Christopher Walken

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Christopher Walken in February 2008

Christopher Walken (actually Ronald Walken ; born March 31, 1943 in Astoria , Queens , New York City ) is an American actor and dancer . Walken plays in both mainstream and independent films. Many of his roles embody sinister and disturbing characters; he was often used as a villain . For the representation of a traumatized by the war in Vietnam soldier in Michael Cimino's film Go through hell Walken was at the Oscar ceremony in 1979 as Best Supporting Actor award.

biography

Christopher Walken at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival

Christopher Walken is the son of Paul Wälken (1903–2001), a member of the German baker dynasty Wälken from Gelsenkirchen-Horst , who emigrated to the United States in the 1920s and became president of the American bakery guild, and Rosalie Russell (1907 –2010), a Scottish theater enthusiast . He has two brothers, Kenneth and Glenn, who have also appeared in film, television and theater productions. Walken also understands German , but hardly speaks it.

Walken was already posing for advertising photos as a three-year-old, and at the age of seven he was already taking part in television shows. At the age of ten, he made a short dance appearance with his brother on The Colgate Comedy Hour alongside Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin , which inspired his acting career. According to Walken's own account, Lewis and Martin spoke to him backstage and prophesied a great future in show business. What was meant to be fun had a big impact on him. From then on he applied for every performance at his school, the Professionals Children's School in Manhattan , and gained further experience in the television business, performing under the name Ronnie Walken, including in the 1953 television series The Wonderful John Acton and from 1954 to 1956 in Springfield Story .

In 1958, Walken made his Broadway debut in Elia Kazan's Tony- winning play JB. Further engagements in musicals and musical comedies followed. After obtaining his university degree in 1961 he took a degree in English Literature at Hofstra University in Long Iceland , which he does not graduated to 1963 alongside the then little known Liza Minnelli in the Off-Broadway -Stück Best Foot Forward to play. During a performance of West Side Story he met Georgianne Thon, whom he married in 1969.

In 1981 Christopher Walken worked with Natalie Wood on the 1983 film Projekt Brainstorm . During a sailing excursion with her husband Robert Wagner and her film partner Walken, Natalie Wood died at the age of 43 for reasons that have not yet been clarified.

In the 1985 film James Bond 007 , Walken played Bond's antagonist Zorin.

Walken has made numerous guest appearances in both film and television. Among other things in Kojak - use in Manhattan . He also played a recurring guest role on the American television show Saturday Night Live , in which he starred in a sketch called The Continental .

In 1998, Walken voiced the character of Colonel Cutter in one of the first computer-animated feature films, Antz . In the 1980s Heiner Lauterbach was his permanent German dubbing voice; The actor and voice actor Randolf Kronberg later took on this task several times . Since 2000 he has been dubbed alternately by Bodo Wolf and Frank Glaubrecht .

In 2001 he also tried his hand at writing and directing the short film Popcorn Shrimp .

Act

Filmography

Theater (broadway)

Others

Awards

Christopher Walken has received numerous awards over the course of his career. For the film Going Through Hell , he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and the New York Film Critics Circle Award in 1979 , and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and the British Film Prize . In 1984 he received a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Actor in the Film Dead Zone . His role in Catch Me If You Can earned him an Oscar nomination in 2003 and a British Academy Film Award. For the television film Sarah, Plain and Tall , he received an Emmy nomination in 1991 .

For his theater work in the play The Tattooed Rose , he was awarded the Theater World Award in 1967. Three years later, he received a Drama Desk Award for his outstanding performance in the Off-Broadway -Stück Lemon Sky . In 1975 and 1981, Walken received the Obie Award . He has also received two nominations for Best Actor for the Tony Award , 2000 for James Joyce's The Dead and 2010 for A Treating in Spokane .

Quotes

"He's got more talent in his little finger than most of the superstars put together." (Director Abel Ferrara )

Others

Christopher Walken (2007)

Walken is a very good dancer - he initially trained as a dancer at the renowned Actors Studio - and the directors of his films often try to incorporate a dance scene especially for him, as this has now become a kind of trademark for him.

His first appearance in a music video had Walken as Madonna's death angels in her video Bad Girl His appearance in the music video from 1993. Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim in the Spike Jonze directed led to a wide audience brought him closer and attained cult status . In April 2002, Weapon of Choice won “Best Video of All Time” from a list of the “Top 100” music videos. These were put up for election in a survey of musicians, directors and managers in the music industry by the British music broadcaster VH1 .

Christopher Walken was seen as the understudy after Harrison Ford for the role of Han Solo in George Lucas ' Star Wars .

At the beginning of the 1983 film Dead Zone , Christopher Walken's character mentions the story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow , and in 1999 Walken starred in the film Sleepy Hollow .

In 2005, Walken fell victim to a hoax campaign announcing the actor's 2008 presidential nomination. Various websites (for example Walken2008.com ) were even created for this purpose. However, the actor had repeatedly stated that he had no interest in politics. Some members of a US web forum were apparently responsible for this.

Walken's quirk is not to buy his wardrobe, but to put it together from film costumes that he secretly takes with him after filming.

literature

Web links

Commons : Christopher Walken  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. DCM: Presseheft 7 Psychos , 2012, p. 22: The actor was born as Ronald Walken on March 31, 1943 in Astoria, New York.
  2. Archive link ( Memento of the original dated December 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tigriffith.com
  3. Andrea Hanna Hünniger: Christopher Walken: "I'm not an actor, more of a dancer". In: Zeit Online. December 17, 2009, accessed December 24, 2014 .
  4. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/christopher-walken-on-life-and-death-in-hollywood-1902602.html
  5. Film-Zeit.de: Christopher Walken - Biography ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Retrieved August 2, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.film-zeit.de
  6. ^ Spiegel Online: Interview with Christopher Walken ; Retrieved August 2, 2010
  7. Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 8: T - Z. David Tomlinson - Theo Zwierski. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 233.
  8. ^ Salon.com: Christopher Walken ; Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  9. ^ Winner In: Theater World Awards. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  10. Prize winners ( Memento of the original from July 4th, 2008 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Drama Desk Award. Retrieved August 4, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dramadesk.com