Top 66 Christopher Walken Quotes

Quite often, I’ll be sent a script for a movie. And I find that I like it, so I say I’ll do it. But then they rewrite it for me. They make it quirky. Odd. I find that rather annoying. I call it Walkenising.

It’s true in most movies I don’t use my own voice.

I think that weddings have probably been crashed since the beginning of time. Cavemen crashed them. You go to meet girls. It makes sense.

I don’t like flying at the best of times. And as I get older, I like it less and less. I don’t much like driving, either. I prefer to be driven. And, when I’m in London, I don’t even like walking on the street. I can never get used to looking the right way when I cross the street.

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.

I don’t much like being directed. I enjoy being allowed to play.

My father was a lesson. He had his own bakery, and it was closed one day a week, but he would go anyway. He did it because he really loved his bakery. It wasn’t a job.

The last time I did a movie that needed a horse, I said: ‘If it moves, I’m out of here.’ The worst thing is, they know when you‘re afraid and act up accordingly. I’ve had them run off on me. Horses I do not like.

I’ve made movies that I thought were good. I’ve made movies that I thought were okay, but then I was very good. And sometimes you’re in a movie and you think, I wish more people saw that – because you’re good. And it just works out that the movie gets lost. But that’s show business.

I make movies that nobody will see. I’ve made movies that even I have never seen.

Is typecasting really a problem?

People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.

Early on, I played one or two disturbed people, and I guess I must have been good at it, because it stuck. But, you know, I’m a regular guy. I stay home a lot, I make an effort to keep a distance from the whole social thing, the openings, the parties. I try to live in a calm way.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

I have always refused to do something that has offended me. I have been offered potential roles that are totally vulgar.

I grew up in the ’50s, in New York City, where television was born. There were 90 live shows every week, and they used a lot of kids. There were schools just for these kids. There was a whole world that doesn’t exist anymore.

You know, there’s nothing you can do about your public image. It is what it is. I just try to do things honestly. I guess honesty is what you would call subjective: if you feel good about what you’re doing, yourself, if you figure you’re doing the right thing.

I’d love to do a character with a wife, a nice little house, a couple of kids, a dog, maybe a bit of singing, and no guns and no killing, but nobody offers me those kind of parts.

When I was a kid I joined the circus. I did that. It is true. But it’s not like you think. There was a guy, he had his own circus. His name was Carol Jacobs and he owned it. It was a small thing.

I was never a child actor. I was a child performer.

To be honest, I was never very ambitious. And I still am not.

Morning is the best time to see movies.

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.

My background is in musical comedy. I didn’t know I was going to be an actor. But all my points of reference have to do with musical comedy and in being kind of a showoff.

At its best, life is completely unpredictable.

I play disturbed people a lot, but always with a bit of distance or tongue-in-cheek. Most of the villains I play are essentially harmless.

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

I think that sometimes when they see me in a movie they expect me to be something nasty. I mean, I play a lot of villains and you show up and they think maybe… That’s why it’s good to defy expectations sometimes.

Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.

I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore.

Onstage I have a natural chutzpa that audiences like. I’m out there.

I remember that. I was talking to him and I said how great it would be if actors had a tail because I have animals and a tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell everything. You can tell if they’re annoyed. You can tell whether they’re scared.

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.

Both my parents had heavy accents, and so did everybody they knew. It’s a rhythm thing – people who speak English where they have to hesitate and think of the right word. And I think it rubbed off.

I’ll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.

There’s something dangerous about what’s funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.

To me, there are things you’re good at and things you’re not so good at. For some reason, I’m good at darker characters. It has to do with how you look.

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.

When you’re onstage and you know you’re bombing, that’s very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going – you’re bombing, but you can’t stop. And you know that half an hour from now, you’re still gonna be bombing. It takes a thick skin.

They have a kind of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby thing going on.

The best thing for me is, when I’m not working, is to be at home and to have a script or two scripts is better, and to be just walking around the house and just thinking about the lines.

I live sort of in the country and I like that. It’s very quiet, it’s beautiful.

I don’t have a lot of hobbies. I don’t play golf. I don’t have any children. Things that occupy people’s time. I just try to take jobs.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

You do something on television, and so many people see it that it follows you around. It’s interesting. I’ve done a couple of things on TV, and probably more people saw me than in all the movies I’ve made.

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.

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.

It’s what actors call a big, juicy part, when you’re a leading man. I don’t get a lot of those. I get a lot of supporting things.

I don’t play lovers. I wish I did. At least once I’d like to have a crack at one of those guys. A heartbreaker. Some people are born to it. I’m not.

Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you’re doing. That’s a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.

An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it’s a play or movie.

Even in the limo, I buckle my seatbelt. I got that seatbelt on before the car moves.

My life is really quite conservative. I’ve been married nearly 50 years. I don’t have hobbies or children. I don’t much care to travel. I’ve never had a big social life. I really just stay home, except when I go to work.

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.

I have made a number of movies that I have never seen. It’s not a matter of ego. It’s a matter of being disappointed. It’s really a shame. It’s just as difficult to make a movie that no one cares about as to make a hit.

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.

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.

Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what’s serious. I think that’s true. Sometimes things are really funny if you’re absolutely earnest. If you’re really serious, it’s hilarious.

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.

No, but way before that, I’ve been doing little dances in movies for years. Yeah, that was an amazing chance. You know, at my age to be able to do a music dance video, very unusual.

I think the fact that I grew up in show business had a real effect on my personality. If you were born in New York during the golden age of television, and you grew up on Broadway, that marks you.

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

I like to stand in my kitchen with the script on a counter that’s about chest high. Usually I do something else at the same time – make a chicken or slice vegetables – and all day long I just read it over and over and over.

In England, and all over Europe, and all over the world, actors act until they die. They get old, really old, and they’re still working. They just keep doing it.

I’ve made three musical movies which is pretty good considering that not many are made but I was lucky in other ways. I came along when independent movies were starting to boom.

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.