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Revision as of 04:04, 14 March 2007
Christopher Walken | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ronald Walken |
| Other names | Chris, Ronnie |
| Height | 6 ft 3 in (1.91cm |
| Spouse | Georgianne Walken (1969-) |
Christopher Walken (born Ronald Walken on March 31, 1943) is an Academy Award-winning American film and theatre actor.
Biography
Christopher Walken was born Ronald Walken (named after actor Ronald Colman) on March 31, 1943. He was raised along with his older and younger brothers Ken and Glenn, in Queens, New York. As the middle child of the family, his mother kept him busy in the family bakery every day after school. Although his mother had her own dreams of stardom, after raising a family, he and his brothers began acting careers early in life as their mother's dream rubbed off on them. Walken has been married to casting agent Georgianne Walken (The Sopranos) since 1969. They have no children.
Career overview
Walken initially trained as a dancer in musical theatre before moving on to more serious roles in theatre and then film. He has a considerable body of work in theatre, with over 100 plays to his credit. Walken won the Clarence Derwent Award for his performance in The Lion in Winter in 1966 [1] and an Obie for his 1975 performance in Kid Champion. He has played the main role in a number of Shakespeare plays, notably Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Coriolanus. Walken tried his hand at writing and directing with the short five-minute film Popcorn Shrimp in 2001. He also wrote and acted the main role in a play about Elvis Presley titled Him in 1995. [2]
Walken has also appeared in over 100 movies and television shows since 1953, including The Deer Hunter, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New York, Batman Returns, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, The Funeral and Catch Me If You Can, and in classic TV series such as Kojak and The Naked City. Walken attained cult status in 90's, playing the role of the Archangel Gabriel in the first three The Prophecy movies. His films have grossed a cumulative North American profit of over USD 1.8 billion.[3]
Along with Nick Nolte, Walken was considered by George Lucas for the part of Han Solo in the 1977 science fiction film Star Wars. [4][5] The part eventually went to Harrison Ford.
In 1979 Walken won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Deer Hunter, where he played a disturbed Vietnam vet alongside Robert De Niro. Walken was nominated again in 2002 for Catch Me if You Can.
He has also starred in three music videos. His first video role was as the Angel of Death in Madonna's 1993 "Bad Girl" video, the second appearance was in Skid Row's "Breakin' Down" video, and the third one in Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice" in 2001, directed by Spike Jonze. In addition to this, Walken has voiced characters in a number of video games, and is also the only actor to play both a Bond villain and a Batman villain.
1970s and before
Walken first appeared on the screen as a child 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.[6] At ten years old, he landed a regular role in the 1953 television show The Wonderful John Acton as the show's narrator. During this time, he was credited as "Ronnie Walken".
Over the next twenty years, he would find his acting ground in television, an experimental film Me and My Brother, and a thriving career in theatre. In 1964, he changed his name to "Christopher" at the suggestion of a friend who believed the name suited him better.[7] He nowadays prefers to be known informally as "Chris Walken". [1]
Walken made his feature film debut with a small role opposite Sean Connery in Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes in 1971. In 1972, Walken played his first starring role in The Mind Snatchers.[8] He plays a borderline sociopathic American soldier stationed in Germany, in a science fiction film which deals with mind control and normalization.
Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall has Walken playing the strange and suicidal brother of Annie Hall (Diane Keaton);[9] this Academy Award-winning film is often cited by Walken and others as the first film that brought the actor and his unusual qualities to the attention of the mainstream viewing public. 1978 saw the release of a western, titled Shoot the Sun Down, which had originally been filmed in 1976 and which also co-starred Margot Kidder just before she rose to fame in the Superman films. [10]
Walken won his only Academy Award for best supporting actor with his performance in the controversial 1978 film, The Deer Hunter.[11] He plays a young Western Pennsylvania steelworker who is emotionally and spiritually destroyed by his combat experience of war in Vietnam. Walken's performance is notable for his transformation from a sensitive, gentle character to a self-destructive, heroin-addicted Russian roulette playing tragic figure. To get the hollowed-out look for his character, Walken reportedly ate nothing but bananas and rice for a week.
1980s
Walken's first film of the 1980s was the scandalous and controversial Heaven's Gate. This film led to the financial ruin of United Artists, hastened the end of directorial control of films in Hollywood, and offended many in a climate marked by a return to political conservatism with the election of Ronald Reagan. The film received extremely negative reviews in the United States, but was seen in a more favorable light by European critics and a 2004 re-release in selected cinemas in the USA and Australia has attracted a more positive reevaluation of the artistic merits of the film. Although Walken's role does not provide him with the opportunities offered by Michael Cimino's previous film The Deer Hunter, his cold and alien menace as a highly efficient hired gun is unexpectedly offset by a romantic vulnerability and a subtly amusing take on his character's aspirations to social betterment.
After Heaven's Gate, Walken starred in the 1981 action-adventure The Dogs of War filmed by famous Technicolor cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Walken plays schoolteacher Johnny Smith in David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone. After lying in a coma for five years, Smith awakes to find he has psychic powers. His performance in this film is often regarded as one of his best. Walken also starred in the 1983 film Brainstorm alongside Natalie Wood in her last film before her death in 1981.
Walken played the role of a James Bond villain in A View to a Kill (1985). He plays opposite Roger Moore as Max Zorin, a psychotic villain who runs a horse stable which suspiciously always produces winning horses. Walken dyed his hair blond to befit Zorin's origins as a Nazi experiment.
At Close Range has Walken starring as Brad Whitewood, a psychopathic rural Pennsylvania family crime boss who tries to bring his two estranged sons (played by real-life brothers Sean Penn and Chris Penn) into his criminal world. Based on a true story about the Bruce Johnston crime family which operated in eastern Pennsylvania during the late 1970s, this independent film has received much critical acclaim over the years.
1990s
Walken had a role in The Comfort of Strangers, an art house film directed by Paul Schrader. The film has the notable distinction of providing a role for Walken that disturbed even him. He plays Robert, a decadent Italian aristocrat who lives with his wife (Helen Mirren) in Venice, in addition to having extreme sexual tastes and murderous tendencies. Sporting Armani suits, Walken provides an understated performance that combines charm, evil, and sudden, shocking violence.
King of New York was a film directed by noted independent New York filmmaker Abel Ferrara that has attracted both a cult following and the attention of serious film theorists (for example Nicole Brenez [2]). Walken stars as mysterious but ruthless New York City drug dealer Frank White, recently released from prison and set on reclaiming his criminal territory by any means necessary. White also has moral pretensions, acting as a kind of a Robin Hood figure. In this film, Walken has the opportunity and screen time to demonstrate his range and his experimental abilities as an actor.
In 1992, Walken was in Batman Returns, a film with immense success at the box office and one that still has quite a following. Here, he plays greedy millionaire industrialist Max Shreck, who attempts to get Oswald Cobblepot elected as Mayor of Gotham City for his own personal gain. Despite being the only normal one of the villains, it is he who is the most evil, as he was responsible for Selina Kyle's transformation into Catwoman and he manipulated both the Penguin and the citizens of Gotham City in an attempt to build a power plant which steals, instead of supplies, Gotham's power. His character can be seen as a reflection of Bruce Wayne.
Walken plays a scene opposite Dennis Hopper in True Romance, scripted by Quentin Tarantino. This so-called "Sicilian scene" has become a cult favorite and is frequently hailed by critics, professional and amateur alike, as the best scene in the film. This scene alone is the subject of four commentaries on the DVD attesting to its cult status. After an exchange of dialogue, Walken's character, Sicilian gangster Vincenzo Coccotti, summarily executes Hopper's character after deliberate provocation by the latter.
His performance in Pulp Fiction, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, has received many accolades. Walken's sole scene, consisting essentially of a monologue by him, is another frequently quoted bit of cult dialogue. Here Walken offers a slightly disturbing, but nonetheless amusing turn as a Vietnam veteran who delivers a watch to a small boy from his dead father and explains, in a long speech, just how the watch had been hidden during his long years in a prisoner of war camp.
Later in 1994, Walken had a part in A Business Affair. This is one of Walken's few outings in a principal role in a romantic comedy. He plays Vanni Corso, an American publisher living in London who falls for one of his authors. Walken also dances a tango, although it is difficult to see much detail due to the way it is filmed.
Walken had six acting roles in 1995. Wild Side was directed by Donald Cammell, who directed the experimental landmark film of sixties counter-culture Performance with Mick Jagger. Cammell removed his name from the 1995 studio cut of Wild Side and a far superior director's cut was only released posthumously in 2000. The film boasts one of Walken's most extreme performances. In one notable and lengthy scene his character, high on drugs, graphically threatens to rape his chauffeur, an undercover cop.
The Prophecy is a horror film directed by Gregory Widen, also featuring Elias Koteas, Virginia Madsen and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer, Walken takes on the role of the Archangel Gabriel. In this account, Gabriel has rebelled against God because God favors humans over angels. The film and its two sequels has attracted a cult following amongst Walken's fans. Two further sequels without Walken have been made, one was released on DVD in 2005. Walken's over the top but nuanced performance in these films is a favorite with many fans.
The Addiction is another horror film and Walken's second collaboration with director Abel Ferrara and writer Nicholas St. John, dealing with modern vampires in New York City, using vampirism as a metaphor for the Christian doctrine of original sin. Walken plays an ancient vampire who has learned to control his addiction to blood (an outward manifestation of the inward hunger) to the degree that he is able to function fairly normally in society.
In the 1996 film Last Man Standing, Walken plays a sadistic henchman who kills for the sheer joy of it. Last Man Standing is director Walter Hill's contribution to a collection of films inspired by the novel Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett.
In 1999 Walken played the role of Calvin Webber in the romantic comedy Blast from the Past. Walken plays the role of a brilliant, eccentric, and paranoid Caltech nuclear physicist whose fears of a nuclear holocaust resulting from the Cold War lead him to build an enormous self-sustaining fallout shelter beneath his suburban Los Angeles home.
One of Walken's last 90s movie appearances was as The Headless Horseman in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow starring Johnny Depp & Christina Ricci, although his face was only seen three times in the movie, due to the nature of the character.
2000s
In 2000, Walken was cast as the lead, along with Faith Prince, in James Joyce's The Dead on Broadway. A "play with music", The Dead was directed by Richard Nelson. The show featured music by Shaun Davey, conducted by Charles Prince with music coordination and percussion by Tom Partington. James Joyce's The Dead won a Tony Award that year for Best Book for a Musical.
Walken had a notable music video performance in 2001 with Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice. Directed by Spike Jonze, it won six MTV awards in 2001 and also won best video of all time in April 2002, in a list of the top 100 videos of all time, compiled from a survey of musicians, directors, and music industry figures conducted by a UK music TV channel VH1. In this video, Walken performs a tap dance around the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles. Walken also helped choreograph the dance. Also in 2001 Walken played Clem in David Spade's comedy Joe Dirt and a very eccentric film director in America's Sweethearts who kidnaps the movie he's working on, from a worried movie studio head (Stanley Tucci).
Walken played Frank Abagnale, Sr. in Catch Me If You Can, a film directed by Steven Spielberg. It is inspired by the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), the legendary con artist who managed to pass himself off as several identities and forge millions of dollars worth of checks, with an FBI agent (played by Tom Hanks) hot on his trail. Walken plays Frank Jr.'s father, in a difficult and emotionally charged role. His portrayal earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.[11]
Walken also had a part in the 2003 action comedy film The Rundown starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Seann William Scott, in which he plays a ruthless despot who pays people very small amounts of money and deliberately makes sure they get in debt with him.
Man on Fire (2004 film) is a film directed by Tony Scott, starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Radha Mitchell, Giancarlo Giannini, and Walken. It is a remake of the 1987 film of the same name. The film was originally based on a series of books by A. J. Quinnell. Man on Fire loosely follows the first of the series about a former Marine and Foreign Legionnaire turned mercenary. The remake was released on April 23, 2004 in the United States and drew $23 million USD in its opening weekend. Another film released in 2004 Walken has starred in was a remake of Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives. He played the role of Treasury Secretary in the 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers, where he was the father of three daughters and a gay son.
Most recently, he played the role of Morty, a sympathetic inventor and angel of death, in the comedy Click and in Man of the Year with Robin Williams and Lewis Black. He will next be seen in the 2007 film adaptation Hairspray.
Cult status
Walken has attracted a strong cult following as an actor. One reason for this is the type of films he has appeared in, for example gangster and science fiction/fantasy films, or films by directors with their own cult following such as Abel Ferrara, David Cronenberg, Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino. But more important factors are his odd appearance, quirky mannerisms, and ability to exude menace. Walken is often imitated for his deadpan effect, sudden off-beat pauses, and strange speech rhythm.
Additionally, his comedic efficiency comes as a surprise to those who are familiar only with the more serious roles that comprise the majority of his body of work, and so Walken is admired for his versatility. This cult status is demonstrated by the number of photo-shopped images of Walken on the net, [12] the frequency of impersonations either by amateurs or other professional actors (notably Kevin Spacey, Kevin Pollak, and Jay Mohr), the invention of fictitious stories about his activities, and the invention of various things he might have said. He is also frequently referenced in various other works of pop culture, such as in the Fountains of Wayne song "Hackensack".
There is also the fan practice of rote reciting some of his speeches from film - for example True Romance, Pulp Fiction and The Prophecy. There are even short films and plays which use his persona.
Appearances on Saturday Night Live
Walken has hosted the comedy sketch and satire TV series Saturday Night Live on six occasions. His recurring sketch "The Continental" has been a favorite with audiences. One of his more renowned SNL performances was a spoof of "Behind the Music" featuring a recording session of Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." In the guise of record producer Bruce Dickinson (not to be confused with Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer for Iron Maiden), Walken makes passionate and slightly unhinged speeches to the band. More importantly, contrary to the wishes of most of the band, he is obsessed with getting "more cowbell" into the song. This sketch has proven immensely popular and has garnered a large cult following.
Walken also spoofed his role from The Dead Zone in a sketch titled "Ed Glosser: Trivial Psychic", in which the title character had the ability to accurately predict meaningless, trivial future events ("You're going to get an ice cream headache. It's going to hurt real bad...right here for eight, nine seconds.").
He also spoofed his role from A View to a Kill in a sketch titled "Lease with an Option to Kill", in which he reprised his role as Max Zorin. Zorin, who had taken on some qualities of other notable Bond villains (Blofeld's cat and suit, Emilio Largo's eye patch), was upset that everything was going wrong for him: his lair was still under construction, his henchmen had jump suits that did not fit, and his shark tank lacked sharks, instead having a giant sea sponge. A captive James Bond, portrayed by Phil Hartman, offered to get Zorin "a good deal" on the abandoned Blofeld volcanic lair if Zorin let him go, to which he reluctantly agreed.
Another notable performance was his song and dance rendition of the Irving Berlin standard "Let's Face the Music and Dance."
Finally, the "Colonel Angus" sketch, in which Walken played a dishonored Confederate officer, was a tour de force of ribald double entendres.
Walken's SNL appearances proved so popular that he is one of the few SNL hosts for which a "Best of...SNL" DVD is available (an honor usually reserved only for SNL cast members).
Presidential candidacy hoax
Walken was the subject of a hoax in August 2006 when a website, Walken2008.com, presented numerous politically charged fictitious quotes from Walken and claimed he was running for President of the United States. His publicist dismissed it as "100% not true." The Walken site was featured on a "Celebs for President" Yahoo! Current Buzz segment in October 2006.
The Urban Legends Reference Pages list the site as a fake [13]. This hoax was perpetrated by the Internet forum General Mayhem. [14] The original discussion has been archived on their site.
In September 2006 in an interview with Conan O'Brien, Walken seemed quite amused by the fake presidential campaign and commented that he found it difficult to discover who started it. When prompted for a presidential campaign slogan, an amused Walken came up with "What the Heck?". Then, somewhat randomly, "No More Zoos!"[3]
Filmography
Filmography
Christopher Walken also voiced the characters of George, a police officer and friend of protagonist Nick Kang in the videogame True Crime: Streets of LA, and as Gabriel Whitting, an FBI agent, in True Crime: New York City.
Trivia
- Appears on the cover of the American version of Fatboy Slim's 2006 Best of album, "Why Try Harder, The Greatest Hits".
- Christopher Walken played the angel Gabriel in The Prophecy. Interestingly, he plays the angel Death or Morty in Click.
- A character named "Big Chris" appears in the comic book mini-series The Punisher: Barracuda by Garth Ennis, who bears a striking resemblance in both appearance and dialogue.
- The Fountains of Wayne song "Hackensack" contains the line "I saw you talkin' / To Christopher Walken / On my TV screen "
- Has stated in interviews that he will never turn down a role unless he is simply too busy on other projects, and regards each role as a new learning experience.
- American impressionist Kevin Pollak is known for his Walken impressions. One routine, "Frankenstein never scared me," became one of the most requested routines on the Bob and Tom radio program.
References
- ^ www.actorsequity.org
- ^ Review by Michael Feingold
- ^ Nash, Bruce. "Christopher Walken - Box Office Data". The-Numbers.com. Retrieved 2006-07-25.
- ^ film.quardian.co.uk
- ^ www.timburtoncollective.com
- ^ "Christopher Walken Biography". Tiscali SpA.
- ^ "Christopher Walken: The Song and Dance Man". Celebrating Christopher Walken.
- ^ The Mind Snatchers is also known as "The Happiness Cage" and "The Demon Within."
- ^ He is incorrectly credited as "Christopher Wlaken" in the film's credits.
- ^ 'Interview with director David Leeds
- ^ a b "Awards for Christopher Walken". IMDB.com. Retrieved 2006-07-24.
- ^ www.worth1000.com/
- ^ www.snopes.com
- ^ "Christopher Walken for president!". 2006-08-15. Retrieved 2006-11-16.
External links
