Christopher Walken

Ronald Walken (born March 31, 1943), known professionally as Christopher Walken, is an American film, television and theatre actor best known for playing menacing or psychologically damaged characters. He was born in Queens, New York, and has been married to casting director, Georgianne Walken, since 1969.

Walken initially trained as a dancer in musical theatre before moving on to more serious roles in theatre and then film. A select number of his movies include dance moves that he has worked in, reflecting this early background.

He has been in nearly one hundred movies and television shows since 1953, including The Dead Zone (1983), Brainstorm (1983), A View to a Kill (1985), Batman Returns (1991) True Romance (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Catch Me If You Can (2002). He was George Lucas' second choice for Han Solo after Harrison Ford. [1] (http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1286587,00.html) He also has won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Deer Hunter (1978) where he played alongside Robert De Niro. He was nominated again in 2002 for Catch Me if You Can.

He also has a considerable body of work in the theatre with over 100 plays to his credit. He won the Clarence Derwent award for his performance in The Lion in Winter in 1966 and an Obie for his 1975 perfomance in Kid Champion. He has perfomed the main role in a number of Shakespeare plays - notably Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Coriolanus.

He tried his hand at writing and directing with the short five minute film Popcorn Shrimp in 2001.

He is also a frequent guest on Saturday Night Live where he has a recurring character and sketch called "The Continental". Another skit for which Walken has become famous was a spoof recording session for Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." Playing a music producer, he repeatedly stopped the recording to request "more cowbell!" This sketch has become a huge cult hit.

He has also starred in two music videos. His first video role was as Madonna's guardian angel in her 1993 "Bad Girl" video and the second appearance was in Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice video in 2001.

Notable performances

Listed in chronological order. More general information about each of these films can be found on the individual pages for the films

• The Deer Hunter (1978)
  

Walken won an Oscar for best supporting actor with his performance in this controversial film. He plays Nick, a young working class man with a poetic bent who is destroyed by the experience of war in Vietnam. Walken's perfomance is notable for his transformation from a sensitive, gentle character to a zoned out lost soul, high on drugs and gambling with his life at Russian roulette.

• The Dead Zone (1983)
  

Walken plays a school teacher, Johnny Smith, who after lying in a coma for six years awakes to find he has psychic powers. The role is currently being reprised by Anthony Michael Hall in a TV series of the same name. Walken later spoofed his role in a sketch in Saturday Night Live in a sketch titled "Trivial Psychic". Walken's otherworldly looks and his ability to play vulnerable damaged characters are put to good effect here.

• True Romance (1993)
  

Walken plays a scene opposite Dennis Hopper in this film. This so-called 'Sicilian scene' has become a cult favourite and is frequently hailed by critics - professional and amateur alike - as the best scene in the film. This scene alone is the subject of four commentaries on the DVD attesting to its cult status. After an exchange of dialogue (penned by Quentin Tarantino) Walken's character, Sicilian gangster Vincenzo Coccotti, summarily executes Hopper's character after deliberate provocation by the latter.

• Pulp Fiction (1994)
  

This film, which has received many accolades, contains another frequently quoted cult scene with Walken scripted by Tarantino. Here Walken offers a slightly disturbing but nonethless amusing turn as a Vietnam veteran Captain Koons who in a long speech delivers a watch to a small boy from his dead father. Koons explains just how the watch had been hidden during long years in a prisoner of war camp.

• Weapon of Choice (2001)
  

Weapon of Choice is a three minute video clip directed by Spike Jonze with music by Fatboy Slim. Spike Jonze has directed numerous other video clips and films such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. It won six MTV awards in 2001 and also won best video of all time in April 2002, in a list of the top 100 videos of all time, compiled from a survey of musicians, directors and music industry figures conducted by a UK music TV channel VH1. In this video, Walken performs a virtuoso tap dance around the lobby of the Marriott hotel in Los Angeles. Walken also helped choreograph the dance.