaprio), a con artist who passed
himself off as several identities and forged millions of dollars worth of checks, with an
FBI agent (played by Tom Hanks) hot
on his trail. Walken plays Frank Jr.'s father. His portrayal earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting
Actor.[15]
Walken also had a part in the 2003 action comedy film The Rundown starring
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Seann William
Scott, in which he plays a ruthless despot.
Most recently, he played the role of Morty, a sympathetic inventor who's more than meets the eye, in the comedy
Click and also appeared in Man of
the Year with Robin Williams and Lewis
Black. He costarred in the 2007 film adaptation Hairspray where he
is seen singing and dancing in a romantic duet with John Travolta, as well as an eccentric
but cruel crime lord and ping-pong enthusiast Feng, in the 2007 comedy Balls of Fury opposite Dan Fogler.
Walken is currently in the movie Five Dollars a Day, in which he plays a con man proud
of living like a king on five dollars a day.[16]
The death of Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood's death occurred after an evening onboard a yacht with her husband
Robert Wagner and Walken. There were reports Wagner and Walken had an argument about
Walken's behavior towards Wood, and she apparently tried to either leave the yacht or to secure a dinghy that was banging against
the hull when she accidentally slipped and fell overboard. A woman on shore said she heard cries for help from the water that
night, along with voices replying "we're coming." Wagner, Walken, and the pilot of the Splendor said they heard nothing.
Los Angeles Medical Examiner Thomas
Noguchi revealed that Wood was legally intoxicated when she died and there were marks and bruises on her body, which could
have been received as a result of her fall. In Noguchi's memoir, Coroner, he stated that had Wood not been intoxicated,
she would likely have realized that her heavy down-filled coat and wool sweater were pulling her underwater, and would have
removed them. Noguchi said he found her fingernails still embedded in the rubber boat's side. [citation needed]
Cult status
Walken has attracted a strong cult following as an actor. He is often imitated for his
deadpan affect, sudden off-beat pauses, and strange speech rhythm. He has been parodied on
