Christopher Walken

Born on March 31, 1943, in Queens, New York, Ronald Walker – his real name – is the son of Rosalie, a Scottish immigrant, and Paul, a pastry chef who was born in Germany. Passionate about movies, they named it in honor of actor Ronald Colman . His mother dreamed of her sons becoming famous so she continually submitted them to castings, so both he and his brothers, Glenn and Kenn, became child actors in the 1950s. As a child Christopher Walken participated in the television show The Colgate Comedy Hour , where he shared the screen with Jerry Lewis .

As a teenager he got a job as a lion tamer in a circus. At that time he was fascinated by Elvis Presley . “My girlfriend showed me a photo of the king of rock. She impressed me with his hairstyle, so I cut my hair just the same, and I’ve kept that look ever since,” he recalls. He began studying acting at Hofstra University, but left it a year later because he was recruited as an actor for “Best Foot Forward”, an off-Broadway production from 1963. After various roles in series and movies, Christopher Walken began to stand out accompanying Sean Connery in 1971’s Manhattan Heist , and then as Alvy, Diane Keaton ‘s weird brother who is terrified of driving, in Annie Hall in 1971 ‘s Woody Allen .

He played his best-remembered character, Nick Chevotarevich, a Pennsylvania steelworker whose mind is destroyed by the horrors of the Vietnam War, in Michael Cimino ‘s The Hunter , for which he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Role. “I remember filming in real settings. At midnight. With a lot of heat. The atmosphere helped a lot. In Bangkok, in the final sequence, we were sitting and the rats were running around our feet, for so long that you didn’t even pay attention to them anymore. It was a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere.” Few people know that George Lucas was about to recruit him to play Han Solo in Star Wars , but in the end he gave the role to Harrison Ford .

After The Niagara Link , and Heaven’s Gate , Christopher Walken lived the most traumatic experience of his life during the filming of Project Brainstorm , since he was on board the ship with his co-star Natalie Wood , the night she passed away. Only the two of them were on board, the actress’s husband, Robert Wagner, and Dennis Davern, captain of the ship. Over the years he has resisted speaking about the matter publicly, although he has occasionally told his version. “I do not know what happened. She slipped and fell into the water. I was in bed then. It was a terrible thing, ”she declared to People in 1986.“ What happened that night only she knows, because she was alone, ”she added in 1997 in another conversation, with Playboy. She “she had gone to bed before us and her room was in the back. A boat was bouncing against the side of the boat, and I think she got out to move it. There was a ski ramp that was partially in the water. It was slippery, I had stepped on it myself. She had told me that she did not know how to swim. In fact, they had to cut a swimming scene from the movie. She was probably half asleep and was wearing a coat. The people who are convinced that there was something more than what came out in the investigation. Public opinion will never be satisfied with the truth. But the truth is that there is nothing else. It was an accident”.

Christopher Walken is good at playing heroes, as when directed by David Cronenberg he starred in The Dead Zone , adapted from a Stephen King novel . But he commands more attention as a villain, for example facing James Bond, in A View to a Kill , or making Easter for the inhabitants of a small town, as a hit man for a powerful individual, in A Place Called Miracle , by Robert Redford . “That I am good at psychopaths has to do with the way I look. That gives special character to my characters. It is always good to impress, it is what any actor wants. I am also very pale, I never sunbathe, I don’t like it. Surely there is something of Dracula in me.”

He interrogated Dennis Hopper , in a key scene from Point Blank Love , directed by Tony Scott . “After the first take, Hopper and I realized that he had come off really well. The director agreed, so the three of us went to dinner to celebrate,” he recalls. He did not then meet the film’s screenwriter, Quentin Tarantino , who later called him for a role in Pulp Fiction .It did not have a comfortable budget, so the most famous actors only went to the set when the rest of their obligations allowed it. Christopher Walken was in full swing, so his scene as Captain Koons had to be the last one filmed. He hadn’t even had time to rehearse it once. “I did it without the child,” he recalls. Still, he did another brilliant job as the guy who gives the kid who will later be Bruce Willis his dead father’s watch, which he has kept captive from the Vietnamese hidden up his ass. “I shot it without the child.”

Despite his dark characters, he considers himself a lucky person. “The actor should not be confused with the roles he plays. My life is very different, fortunately.” Playing one of the jets in a 1963 stage production of West Side Story, Christopher Walken fell in love with casting director Georgianne Thon, whom he married in 1969. They have no children but live happily in the countryside. of Connecticut.

After giving life to a drug lord in The King of New York , Abel Ferrara also turned him into Ray, the coldest and most calculating of a family of four mafia brothers in The Funeral , a vampire in The Addiction , and in headhunter for a megacorporation at the New Rose Hotel . Tim Burton had him under his baton, as an unscrupulous businessman (named Max Schreck , in homage to the leading actor in Nosferatu ), in Batman Returns , and in the terrifying Headless Horseman, in Sleepy Hollow. It’s surprising that with so much good work Christopher Walken has only returned to achieve an Oscar nomination just once, in 2002, for Steven Spielberg ‘s Catch Me If You Can , in which he was the progenitor of Leonardo DiCaprio .