From the Archives: Christopher Walken

His face has always held the promise of the offbeat, of the otherworldly. The grooves and pauses that rollercoaster through his sentences cement the eccentricities that he had made a living out of. It's a treat to meet Christopher Walken: Oscar winner, thinking man's psycho, icon. It's a chance to pore over those pale blue eyes, which suggest the possibility of a parallel universe, and that pucker of a mouth whose downturn is both sensual and menacing. His manner of speaking, with its stops and starts, the pauses, the seemingly random emphasis on certain words -- all of these combine to create a harmonious dissonance. Walken may say very much with very little but it's not so much what he says as how he says it.

Audiences may be shocked to discover that the actor, born Ronald Walken nearly 55 years ago in Astoria, Queens in New York, is not only a nice guy but a happily married one as well. Wife Georgianne, a casting agent whom he married three decades ago, and he are childless. "It was," he once explained, "a consequence of the way I lived. It wouldn't have been right to have had kids. A lot of the problems we have in society now are the result of people having children without being able to take proper care of them."

He and his two brothers were inducted into show business by their mother Rosalie, a stage-loving Glaswegian whom Walken clearly adores. Musicals and comedies or a combination of both became his calling card. His appearance on Saturday Night Live, which opened with a musical routine dedicated to his mother, was a nod to his past. Though he misses it very much, he would never go back or resuscitate it. "It's a little like sports," he offers by way of explanation. He does, however, keep his old flame alive by inserting a dance number in most of his films.

Which brings us to the point of this interview. Walken is in town to promote Blast From the Past, a romantic comedy headlined by Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone (Walken's Excess Baggage costar of whom he remarks, "I enjoy her."). Walken -- gasp! -- does not play a villain nor does he portray a psychopath. Instead, he plays Calvin Webber, a brainy inventor who sequesters his wife Helen (Sissy Spacek, with whom he cuts a rug in the film) and their newborn son (played as an adult by Fraser) in an ingeniously crafted bomb shelter for 35 years. Walken didn't have to look far for inspiration. "[Calvin] has a lot to do with my own background," he relates. "In those days -- not the Sixties but the Fifties when I was growing up -- people did have bomb shelters. They had a little thing in the backyard with some canned goods. It probably would have been absolutely useless if anything had happened."

Reminiscing brings about some amusing memories: "There's a scene right at the top of the movie where you see the party they're having and on the table is. . . celery with cream cheese inside. Nobody does that anymore," he smiles, his teeth somehow resembling something predatory. "Deviled eggs and jello molds with fruit floating in there. Nobody does that," he continues, his amusement growing. "Rob Roys! My parents used to like their Manhattan. . ." His voice trails off into a whisper. ". . .Manhattan with Maraschino cherry." His smile this time is softer, obviously heartened by this pivotal detail.

Walken's softer side has received legendarily short shrift yet even his darkest characters have been underlined in pathos, his Oscar-winning supporting turn as the suicidal Vietnam vet in The Deer Hunter being the strongest evidence of this. That early success prefigured a rocky patch in the 1980s. First there was Heaven's Gate, director Michael Cimino's follow-up to his critically acclaimed The Deer Hunter. The film, which costarred Kris Kristofferson and Isabelle Huppert, became one of the most notorious flops in film history. Then there was the rumor-ridden accidental death of Natalie Wood, film legend and his Brainstorm costar. Because Walken was aboard the yacht with Wood and her husband Robert Wagner and because gossip circulated that the married couple had engaged in a heated argument on that fateful day, it was alleged that Walken and Wood had been conducting an affair. "It always sounds so mysterious," Walken stated, dismissing the rumors in an interview many years after the incident. "There's nothing mysterious about it. She banged her head and fell in the water, and she floated one way; the boat floated another."

The decade wore on and after some missteps, including Pennies From Heaven, Walken delivered some memorable performances: unforgettable in The Dead Zone, villainous in the James Bond film A View to a Kill, comedic in Biloxi Blues, and searing in At Close Range. The Nineties brought forth, among others, The Comfort of Strangers, Paul Schrader's discomfiting tale of sexual obsession; Batman Returns, where his Max Shreck literally pushed Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman into being; and two television outings as the hardworking and romantic Jacob Witting in Sarah, Plain and Tall and its sequel Skylark. But it was in key supporting roles in Pulp Fiction and True Romance that cemented his status as the cinema's preeminent ticking time bomb. Walken is well-aware of his reputation but is calmly reconciled to it. "I feel about anything you play is if they say that's what you are, then that's what you are. All you gotta do is (pause) not deny it. (pause) I feel that way about all parts. If they say that's what you are, that's what you are."

The fear of idleness contributes to his constant need to work. Upcoming films include Illuminata, John Turturro's backstage drama which also stars Susan Sarandon and Georgina Cates, the romantic drama No Vacancy and, most arrestingly, a role as the Headless Horseman in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow in which Walken reunites with his Nick of Time costar Johnny Depp. Also on the slate is playing Nicholas II in Crown of Blood, which chronicles the life of the last heir to the Russian throne through the eyes of his tutor. "I think that (pause) the more I do it, the better I get at it. I might make a lot of movies that nobody sees -- I shouldn't say nobody but I've made movies that I haven't seen," he smiles. "But it kept me busy and it made me some money and it made me better." As far as acting is concerned, Walken puts it in this way: "It's good to be good in a movie, it's better to be good in a good movie and it's even better than that to be good in a good movie that a lot of people see. (pause) So that triple thing is hard to come by. You've got to get a little lucky, too."

"What can I say? The guy's a national treasure," director Abel Ferrara has said of his frequent star. Having guided Walken through King of New York, The Addiction and The Funeral, Ferrara offered two teasing insights: "Chris Walken could scare people just walking down the street. Two-year-old babies cry when he enters the room. The guy is scary. He works hard at it though. He hates people giving away his secrets. He wants to be thought of as naturally terrifying, I guess." And: "You only have to look at Chris to realize he has been through some heavy duty shit." Their latest collaboration New Rose Hotel remains unfinished. "It's missing about four juicy scenes," Walken laughs. "He'll finish it but everybody will look older."

Originally published February 11, 1999