Background

Ethnicity: Walken's mother was a Scottish immigrant from Glasgow, and his father was a German immigrant from Gelsenkirchen.

Christopher Walken was born as Ronald Walken on March 31, 1943 in Astoria, New York, United States. He is the son of Paul Walken and Rosalie Russell. He and his brothers, Kenneth and Glenn, were child actors on television in the 1950s.

Education

Christopher Walken attended the Professional Children’s School, a school for child actors. As a teenager, he worked as a lion tamer in a circus. He also studied at Hofstra University but dropped out after one year. Walken initially trained as a dancer at the Washington Dance Studio.

Career

Christopher Walken started acting as a child when he appeared in countless television and stage productions. Then, as an adult, he enjoyed several years of popularity and critical acclaim on the Broadway stage. In the 1970s, he started working in film, and during the early years of his screen career Walken distinguished himself in several compelling supporting roles, including his amusing performance as Diane Keaton's strangely neurotic younger brother in Annie Hall, and as a cunning and comfortably kept gigolo in Roseland. In 1978, he starred in the film The Deer Hunter. He plays a young Pennsylvania steelworker who is emotionally destroyed by the Vietnam War.

Walken's first leading screen role was in The Dogs of War in 1980, the same year he appeared in the epic but commercially disastrous Western Heaven's Gate. He also performed a song-and-dance number in the musical Pennies from Heaven (1981). In 1985 Walken starred in A View to Kill, the James Bond film starring Roger Moore as the antagonist Max Zorin, and by this time, he had become renowned for his ability to play negative roles. In 1992, he appeared in Madonna's coffee table book, Sex, and also starred as a villain in the movie Batman Returns. His next major film was True Romance, scripted by Quentin Tarantino. He also played a supporting role in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

In 1994, Walken starred in A Business Affair, a rare leading role for him in a romantic comedy. In 1995, he appeared in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, Wild Side, The Prophecy and the modern vampire flick The Addiction, which was his second collaboration with director Abel Ferrara and writer Nicholas St. John. In 1996, Walken starred as a sadistic gangster in Last Man Standing, and in the same year, had a prominent role in the video game, Ripper. In 1999 he played a Hessian horseman in Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. Through and beyond the 1990s, Walken has hosted the comedy sketch and satire TV series Saturday Night Live seven times. One of his more famous SNL performances was a spoof of Behind the Music, featuring a recording session of Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) the Reaper". 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. The second appearance was in Skid Row's Breakin' Down video.

In 2000, Walken was cast as the lead, along with Blair Brown, in James Joyce's The Dead on Broadway. In 2001, he played Lieutenant Macduff in Scotland, PA, a loose film adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Later Walken played Mike in the film Poolhall Junkies and played Frank Abagnale, Sr. in Catch Me If You Can. He played the role of Paul Rayburn in 2004's Man on Fire. Later he starred in such films as The Stepford Wives, Man of the Year and Balls of Fury. In 2010, Walken returned to Broadway in Martin McDonagh's play A Behanding in Spokane. In 2012, he costarred with Al Pacino and Alan Arkin in the film Stand Up Guys. In 2014, Walken played Captain Hook in the NBC production Peter Pan Live! He also starred in the film When I Live My Life Over Again and voiced King Louie in the CGI-live action adaptation of Disney's The Jungle Book. Later he appeared in Dexter Fletcher's Eddie the Eagle and Barry Sonnenfeld's Nine Lives. In 2017, Walken replaced Bill Irwin in the role of Walter Tinkler in the critically panned Father Figures. The following year, he played Myron in the Netflix film Irreplaceable You.

Achievements

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  Christopher Walken is an American actor, singer, comedian, director, producer, screenwriter, and dancer who is famous for his roles in such films as The Deer Hunter, Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow, Catch Me If You Can and Seven Psychopaths. He's known for his versatility and is named as one of Empire magazine's "Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time". Walken inspired the stage show, All About Walken: The Impersonators of Christopher Walken, created by actor Patrick O'Sullivan in Hollywood in 2006.
  
  Christopher Walken received the Academy Awards in 1978, for his role in the film in The Deer Hunter. He also received the BAFTA Award in 2002. In 2003, he was awarded the Supporting Actor of the Year Award. Walken also received such awards as the Marquee Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Lifetime Achievement Award and New York Film Critics Circle Award.

Works

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  • Suicide Kings

    (Avery (Henry Thomas), Max (Sean Patrick Flanery) and two ...)

    1997
  • King of New York

    (A psychotic drug lord leaves prison bent on sharing his p...)

    1990
  • Heaven's Gate

    (James Averill, the sheriff of Jackson County in Wyoming, ...)

    1980
  • The Maiden Heist

    (When museum security guards Charles, Roger and George lea...)

    2009
  • Balls of Fury

    (Former professional table tennis champion Randy Daytona, ...)

    2007
  • Seven Psychopaths

    (Marty, an aspiring screenwriter working on a screenplay, ...)

    2012
  • The Prophecy

    (The story revolves around a little girl and a priest, who...)

    1995
  • The Dead Zone

    (When Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) awakens from a com...)

    1983
  • Nick of Time

    (Gene Watson, an accountant, finds himself facing his wors...)

    1995
  • McBain

    (An ex-POW (Christopher Walken) and his war buddies help a...)

    1991
  • Watch Around the Bend

    (Four generations of men embark on a bus journey to New Me...)

    2004
  • The Deer Hunter

    (In the backdrop of the US-Vietnam war, three friends who ...)

    1978
  • Batman Returns

    (When Max, an entrepreneur, and criminal Penguin team up t...)

    1992
  • The Addiction

    (A vampiric doctoral student tries to follow the philosoph...)

    1995
  • Catch Me If You Can

    (Notorious con artist Frank Abagnale has duped people wort...)

    2002
  • Stand Up Guys

    (Retired gangsters and best friends come together, after d...)

    2012
  • The Family Fang

    (A brother and sister return to their family home in searc...)

    2015
  • Man On Fire

    (John, an ex-CIA officer, is entrusted with the responsibi...)

    2004
  • The Dogs of War

    (On a reconnaissance to the African nation of Zangaro, Jam...)

    1980
  • Mr Fuzzypants

    (Tom, a businessman who has no time for his family, gets a...)

    2016
  • A Late Quartet

    (For 25 years, the Fugue, a string quartet, has wowed musi...)

    2012
  • Brainstorm

    (A research scientist, Walken has been experimenting with ...)

    1983
  • The Funeral

    (Chaz and Ray Tempio are criminals who want to avenge thei...)

    1996
  • The Prophecy 3: The Ascent

    (This is the conclusion of the Prophecy trilogy. Danyael i...)

    2000

Religion

Christopher Walken and his brothers were raised Methodists.

Politics

There is a sensational incident related to Walken when it comes to his political engagements. He was subject to a hoax controversy in 2006 that he is running for President of the United States, through a fake website started by mostly his fans. These rumours were soon denied by his publicist. However, he later endorsed Barack Obama for re-election in 2012.

Views

Quotations: "I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own."

"If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don't ask anybody, just build a house."

"I play a lot of those parts, and it's a chicken-and-egg thing. I don't know whether you get scary because you play those parts or did you get those parts because you were scary? But I do believe that there's a very close connection to what's scary and what's funny. So I think if you have the ability to do one, you might have the ability to do the other."

"Obviously an actor draws on his own experience."

"My favorite characters are the ones that are the most successful movies."

"I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies."

Membership

Christopher Walken is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, Actors' Equity Association and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Personality

Christopher Walken is often called the quintessential character actor. His unique voice and speaking style has been compared to other entertainment figures with voices that create "a pleasing (or at least entertaining) aural experience," such as William Shatner and Garrison Keillor. Thanks to his nervy charm that can skew sinister in a flash, he excels at playing weirdos, psychopaths, and villains.

Walken holds great compassion and seeks to be of service to others. He is capable of giving comfort to those in need.

Physical Characteristics: Christopher Walken's eyes are of different colors, one hazel, another blue, a condition called heterochromia.

Quotes from others about the person

• Josh Lucas: "Walken is fascinating because he has a complex and fearless process – each take is wildly different and he does that until he finds the one that is true perfection."
  
  Mars Callahan: "Everybody always wants to work with Christopher Walken. I think he's the most interesting actor working today. His choices are always dangerous, which makes for interesting work. You can watch him eat a bowl of cereal and you'd be riveted because he's just unpredictable."

Interests

• Cooking

• Writers

  Edgar Allan Poe

• Sport & Clubs

  Golf

Connections

Christopher Walken married Georgianne Thon in 1969. The couple has no children, and Walken has stated in interviews that being childless is one of the reasons he has had such a prolific career.

Father:

Paul Walken

Mother:

Rosalie Russell

Brother:

Ken Walken

Brother:

Glenn Walken

Wife:

Georgianne Walken

colleague:

Meryl Streep

colleague:

Leonardo DiCaprio

References

• Christopher Walken A to Z The Complete Guide To All Things Walken He's been a dancer, a baker, a lion tamer, an award-winning actor, and a Hollywood legend.
  2008