Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken (born Ronald Walken; March 31, 1943) is an American actor. Prolific in film, television, and on stage, Walken is the recipient of numerous accolades. He has earned an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, as well as nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Tony Awards. His films have grossed more than $1.6 billion in the United States alone.[1]
Christopher Walken
March 31, 1943
Actor
1952–present
Walken has 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.[2] 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), 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 has 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–), 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.[3]
Early life[edit]
Walken was born Ronald Walken on March 31, 1943,[4] in Astoria, Queens, New York City. His parents were Rosalie Russell, a Scottish immigrant from Glasgow, and Paul Wälken, a German immigrant from Gelsenkirchen[5][6] who owned and operated Walken's Bakery in Astoria.[7][8] Walken was named after actor Ronald Colman. He was raised Methodist.[9] He and his brothers, Kenneth and Glenn, were child actors on television in the 1950s, influenced by their mother's dreams of stardom.[8][10]
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.[11] As a teenager, he worked as a lion tamer in a circus.[12]
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.[13] Walken initially trained as a dancer at the Washington Dance Studio before moving on to dramatic stage roles and then film.[13]
Career[edit]
1950s–1960s[edit]
As a child, Walken appeared on screen as an extra in numerous anthology series and variety shows during the Golden Age of Television.[13] After appearing in a sketch with Martin and Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour, Walken decided to become an actor.[14] 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.[15]
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 Ronnie (a pet form of his given name, Ronald), which he was credited as until then.[16] He prefers to be known informally as Chris instead of Christopher.[14]
In 1966, Walken played the role of King Philip of France in the Broadway premiere of The Lion in Winter.[17] In 1968, he played Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet at the Stratford Festival in Canada.[18][19]
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. In 1969, Walken guest-starred in Hawaii Five-O as Navy SP Walt Kramer.
1970s[edit]
In 1970, Walken starred in the Off-Broadway production of Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky opposite Charles Durning and Bonnie Bartlett.[20] Later that year Walken received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance.[21]
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.[22] 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 the borderline crazy brother of Annie Hall (Diane Keaton).[23] 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.[24] Along with Nick Nolte and Burt Reynolds, Walken was considered by George Lucas for the part of Han Solo in Star Wars;[25][26] the part ultimately went to Harrison Ford.
In 1977, Walken also starred in an episode of Kojak as Ben Wiley, a robber.
Walken won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Michael Cimino's 1978 film The Deer Hunter. He plays a young Pennsylvania steelworker who is 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 week.[27]
Personal life[edit]
In 1963, Walken met Georgianne Thon during a tour of West Side Story.[77] They married in January 1969. The couple have no children and Walken has stated in interviews that not having children is one of the reasons that he has had such a prolific career.[78]
Walken discussed his feelings on sexuality in a 1973 interview with After Dark promoting his appearance as Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. "I suppose I think of the man I'm playing as bisexual, and I suppose that's how I think of myself too. I'd hate to think that I was harnessed to heterosexuality. I mean, my life is heterosexual, but I like to think that my head is bisexual, and I think it's a good idea for everybody to start getting used to that notion, because that way one becomes aware of a lot more things."[79]
Walken was with Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner on Wagner's yacht the day in 1981 that Wood went missing and ultimately was found dead by drowning. Walken was not considered a suspect by authorities.[80]