Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walkenis an American actor who has appeared in more than 100 films and television shows, including Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Dogs of War, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, Batman Returns, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Sleepy Hollow, Catch Me If You Can, Hairspray, Seven Psychopaths, and the first three Prophecy films, as well as music videos by many popular recording artists. Walken has received a number of awards and nominations during his career, including winning...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth31 March 1943
CityAstoria, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I've made three musical movies which is pretty good considering that not many are made but I was lucky in other ways. I came along when independent movies were starting to boom.
I know that whenever I think about death, I come up against a stone wall.
My background is in musical comedy. I didn't know I was going to be an actor. But all my points of reference have to do with musical comedy and in being kind of a showoff.
When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go; they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV.
It's impossible for me to play a part without thinking about the audience.
If you do movies that are modestly budgeted, the way they finance them is they figure out how they can sell them.
One of the difficult things about being an actor is to stick around.
It's not necessarily how many minutes you're on screen, it's the material you have. It's more important what it is you have to do than the amount of time you're there.
Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.
A good actor is like a racehorse or a Ferrari. If a cylinder is missing on a Chevy, it's doesn't matter that much. But if something's not working right on a Ferrari, it makes a big difference. It's the three percent that makes the difference between good and great. It's a fine line. If you're not there, it's very painful.
Sometimes a certain innocence is good, but not about yourself.
When you're an actor, you do a lot of the same kind of thing. It's great when someone gets you to do something that's a little surprising.
Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.
I was born in America but all of my friends' parents, everybody's parents, including my own, had come to America from Europe. Many people in my neighborhood hardly bothered to learn English.