Historic Hollywood

Christopher Walken

Given his ability to wear a court jester's mask one moment, only to become a shockingly cold fiend in the next, supports the fact that Chris Walken is one amazing, if complex, actor.

He was born Ronald Walken on March 31, 1943, in Astoria, Queens, NY. His mother, Rosalie, a Scottish immigrant, named him after her favorite actor, Ronald Colman, but he later changed it to Christopher upon the advice of a friend. His father, Paul, who emigrated from Germany in 1928, owned a bakery.

Walken started performing as a dancer at the age of three, taking lessons as a child. Later, he would often leave his neighborhood along with his two brothers and go to Manhattan, where they would visit Rockefeller Center, since many TV shows were filmed there. Sometimes, they found work as extras for extra spending money.

He attended the prestigious Professional Children's School and, at age 18, began working in theater, landing small parts in musicals, including West Side Story, where he met actress and future wife Georgianne Thon.

By the early 1970s, he began film work, with his breakthrough role occurring in the1977 movie Annie Hall, in which he played the suicidal brother of Diane Keaton. A year later, his harrowing performance as a Pennsylvania steelworker undone by the Vietnam War in the Deer Hunter earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

After bombing in the Western historical drama Heaven's Gate (1980), he appeared as a mercenary in The Dogs of War, which was an improvement that same year at the box office. He then did an about-face a year later by tap-dancing in the Steve Martin musical comedy Pennies from Heaven.

On Nov. 29, 1981, Walken was a guest of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood on their yacht docked in Catalina Island in California. Walken and Wood had been working together on the sci-fi thriller, Brainstorm. Tragically, Wood drowned, an event that haunted the actor for many years.

Walken then played a schoolteacher-turned psychic in the 1983 adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone. That same year, Brainstorm was also released to the public.

For the next several years, he experimented, turning in superb performances in such movies as Biloxi Blues (1988), Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991) and Batman Returns (1992). But, given his unpredictable nature, he was bound to demonstrate his droll comic wit on Saturday Night Live. One of his more memorable spoofs was based on his role from The Dead Zone in a sketch titled "Ed Glosser: Trivial Psychic," in which the title character had the ability to accurately predict meaningless future events ("You're going to get an ice cream headache. It's going to hurt real bad—right here—for eight, nine seconds."). This probably led to his role in the comedy hit Wayne's World 2 (1993).

His next major film role was opposite Dennis Hopper in True Romance, scripted by Quentin Tarantino. His Sicilian scene has been hailed by critics as the best scene in the film. He then gave another strong performance in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994).

Although overlooked by critics due to his small part in the comedy Mousehunt (1997), his performance as the exterminator hired to rid Nathan Lane's house of the little rodent is hilarious.

In 1998, Walken played a powerful New York theater critic in John Turturro's film Illuminata, and a year later, he starred in the romantic comedy Blast from the Past. The same year, he appeared as the Headless Horseman in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow.

Having proven his dancing skills in two music videos earlier in the '90s, he earned a Grammy for showing that he was still light on his feet in the 2001 video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice." Directed by Spike Jones, it won six MTV awards and won Best Video of All Time in April 2002. In this video, which he also helped choreograph, he dances and flies around the lobby of a hotel.

In his next film, he played the heartbroken father of Leonardo Dicaprio in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002). The role earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

After appearing as the father of the bride in the romantic comedy Wedding Crashers (2005), he was rumored to be running for President the following year. However, the claims were dismissed as untrue.

Christopher Walken lives with his wife of 41 years in Wilton, CT.

Joan Voss is a freelance writer living in Libertyville, IL.