Christopher Walken Quotes

My background is in musical comedy.

I think early on I knew what I was going to do and it was based a lot on familiarity but it was also because I didn't have a lot of skills. There was nothing I wanted t be. I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be in show business.

I became an actor kind of by accident. I was in musical theater and I got a job as an actor in a play and kept going. But I never set out to be an actor; it happened over time.

It's very bizarre though when you get hired and then the director will say, "I know how this goes." And you're thinking, "Wait a minute, I thought that I was doing this" but basically what they really want, especially if they wrote it, is they want you to do it as they imagined it. It's virtually impossible.

There probably aren't a lot of actors my age who tap dance.

I used to be prettier than I am, but I think I look better now. I was a pretty boy. Particularly in my early movies. I don’t like looking at them so much. There’s a sort of pretty thing about me.

I tend to play mostly villains and twisted people. Unsavory guys. I think it's my face, the way I look.

I became very critical of zoos and circuses and keeping animals in captivity. I wish it was against the law.

I remember from when I use to be a dancer, there is an expression among dancers, I had a T-shirt that said: SHUT UP AND DANCE.

I have a friend of mine who does me on his answering machine, and when I call him, I answer. It's pretty strange.

I became an actor by accident.

I like cats a lot. I've always liked cats. They're great company. When they eat, they always leave a little bit at the bottom of the bowl. A dog will polish the bowl, but a cat always leaves a little bit. It's like an offering.

I never know when I am being funny, and the other way too. I don't think you can think about that. I don't think you can try to be funny. Some people are just funny.

I don't usually get to play fathers or grandfathers or uncles. Now that I'm older, maybe I can play people closer to myself. I'd like that.

People come up to me all the time in New York. Not for autographs, but to talk about movies, often in a very scientific way.

I've been very fortunate, because I've been involved in things that very often lead to obscurity. I was in some pictures that were not successful whatsoever. I think people admire persistence. People notice that I'm still there.

Somebody said to me that I speak English almost like somebody for whom English is not their first language.

It's interesting - a lot of good actors are good mimes. But I'm terrible. If I tried to do an impression, nobody would know what I was doing.

Death is wonderful because you can't think about it. How are you gonna think about it?

I think if you do something effectively whether you're the lover or the comic or the action guy or the villain like I play; movies are very expensive to make. Chances are you'll get asked to play that part again.

My favorite characters are the ones that are the most successful movies.

I don't know why people eat so badly. I could eat pasta all the time, but it really is fattening. And I love ice cream, but I can't do that. There was a time, until I was in my mid-forties, when I could eat a whole pizza - and really, no effect.

I play so many villains and strange, troubled people. I don't have that kind of life. I live in the country. I've been married nearly 50 years. I have a cat.

I come from a show-business family, so wanting to become an actor never crossed my mind. It was just a part of my life.

When I was a kid, I worked in the circus. It was a touring circus that was owned by a man named Terrell Jacobs. It was just one big tent, and he was a lion tamer. He didn't have any kids, but the bit was that I would dress up as his son in an identical outfit.

In the end, there's still the Word, everywhere... In Heaven and it's Angels, the Earth and Stars, even in the darkest part of the Human Soul It was there where it burned brightest. And for a moment, I was blinded.

Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.

I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even 'pass the salt' - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying that. Maybe that's what gives the impression that I'm saying one thing and thinking something else.

The thing about cooking is it's so interesting to watch. I don't know why, but if you go to somebody's house and they're making something, they usually say interesting things while they're cooking.

Well, I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades in show business for a long time. I was a singer and a dancer and then I got a job as an actor.

I think I'm getting a little bit of Alzheimer's. Just a little.

I like to be cast well and then I like to be left alone. And good directors, that's generally what they do when they hire you because you have something that's useful to the part, and then they leave you alone. The times that I've run into trouble is when, very rare actually, but you get hired and then there's some sort of makeover involved.

One thing that's happened to me is I've been around a long time and I've played a lot of villains and so forth. I think it had to do with, well one thing is that I looked younger than I was for a long time. Now I think I'm suddenly starting to play people's father.

My own way of thinking is very conservative, very linear and not particularly imaginative, but if I look for things in different places, sometimes things happen.

Acting is a bit like being an athlete. You spend all your time getting ready to do something for two minutes. All the things that made my career in the movies happen took two or three minutes, which is the time that it takes for a 'take'. In that time, something happens. That's what people know you for, just like someone running the hundred metres.

And I think that when I play these villains, maybe what is different is that the audience sees me play these and they know that that's Chris and he's having fun and he knows that and he knows that and you know that and everybody knows that.

I've never done that [fighting for arole]. You hear about actors going in and saying, "You've got to let me read for this!" I've never done that. Lots of parts I've wanted and didn't get, but I think any actor would say that.

It's very hard to get a movie made. You could spend your life reading scripts that never got made.

I don't carry lucky charms, but I believe in those things.

I wasn't a trained actor, I was trained in musical comedy theater, and when you do that, the audience is completely part of the thing. It's like Elizabethan theater. You play the scene, and then you turn - the audience is part of it.

Acting has to do with saying it as if you meant it, so for me the words are always very important. It's very important for me to know my lines, know them so well that I don't have to think about them.

I got [Muhammad Ali's boxing shorts] for $40 at an auction. Nobody wanted them. I have them framed in my house.

No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing.

If you do movies that are modestly budgeted, the way they finance them is they figure out how they can sell them.

I'm not sure I'd write a good cookbook, but I might make a good cooking show.

I don't even like holding them. Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as quick as possible.

I've made a couple of movies in the jungle, and I don't want to go back to the jungle.

Sometimes a certain innocence is good, but not about yourself.