Walken Talking
The surprisingly homely life of Hollywood bad
boy Christopher Walken. By Nick Griffiths
Does this man look like a Ronald to you? Because that’s his real name: Ronald
Walken. In the 50s US TV series The Wonderful John Acton, he was actually billed as
‘Ronnie’, and only changed to Christopher in his early twenties because he
realised that sounded better. Wise move. Think of another famous Ronald. Reagan? McDonald?
Christopher Walken is a man of contradictions. He is known for playing psychotics, in
unsettling movies such as The Deer Hunter (his Oscar-winning role), True Romance,
Pulp Fiction, The Prophecy…More recently, he was the Headless Horseman
in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. The way he wears his hair, that pallor, which
he maintains by staying in, those eyes. People with eyes like that shouldn’t play
psychotics – they should be psychotic.
Yet the real Christopher Walken is a genial man with a healthy sense of humour, who
enjoys cooking – his ‘TNT Prawn Appetiser’ is a speciality – is
fastidiously tidy (‘I can’t stand mess’), hates being a passenger in cars
traveling at speed, who enjoys watching his cats and can’t drink soda because it
makes him too wired. He once asked two chaps on a New York sidewalk to turn down their
loud music, and one broke his nose for him.
He actually shares beauty secrets: ‘If you have red eyes from staying up too late,
you should put warm, wet tea bags on them. It’s very soothing.’
Christopher Walken is 58 years old; 55 of those have been spent in showbiz, and more
than 30 in a happy marriage to casting director Georgianne Thon. Now he says,
‘I’d love to play a guy who had a wife and children and a dog, and he
didn’t shoot people.’
His latest role comes closer to that than most.
In America’s Sweethearts, which has been compared to Singin’ in the
Rain, he plays a merely oddball film director, supporting Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal
and Catherine Zeta Jones. Walken so often plays the bride because the villain rarely
enjoys the lead in movies.
He reckons he never earned more than $11,000 a year until the age of 35. Even these
days, in Hollywood terms, he is only financially comfortable. It could have been
different: were it not for Harrison Ford, he would have played Han Solo in Star Wars.
Actually, it could have been even more different than that. Those who saw his surreally
classy tap-dancing performance in Fatboy Slim’s award-winning video Weapon of
Choice will have some clue as to Walken’s origins.
Born in Queens, New York, he was encouraged into showbiz by his mother and
attended the Professional Children's School. (‘What do you do, son?’ ‘I’m a
child, sir.’) His forte was dancing. Young Ronald would twirl in the background of
television shows starring the likes of Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle.
On leaving college, he joined the musical Best Foot Forward. He recalls, ‘I
was 19, making $55 a week, Liza Minelli sang a song for the investor, that’s how we
got the money to do the show. Her mother threw a 16th birthday party for her,
and the cast was invited. I danced with Judy Garland.’
This guy, the one who pushes Michelle Pfeiffer out of a short skyscraper in Batman
Returns, who blows out his own brains in The Deer Hunter, whose stare on this
page is the essence of chill – danced with Judy Garland.
That’s the beauty of Christopher Walken. He has one of those memorable heads, and
a heart of gold. Just as television comedians can be unfunny in real life, so screen
madmen need not be genuinely insane.
No wonder he is never out of work.
UK Hello Magazine - October 23, 2001
Reprinted with the permission of Hello Magazine
http://www.hellomagazine.com
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