Christopher Walken has been doing it his way since he started in show business at the age of three. Now he's inspiring a new generation of actors.
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Christopher Walken is not fond of the label creepy. "Creepy is not a mammal. Creepy is like an insect," he protests. "Spooky is OK." Walken's been spooking audiences since playing Diane Keaton's demented brother in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. His career spans over 80 movies, including his Academy Award-winning turn as a Russian roulette-playing Vietnam vet in The Deer Hunter. He was Sean Penn's crazed father in At Close Range, the wickedly evil mobster who took out a taunting Dennis Hopper in True Romance, the crime boss in Abel Ferrara's King of New York, a villain in the Bond film A View to a Kill and sleazy businessman Max Shreck in Batman Returns.
Between the spring and fall of 2004 Walken will appear in four new films: Envy, directed by Barry Levinson; Man on Fire with Denzel Washington; The Stepford Wives, as Glenn Close's husband; and Around the Bend, with Michael Caine and Josh Lucas. He put a week's work into John Turturro's Romance & Cigarettes, with Susan Sarandon and James Gandolfini. And he will be playing the father of the bride in The Wedding Crashers.
Though he's now 61, his appeal to the young has never wavered. He has guest-hosted Saturday Night Live a half-dozen times, and his hilariously tacky character The Continental has become a classic. He was the star of one of the most downloaded videos on the Internet, dancing on tables and up walls à la Fred Astaire in Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice," directed by Spike Jonze. Like Marlon Brando before him, he is probably the most parodied actor of his generation. Everyone has a Walken impression they like to perform at parties.
What unsettles Walken today? Young actors who are "a little too young, a little too good-looking, a little too sure of themselves."
LAWRENCE GROBEL: Since this is the Young Hollywood issue, do you feel like an elder statesman?
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN: Well, I play a grandfather in Around the Bend. I don't feel like one, but I have been around a long time. I've been in show business since I was a kid. So if young actors are watching my performances, that's great. When I was a kid there were actors I always went to see, and they certainly had an influence on me.
Q: Who were they and what were the movies that made an impression on you?
A: As a kid in the '50s, I went to the movies a lot. The action movie then was usually in reference to the Second World War or Korea, like The Bridges at Toko-Ri with William Holden. My father took me to see Ben-Hur. In those days you would see three features and 27 cartoons, so going to the movies was an entire day. I remember seeing Richard Burton in Alexander the Great. Brando in On the Waterfront. Katharine Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Christopher Plummer, my God. The first time I ever wrote an actor a letter was to Ian McKellen, just telling him I thought The Promise was great. So yes, I do have actor heroes. Lots of them.
Q: How different is it being a young actor today than it was when you were young and upcoming?
A: I came out of a variety-review background--singing, dancing. That was useful, because I had decades to make a lot of mistakes and not really be seen. I don't think anybody noticed my presence until I was well into my thirties and did The Deer Hunter. So I had a lot of time to do it wrong and try to get it right. Today, with TV, the exposure is so enormous, it might be difficult to make a big splash and then have something not work out; it's much more public than it was for me when I was starting out.
Q: What auditioning stories do you have that might offer some hope for young actors?
A: What I used to do was, I'd get the script and see who the character was--a spy, a lumberjack, whatever--then I'd try to dress the part for the audition, to give the impression that I was tough or funny or whatever the part seemed to call for. That was always a disaster. I would never get the job. If I learned anything it's not to do anything like that. Now if they want to look at me, I go in and let them look at me. Let them figure out their own reasons for why they'd want to hire me.
Q: Has another actor ever given you helpful advice?
A: I was in the original stage production of The Lion in Winter with Rosemary Harris and Robert Preston. I had terrible stage fright and I thought the producers were going to fire me. Robert Preston was very helpful. He would say kind things to calm me down. He used to say, "Don't stand in the wings and go over your lines. You're getting yourself all wound up." He was right. I used to go over my lines before walking out on stage, and when I went out I didn't know what I was doing. You get your head all crammed with stuff and it's impossible to be spontaneous. It wasn't until after I was 50 that I could stand in the wings and look forward to going on stage and not have a sense of dread.
Q: Before you became successful, how often did you stand on unemployment lines?
A: There were years when I didn't do anything but collect unemployment. I worked a lot, but I worked for nothing. I worked for 15 years as a kind of janitor at the Actors Studio. I would do manual things. I did lots of plays, theater workshops, for nothing.
Q: Once you started making films, what was the low point for you?
A: The first movie I made was The Anderson Tapes. Sidney Lumet directed, Sean Connery was in it. Then [after 1972's The Happiness Cage] I didn't make another movie for several years. I just went back to the theater. I never knew the reasons for that. But when the phone doesn't ring and they don't want you--that's tough.
Q: And the high points?
A: When you're in a movie that's popular and you get good reviews, and people come up to you and say they loved it, that's great. You want people, and critics, to say you're wonderful. Then, for reasons that are mysterious, you're in a movie like Gigli, and that's a shock. I was in a makeup trailer and somebody started reading me the reviews and I thought, how did that happen?
Q: During Catch Me If You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio spoke of a certain scene where you started to hyperventilate and he thought you were having a heart attack, remember that?
A: We were doing this scene in a restaurant, talking about my wife. My technique is to try things different ways. There's a temptation to do a take and then do another, more or less the same, and try and make it better. I don't go that way. I usually try to do takes with variety--I try to do one real fast, then take my time on another, then do it as if the scene was funny, then earnestly. So that when the editors take it apart and put it together later, there are some different colors to work with.
Q: Johnny Depp has said that he always thinks he's going to get fired when he starts a new job, because he wants to do the character a certain way. How often do you think about that?
A: With Johnny they'd be smart to let him do it his own way. He's one of the best. He is so much fun to watch. If you get hired for a part, it's because of whatever it is you bring to it. I very rarely had anybody say, "That's okay, but you'll do it this way." Because I would have to say, "I don't know how to do it that way."
Q: How often have you changed the way the character was written?
A: You can't change the way a character is written, but you can do it your own way. The writer sometimes tries to indicate how he sees it in stage directions. I've read scripts where the stage directions were like an operator's manual like when you buy a washing machine. I don't look at them. I don't pay any attention to anything but the dialogue. If a line comes with the direction "wistfully" or "angrily," it makes me want to do the opposite.
Q: You tend to play a lot of bizarre, peculiar people and villains, why do you suppose that is?
A: One of the reasons for that is, there aren't that many people who have been in show business since they were 3-years-old. That has its mark on me. I'm a show business animal. The way I speak, everything I do. There is something a bit foreign about me. That can translate into strange and strange translates to villainous. It seems to be something I'm pretty good at, so I tend to get a lot of those parts. I would love to play the Fred MacMurray parts, with the wife and the house and the kids who say, "Dad, what should I do?" And sometimes I do get that chance. But look, if you're an actor, you're lucky if they want you.
Q: You love to cook and even travel with a collapsible steamer so you can prepare fish the way the Chinese do. What type of cuisine would you like to master?
A: Italian. European cooking generally means that you buy the best stuff you can get and cook it simply, you don't use butter, you use oil, garlic. People spend so much money on pre-cooked, packaged stuff. They don't realize that it's so much cheaper, as well as better, to buy your food and cook it. When I'm learning lines if I'm simultaneously thinking food, the power of distraction helps. I put my script on the kitchen counter and read my lines as I prepare food.
Q: What are some of your favorite foods?
A: I eat the same things all the time: fish, hardly ever meat. Chicken, vegetables. I'm fond of steamed sea bass over leeks. I don't drink hard liquor. I like wine.
Q: Do you watch much TV?
A: Yeah, I do. I watch a lot of movies. And the Comedy Channel to see the stand-ups. I like to watch Charlie Rose.
Q: Ever watch South Park?
A: No. But I've never seen Seinfeld either.
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