Christopher Walken: Greetings from Planet Showbiz
Q: What's your most embarrassing moment?
A: I was at a cocktail party with this actor who always cracks me up and he said something and I pissed myself. I had on a beautiful pale gray suit. I couldn't have had on a black suit, right?
Q: Is your wife your best friend?
A: Definitely.
Q: With her being a casting agent, does she give you any insights about the process?
A: We never talk about it. I know that she works much harder than I do. They don't get paid that much but they're always going to see something, somebody. She's temperamentally that way. If she wasn't doing that she'd be doing something else. I'm lazy physically.
Q: Is laziness the trait you most deplore in yourself?
A: Yes. I can sit in a chair all day and ponder what I'm gonna do, even if it's about going down to the corner for a quart of milk.
Q: What fictional character would you like to be?
A: Ivanhoe.
Q: What sports figure would you like to have been?
A: Joe DiMaggio. There's no bigger hero on Earth, and I don't even know about baseball.
Q: What famous quote would you like to have uttered?
A: Veni, vidi, vici.
Q: What annoys you most?
A: I know definitely what that is: it's that machine that blows leaves around. That should be against the law.
Q: Do you remember your first acid trip?
A: I took it on the night of the New York blackout. I was in an acting class with Raul Julia and Vaughn Meader, the Kennedy imitator, and we were in a small room and the lights started to get brown and we went outside and walked up Seventh Avenue and saw all the lights going out. This guy in our class asked if we wanted to take some acid. So we went to where he lived and I took it. I must say I had a great time. I believe there was a full moon that night, what they call a bomber's moon, and the city was so beautiful. We got in a car and I was doing all that bullshit, "Oh, I can fly."
Q: What was your drug of choice?
A: Vodka. Russian vodka, Polish vodka, Czech vodka. I was a vodka expert. It goes right down, but it's not good for you. And I don't do that anymore.
Q: If you were to receive a letter today from anyone you have known, who would it be from and what would it say?
A: It would be from Ed McMahon and it would tell me that I'd just won a million dollars.
Q: Who would you like to punch in the nose?
A: My dentist.
Q: What is your favorite journey?
A: Going from Katmandu to the Chinese border, a four-hour road trip. Most beautiful scenery I ever saw. I did it right after The Deer Hunter.
Q: How would you behave if someone tried to assault you?
A: I'd cover up. I'm an actor, I can't afford to get hurt.
Q: Ever been robbed?
A: Sure. I was robbed recently of my script of The Prophecy II. I put my bag down at the airport in Venice. It's a very strange story. We were waiting to catch a plane. So the bag was gone--it had my driver's license, credit cards, keys, glasses, a hundred dollars, and the script with three months of notes in it. I saw the guys who took it--one of them asked me for my autograph and I remember giving it thinking, this guy does not collect autographs. I mean, he looked like he'd slit your throat. Anyway, a week later a friend of Julian Schnabel's who lives in Venice whose phone number I had written on the outside of my script calls me and says, "Christopher Walken, I'm a friend of Julian Schnabel's. I have a call from a lady in Sicily who says she found a bag by the side of the road and it's got your stuff in it." She had found it on her way to Sicily in a small town outside of Verona, two hours from Venice. So I got the bag back with the script! All they took was the hundred bucks. Isn't that bizarre?
Q: What is it that you most dislike?
A: I don't like doing anything I don't want to do.
Q: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
A: Being inward-looking. It's possible to be focused on yourself to the point where that's all you see. That's where real depression comes from.
Q: What is your greatest extravagance?
A: Time. And what I do with it. I tend to spend it mostly on myself.
Q: What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A: Happiness is if I have something hard to do at work and on the drive home I think, "Oh man, I nailed that. You are so good!" That's usually not what happens.
Q: What do you consider your greatest achievement?
A: I've been in about 50 movies.
Q: What is your greatest regret?
A: I have nothing that I have to go to a shrink to deal with.
Q: What is your most marked characteristic?
A: I'm very focused.
Q: What or who is the greatest love of your life?
A: My wife. My work.
Q: On what occasion do you lie?
A: I don't.
Q: Do you have a motto?
A: Be comfortable.
Q: How would you like to die?
A: Very old, very successful, working, booked for "Saturday Night Live" for the following weekend.
Q: What would you like posterity to recognize you for?
A: The Nobel Prize for acting.
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Nicole Kidman for the October '98 issue of Movieline.
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