Christopher Walken

Biography

Christopher Walken (born Ronald Walken; March 31, 1943) is an American actor. His work on stage and screen has earned him accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and an Actor Award, as well as nominations for two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe. His films have grossed more than $1.6 billion in the United States. Walken appeared in supporting roles in films such as The Anderson Tapes (1971), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), Roseland (1977) and Annie Hall (1977), before coming to wider attention as the troubled Vietnam War veteran Nick Chevotarevich in The Deer Hunter (1978). His performance earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was nominated for the same award for portraying con artist Frank Abagnale's father in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002). Since his breakthrough, Walken has appeared in films in various genres, both in lead and supporting roles. These include The Dogs of War (1980), Brainstorm (1983), The Dead Zone (1983), A View to a Kill (1985), At Close Range (1986), Biloxi Blues (1988), King of New York (1990), The Comfort of Strangers (1990), Communion (1989), Batman Returns (1992), True Romance (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), The Prophecy (1995, and its two sequels), Suicide Kings (1997), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Man on Fire (2004), Wedding Crashers (2005), Hairspray (2007), Seven Psychopaths (2012), A Late Quartet (2012), Percy (2020), and Dune: Part Two (2024). He also provided voice work for the animated films Antz (1998) and The Jungle Book (2016). On television, Walken has appeared in films such as Who Am I This Time? (1982), and Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991), for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. More recently, he has starred in television series The Outlaws (2021–2024), and Severance (2022–), the latter of which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series nomination. He has guest-hosted Saturday Night Live seven times. His roles on the show include record producer Bruce Dickinson in the "More Cowbell" sketch, the disgraced Confederate officer Colonel Angus, and multiple appearances as an aging, unsuccessful lothario in the Continental sketch. As a stage actor, Walken starred with Irene Worth in a 1975 Broadway revival of Sweet Bird of Youth. Walken has played the lead in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Coriolanus. His performance in the original rendition of James Joyce's The Dead (2000), earned him a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical nomination. He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role in Martin McDonagh's A Behanding in Spokane (2010). He also wrote and played the lead role in the 1995 play Him, about his idol Elvis Presley.

== Early life and education == Walken was born Ronald Walken on March 31, 1943, in Astoria, Queens, New York City. His parents were Rosalie Russell, a Scottish immigrant from Greenock, and Paul Wälken, a German immigrant from Gelsenkirchen who owned and operated Walken's Bakery in Astoria. Walken was named after actor Ronald Colman. He was raised Methodist. He and his brothers, Kenneth and Glenn, were child actors on television in the 1950s, influenced by their mother's dreams of stardom. When he was 15, a girlfriend showed Walken a magazine photo of Elvis Presley and Walken later said, "This guy looked like a Greek god. Then I saw him on television. I loved everything about him." He changed his hairstyle to imitate Presley and has not changed it since. As a teenager, he worked for a lion tamer for a short time in a circus. Walken attended Hofstra University but dropped out after one year, having been cast in the role of Clayton Dutch Miller in an off-Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward alongside Liza Minnelli. Walken initially trained as a dancer at the Washington Dance Studio before moving on to dramatic stage roles and then film.

== Career ==

=== 1950s–1960s === As a child, Walken appeared on screen as an 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. He landed a regular role in the 1953 television show Wonderful John Acton, playing the part of Kevin Acton. During this time, he was credited as Ronnie Walken. Over the next two years, he appeared frequently on television, and had a thriving career in theater. From 1954 to 1956, Walken and his brother Glenn originated the role of Michael Bauer on the soap opera The Guiding Light. In 1963, he appeared as a character named Chris in an episode of Naked City, starring Paul Burke. In 1964, he changed his first name to Christopher at the suggestion of Monique van Vooren, who had a nightclub act in which Walken was a dancer. She believed the name suited him better than nickname Ronnie, which he was credited as until then. He prefers to be called Chris instead of Christopher. In 1966, Walken played the role of King Philip of France in the Broadway premiere of The Lion in Winter. In 1968, he played Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet at the Stratford Festival in Canada. He appeared in the made-for-TV movies Barefoot in Athens (1966) and The Three Musketeers (1969), and made his feature film debut in Me and My Brother (1969), a low-budget production that also featured Sam Shepard.

=== 1970s === In 1970, Walken guest starred as Navy SP Walt Kramer in Hawaii Five-O season 2 episode 17, "Run, Johnny, Run". Walken also starred in the Off-Broadway production of Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky opposite Charles Durning and Bonnie Bartlett. Later that year Walken received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance. Walken's first major studio film was Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes (1971) with Sean Connery and Dyan Cannon. In 1972's The Mind Snatchers a.k.a. The Happiness Cage, Walken played his first starring role. In this science fiction film, which deals with mind control and normalization, he plays a sociopathic U.S. soldier stationed in Germany. Paul Mazursky's 1976 film Next Stop, Greenwich Village had Walken, under the name "Chris Walken", playing the charismatic and promiscuous fictional poet Robert Fulmer. In Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall (in which his surname was misspelled "Wlaken" in the end credits), Walken played Duane, the borderline crazy brother of Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). Also in 1977, Walken had a minor role as Eli Wallach's partner in The Sentinel. In 1978, he appeared in Shoot the Sun Down, a western filmed in 1976 that costarred Margot Kidder. Along with Nick Nolte and Burt Reynolds, Walken was considered by George Lucas for the part of Han Solo in Star Wars; the part ultimately went to Harrison Ford. In 1977, Walken also guest-starred in an episode of Kojak as robber Ben Wiley. Walken won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Michael Cimino's 1978 film The Deer Hunter, in which he played a Pennsylvania steelworker emotionally destroyed by the Vietnam War. To help achieve his character's gaunt appearance before the third act, Walken consumed only bananas, water and rice for a month.

=== 1980s === Walken's first film of the 1980s was the controversial Heaven's Gate, also directed by Cimino. Walken also starred in the 1981 action adventure The Dogs of War, directed by John Irvin. He surprised many critics and filmgoers with his intricate tap-dancing striptease in Herbert Ross's musical Pennies from Heaven (1981). In 1982, he played a socially awkward but gifted theater actor in the film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's short story Who Am I This Time? opposite Susan Sarandon. 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, Roger Moore's last appearance as Bond. Walken dyed his hair blond to befit Zorin's origins as a Nazi experiment. At Close Range (1986) starred Walken as Brad Whitewood, a rural Pennsylvania crime boss who tries to bring his two sons into his empire; his character was mostly based on criminal Bruce Johnston. In 1988, Walken played a memorable role as Sgt. Merwin J. Toomey in Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues, which was directed by Mike Nichols, and he played the role of Federal Agent Kyril Montana in The Milagro Beanfield War. He also played the leading role of Whitley Strieber in 1989's Communion, an autobiographical film written by Strieber. It was based on claims that he and his friends were subject to visitations by unknown, other-worldly entities variously identified as "aliens" or "visitors". That same year, Walken appeared in the film Homeboy, which was written by and featured Mickey Rourke in the titular role. In 1989, he played the lead role of "Puss" in the Cannon theater group's musical version of Puss in Boots.

=== 1990s ===

The Comfort of Strangers, an art house film directed by Paul Schrader, features Walken as Robert, a decadent Italian aristocrat with extreme sexual tastes and murderous tendencies who lives with his wife (Helen Mirren) in Venice. King of New York (1990), directed by Abel Ferrara, stars Walken as ruthless New York City drug dealer Frank White, a recently released prisoner set on reclaiming his criminal territory. In 1991, Walken starred in Sarah, Plain and Tall as Jacob Witting, a widowed farmer. In 1992, Walken played villain millionaire industrialist Max Shreck in Batman Returns. In January 1993, he appeared in Madonna's music video for her hit single "Bad Girl" (directed by David Fincher). Walken also played Bobby, Cassandra's producer, in Wayne's World 2. Walken's next major film role was opposite Dennis Hopper in True Romance, scripted by Quentin Tarantino. Walken later had a supporting role in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction as a Vietnam veteran named Captain Koons. 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 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. He also appeared in Nick of Time, which starred Johnny Depp, and an arthouse film by David Salle titled Search and Destroy. Also in 1995, Walken acted in Him, the first play written by Walken, and about his idol Elvis in the afterlife, featured in the New York Shakespeare Festival. The New York Times gave a somewhat positive review of his "most cheering and refreshingly absurd invention" of retelling Presley's death as a disappearing act that enabled him to flee to Morocco for a sex change to become "her" in a "woozily conceived, fantastical new play...in the sharpness and wit of writing and in the performances by Mr. Walken and Mr. Heyman." Walken made an appearance in the music video for Skid Row's "Breakin' Down". In the 1996 film Last Man Standing, Walken plays a sadistic gangster named Hickey. That year, he played a prominent 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 film. In 1996 Walken also appeared in the Italian film Celluloide as US Officer Rod Geiger and played the role of Ray in the Abel Ferrara crime-drama film The Funeral. In 1997, Walken starred in the comedy films Touch and Excess Baggage and had a minor role in the film Mouse Hunt. He also appeared in the drama/thriller film Suicide Kings, which was also filled with suspense and humor. In 1998, Walken played an influential gay New York theater critic in John Turturro's film Illuminata. The same year he voiced Colonel/General Cutter in the animated film Antz. In 1999, he played James Houston in Vendetta, an HBO original film based on the March 14, 1891 New Orleans lynchings. In the same year, Walken appeared in the romantic comedy Blast from the Past portraying Calvin Webber, a brilliant but eccentric Caltech 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. He also appeared in Kiss Toledo Goodbye with Michael Rapaport and Nancy Allen.