Christopher Walken
I've made movies that I thought were okay, but then I was very good. And sometimes you're in a movie and you think, 'I wish more people saw that' - because you're good. And it just works out that the movie gets lost. But that's show business.
I've been to Chicago a lot - it's one of my favorite places. My wife is from Chicago, and I worked in the theater there a lot.
You do something on television, and so many people see it that it follows you around. It's interesting. I've done a couple of things on TV, and probably more people saw me than in all the movies I've made.
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 come from a part of New York that was almost entirely immigrants. I was born in America, but all of my friends' parents, everybody's parents, including my own, had come to America from Europe.
I grew up listening to people speaking broken English. I probably picked that up. And I probably speak English almost as a second language.
I'm scared of everything. I think it's only sensible to be that way.
I certainly have never been an actor who can play the Everyman guy - or, I don't tend to get those parts. I've tended to play eccentrics. I've played a lot of villains, of course.
I think the fact that I grew up in show business had a real effect on my personality. If you were born in New York during the golden age of television, and you grew up on Broadway, that marks you.
I don't know why people eat so badly. I could eat pasta all the time, but it really is fattening. And I love ice cream, but I can't do that. There was a time, until I was in my mid-forties, when I could eat a whole pizza - and really, no effect.
Morning is the best time to see movies.
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.
I don't play lovers. I wish I did. At least once I'd like to have a crack at one of those guys. A heartbreaker. Some people are born to it. I'm not.
It's true in most movies I don't use my own voice.
People come up to me all the time in New York. Not for autographs, but to talk about movies, often in a very scientific way.
By the time I was 7, I did walk-ons, catalogue modeling, you name it. In the Queens where I grew up, you didn't go bowling on Saturday; you went to dancing school.
I play a lot of, maybe a little bit, cartoonish people. I've been a Bond villain, and I play a lot of villains, people who want to take over something.
In England, and all over Europe, and all over the world, actors act until they die. They get old, really old, and they're still working. They just keep doing it.
I have always refused to do something that has offended me. I have been offered potential roles that are totally vulgar.
The thing about cooking is it's so interesting to watch. I don't know why, but if you go to somebody's house and they're making something, they usually say interesting things while they're cooking.
I have made a number of movies that I have never seen. It's not a matter of ego. It's a matter of being disappointed. It's really a shame. It's just as difficult to make a movie that no one cares about as to make a hit.
I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.Collection: Fever
I'm better off not socializing. I make a better impression if I'm not around.Collection: Inspirational
I have this theory about words. There's a thousand ways to say "Pass the salt". It could mean, you know, "Can I have some salt?" or it could mean, "I love you.". It could mean, "I'm very annoyed with you". Really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.Collection: Love You
We have no way of knowing what lays ahead for us in the future. All we can do is use the information at hand to make the best decision possible.Collection: Hands
I play so many villains and strange, troubled people. I don't have that kind of life. I live in the country. I've been married nearly 50 years. I have a cat.Collection: Country
I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls, and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why.Collection: Girl
In the end, there's still the Word, everywhere... In Heaven and it's Angels, the Earth and Stars, even in the darkest part of the Human Soul It was there where it burned brightest. And for a moment, I was blinded.Collection: Stars
I make up different names for my cat all the time - Flapjack, Bowtie, Popcorn. But he's really, "Hey you, cat."Collection: Cat
I became very critical of zoos and circuses and keeping animals in captivity. I wish it was against the law.Collection: Zoos
I think all men when they get older, they look at the mirror and they probably see their father a little bit.Collection: Father
I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even 'pass the salt' - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying that. Maybe that's what gives the impression that I'm saying one thing and thinking something else.Collection: Character
I got [Muhammad Ali's boxing shorts] for $40 at an auction. Nobody wanted them. I have them framed in my house.Collection: Boxing
I grew up in music theater playing to the audience - singing and dancing and showing off. That's really my background. But the camera's different. I think I'm more at home on stage.Collection: Home
I have boxes full of stuff. Most actors do have a trunk full of stuff, paintings or scripts. It never comes to anything.Collection: Actors
My background is in musical comedy.Collection: Musical
It takes a very long time to read a script. I'll look at a script, but there are so many scripts. I remember once being at the dentist, and the guy was doing my teeth and telling me about the screenplay he'd written and he said, "Will you read it?" And I said "Oh...okay." And it turns out that it was about a dentist!Collection: Long
It's very hard to get a movie made. You could spend your life reading scripts that never got made.Collection: Reading
All actors do what they do differently, and it doesn't matter.Collection: Actors
In the theater you rehearse for a minimum of five to six weeks. And then you get to play it. Which means you get to get better. That's the great thing about the theater.Collection: Mean
I got to playing villains-I don't know how. I think it's like anything else, in the movies in particular that if you establish yourself as something and you're lucky enough to keep getting hired. You know, there are guys who play the guy who gets the girl, guys who are the best friend of that guy, there's the funny guy, the villain.Collection: Girl
I suppose in order to succeed at something you have to be very persistent. I've never done that.Collection: Order
You never forget how to dance. It's just a matter of your bones working and things like that.Collection: Matter
If you do movies that are modestly budgeted, the way they finance them is they figure out how they can sell them.Collection: Way
I became an actor kind of by accident. I was in musical theater and I got a job as an actor in a play and kept going. But I never set out to be an actor; it happened over time.Collection: Jobs
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. But this is a nice part.Collection: Nice
I've never made a movie I wasn't surprised to see.Collection: Made
I get a lot of invitations, and sometimes it's far away, it's in Montana or something. "We'd like you to come to our daughter's wedding." These are people I've never heard of. I get a lot that. "Will you come to my son's graduation?" No...I guess when you're in stuff, it's almost a feeling that they know you.Collection: Daughter
A man can be an artist... in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasey's art is death. He's about to paint his masterpiece.Collection: Art