| "People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding."
Christopher Walken Mini Bio |
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Christopher Walken is an Academy Award-winning American film and theatre actor. Walken initially trained as a dancer in musical theatre before moving on to more serious roles in theatre and then film. He has a considerable body of work in theatre, with over 100 plays to his credit. Walken has also appeared in over 100 movies and television shows since 1953, including The Deer Hunter, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New York, Batman Returns, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, The Funeral and Catch Me If You Can, and in classic TV series such as Kojak and The Naked City. Walken attained cult status in 90's, playing the role of the Archangel Gabriel in the first three The Prophecy movies. Walken has a reputation for playing unbalanced characters on-screen, such as his "claim to fame" role in The Deer Hunter, where he played a disturbed Vietnam Veteran, which won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Walken was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a heart broken and apologetic father to Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can in 2002. Walken has a considerable body of work in theatre. He won the Clarence Derwent Award for his performance in The Lion in Winter in 1966 and an Obie for his 1975 performance in Kid Champion. He has played the main role in a number of Shakespeare plays, notably Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Coriolanus. His movie talents continue to remain in high demand and movie audiences relish watching how capably he reinvents himself for each new challenging role. In the United States alone, films featuring Walken have grossed over $2 billion dollars. He has stated in interviews that he will never turn down a role unless he is simply too busy on other projects, and regards each role as a new learning experience.
In 2001, Walken's performance in Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice video won him a MTV Video Music Award for choreographing his own moves.
"Careers are not often as chosen as people think they are. People talk to me about my choices. I don't make choices, hardly. Things happen, and you say yes or no - usually 'yes', because it's always better to do something. What's the choice? Somebody will say, 'Don't do that part, you don't need to do that part.' And I'll say, 'Why not? What am I going to do? Sit around the house? I'd much rather go to work, and see actors, and have fun."
(On how he selects his roles) " I don't choose that much. I just sort of take what's there. I don't have much else to do. 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 basically work so much because I'm lazy."  "I would like to be a very old man and still be acting. So I feel lucky to have stuck around for this long. You have to be good and all that, but you also have to be lucky. I guess in everything. But especially if you`re an actor. So I got no complaints."
"I`ve enjoyed making movies for lots of different reasons. Sometimes, it was the other people. Sometimes, it was the fact that I was really good in it. Sometimes, it was the location. Sometimes, it was the paycheck. Sometimes, it can be lots of different things, or a lot of those things. Or there can be reasons why you`d like to avoid it the next time. Like the jungle. I`ve made a couple of movies in the jungle, and I don`t want to go back to the jungle."  |
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