Christopher Walken: where can a song-and-dance man from queens with a reputation for portraying off-kilter spooks, deranged psychos, and tragic lugs wind up playing a model citizen? only in this month's remake of the cult classic film the Stepford wives

Interview, June, 2004 by Sheila Benson

Only sharks have Christopher Walken's instinct for forward motion: Weaving elegantly through one film after another, this actor's actor has taken unforgettable turns in movies like Annie Hall (1977), At Close Range (1986), Biloxi Blues (1988), Pulp Fiction (1994), and of course, The Deer Hunter (1978), for which he received an Academy Award. Last year Walken earned another Oscar nomination, for his subtle, affecting work in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002). Although he failed to walk away with his second statue, the near miss may have had a bright side, reminding directors (yet again) just how deep his talent runs. His recent roles suggest that versatility: He's a mega-rich good guy in Tony Scott's action-thriller Man on Fire with Denzel Washington, a classic sidekick to Jack Black and Ben Stiller in Barry Levinson's screwball Envy, and this month, the pillar of a very odd community in Frank Oz's remake of The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, and Glenn Close. Here, Walken, who began performing professionally at age 3, talks--in his distinctive cadence--about his life in show business and why there's really no such thing as a bad gig.

SHEILA BENSON: You've been working nonstop lately, in very different roles. Yet the kind of characters that have become your trademark are vaguely creepy guys who often get the movie's best speeches. Why do you think you get cast this way?

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN: Movies are so expensive to make, and there's a gamble involved, always, so any actor who works consistently gets picked for certain kinds of roles--you know, there's the guy who gets the girl, there's his friend, there's the funny guy, and then there's the kind of viilainous guy. I always say to my agent, "I want to play a guy who has a house and a dog, and his wife makes dinner, and his kids come and say, 'Dad, what do you think is the right thing to do?' And then I would light my pipe and say, 'Well, son, you know, you have to follow your conscience.'" [both laugh] Somehow I just don't get those parts. You know, I love to do comedies--in fact, before I was an actor, I was in musical theater, so my background is very much in light comedy. But somehow, when I started making movies, I got into, you know, a villainous mode.

SB: Looking back over your career, at films like Roseland [1977] and Pennies From Heaven [1981] clear up to your hoofing in the Fatboy Slim video "Weapon of Choice" [2001], which Spike Jonze directed, what you really seem to be is a dancer at heart--a dancer who happens to be one hell of an actor.

CW: When I was a kid, especially in the part of Queens that I come from, Astoria, it was very typical for people--and I mean working-class people--to send their kids to dancing school. You'd learn ballet, tap, acrobatics, usually you'd even learn to sing a song. It was kind of a social activity, almost a tribal thing. I'm sure there's a whole generation of men my age from that part of Queens who can tap-dance. Dancing is really what I did until my early 30s. I toured with West Side Story all over the place--that's where I met my wife [casting director Georgianne Walken]--and did all sorts of musicals, which in those days would go out of town to places like Boston, Philadelphia, and New Haven [Connecticut]. Not only that, but for an actor living when I do, in the 21st century, I've managed to do quite a number of musical movies, which don't get made much anymore. Pennies From Heaven, I believe, was one of the last MGM musicals; the studio and the lion logo and all that was still there.

SB: You've done nearly a hundred movies and about as many plays and musicals, but young audiences know you from the music videos and your appearances on Saturday Night Live. How does that strike you?

CW: About two years ago, in the period of about a month, I was all over the world--in Australia, Singapore, the Czech Republic, London, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles--and for the first time, really, I became aware of the overwhelming pervasiveness of television. There wasn't one place where I went--and I was sometimes way out in the boondocks--that you couldn't turn on the television and see MTV or a comedy channel that would be showing reruns of Saturday Night Live. That's when you realize that when you do something on television, it'll probably be seen by more people than if you made a hundred movies or if you did a hundred years of theater. It's very tricky for actors because the exposure is so enormous. More people probably know me as the Continental on Saturday Night Live than they do from any movie I did.

SB: The Continental--that's the sketch shot from the perspective of a woman, where you romance the camera.

CW: Yeah, but it's based on a show I used to watch as a kid, in the 1950s [The Continental, with Italian actor Renzo Cesana]. There was this handsome guy who used to wear a dinner jacket with an ascot. The doorbell would ring, and the camera was a woman; they would drink champagne and smoke cigarettes, and it was all kind of racy. So that's what we based the sketch on. My thing is that the guy is ridiculous, but in the original it was very serious. He was sort of seducing her, and then she would leave.