Christopher Walken
I think early on I knew what I was going to do and it was based a lot on familiarity but it was also because I didn't have a lot of skills. There was nothing I wanted t be. I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be in show business.
I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.
I've made three musical movies which is pretty good considering that not many are made but I was lucky in other ways. I came along when independent movies were starting to boom.
When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go; they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV.
I think if you do something effectively whether you're the lover or the comic or the action guy or the villain like I play; movies are very expensive to make. Chances are you'll get asked to play that part again.
People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.
I don't have a lot of hobbies. I don't play golf. I don't have any children. Things that occupy people's time. I just try to take jobs.
I have been in movies that I thought I wasn't very good in.
Is typecasting really a problem?
I make movies that nobody will see. I've made movies that even I have never seen.
There's something dangerous about what's funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.
I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore.
When you're onstage and you know you're bombing, that's very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going - you're bombing, but you can't stop. And you know that half an hour from now, you're still gonna be bombing. It takes a thick skin.
My life has been wonderful. Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.
There probably aren't a lot of actors my age who tap dance.
I became an actor by accident. I suppose I figured since I was in musical comedy from the time I was a teenager, I suppose I figured that I'd always been in that world to some extent.
To be honest, I was never very ambitious. And I still am not.
It's what actors call a big, juicy part, when you're a leading man. I don't get a lot of those. I get a lot of supporting things.
My background is in musical comedy. I didn't know I was going to be an actor. But all my points of reference have to do with musical comedy and in being kind of a showoff.
I was never a child actor. I was a child performer.
I grew up in the '50s, in New York City, where television was born. There were 90 live shows every week, and they used a lot of kids. There were schools just for these kids. There was a whole world that doesn't exist anymore.
I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.
To me, there are things you're good at and things you're not so good at. For some reason, I'm good at darker characters. It has to do with how you look.
I think the fact that I was raised in show business, in New York City, in the '50s, that's affected my personality to the point that I'm a little different.
Well, I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades in show business for a long time. I was a singer and a dancer and then I got a job as an actor.
I was born in America but all of my friends' parents, everybody's parents, including my own, had come to America from Europe. Many people in my neighborhood hardly bothered to learn English.
Usually directors hire me because I'm what they are looking for. But once in a while, and it's very rare, they will hire me and then try to make me over.
Some people can do things and get away with it. Comics are famously like that. Why is it that some guys can say the most horrible things and it's not offensive, it's funny?
I always like to watch comics and it's interesting that you can tell if someone's funny in 10 seconds.
I never know when I am being funny, and the other way too. I don't think you can think about that. I don't think you can try to be funny. Some people are just funny.
I'm in a place in my life where I get offered parts that I didn't get offered before - fathers and uncles and grandfathers and so on. And it took me a long time to get to that place, but I'm glad because it opens up new territory.
Somebody said to me that I speak English almost like somebody for whom English is not their first language.
It's interesting - a lot of good actors are good mimes. But I'm terrible. If I tried to do an impression, nobody would know what I was doing.
Even in the limo, I buckle my seatbelt. I got that seatbelt on before the car moves.
Early on, I played one or two disturbed people, and I guess I must have been good at it, because it stuck. But, you know, I'm a regular guy. I stay home a lot, I make an effort to keep a distance from the whole social thing, the openings, the parties. I try to live in a calm way.
I don't like flying at the best of times. And as I get older, I like it less and less. I don't much like driving, either. I prefer to be driven. And, when I'm in London, I don't even like walking on the street. I can never get used to looking the right way when I cross the street.
The last time I did a movie that needed a horse, I said: 'If it moves, I'm out of here.' The worst thing is, they know when you're afraid and act up accordingly. I've had them run off on me. Horses I do not like.
I play disturbed people a lot, but always with a bit of distance or tongue-in-cheek. Most of the villains I play are essentially harmless.
Quite often, I'll be sent a script for a movie. And I find that I like it, so I say I'll do it. But then they rewrite it for me. They make it quirky. Odd. I find that rather annoying. I call it Walkenising.
I don't usually get to play fathers or grandfathers or uncles. Now that I'm older, maybe I can play people closer to myself. I'd like that.
I don't much like being directed. I enjoy being allowed to play.
You hear about things happening to people - they slip in the bathtub, fall down the stairs, step off the curb in London because they think that the cars come the other way - and they die. You feel you want to die making an effort at something; you don't want to die in some unnecessary way.
I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre, and that's really where my training is.
When I was a kid, my parents gave me piano lessons and guitar lessons for a while, but I was never very good at it. I have big, sort of awkward hands. It's hard to keep going when you don't get any better.
I like to stand in my kitchen with the script on a counter that's about chest high. Usually I do something else at the same time - make a chicken or slice vegetables - and all day long I just read it over and over and over.
My own way of thinking is very conservative, very linear and not particularly imaginative, but if I look for things in different places, sometimes things happen.
As an actor, I'm rather hit and miss; I throw a lot out there, and some of it works and some of it doesn't.
There's an impression that actors make a lot of choices. I just take what's there.
I'm not sure I'd write a good cookbook, but I might make a good cooking show.