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.
— Christopher Walken
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.
I like to go to work, and also, I don't have any kids. I don't have any hobbies. I don't like to travel. So going to work is kind of it.
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.
Onstage I have a natural chutzpa that audiences like. I'm out there.
I was never a child actor. I was a child performer.
To be honest, I was never very ambitious. And I still am not.
There probably aren't a lot of actors my age who tap dance.
I love spaghetti. And I like to cook spaghetti. And I used to eat it every day. I weighed thirty pounds more than I do now. You can't - you can't do that.
There's something dangerous about what's funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.
I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.
Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.
People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.
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.
As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.
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.
Also, I think there are huge reactions sometimes, which are also mysterious.
I'm in a place in my life where I get offered parts that I didn't get offered before - fathers and uncles and grandfathers and so on. And it took me a long time to get to that place, but I'm glad because it opens up new territory.
I always like to watch comics and it's interesting that you can tell if someone's funny in 10 seconds.
Usually directors hire me because I'm what they are looking for. But once in a while, and it's very rare, they will hire me and then try to make me over.
I think the fact that I was raised in show business, in New York City, in the '50s, that's affected my personality to the point that I'm a little different.
I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.
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.
I became an actor by accident. I suppose I figured since I was in musical comedy from the time I was a teenager, I suppose I figured that I'd always been in that world to some extent.
My life has been wonderful. Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.
I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore.
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 make movies that nobody will see. I've made movies that even I have never seen.
I have been in movies that I thought I wasn't very good in.
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 think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.
An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie.
I live sort of in the country and I like that. It's very quiet, it's beautiful.
I've made movies that we're very successful that we're a complete surprise, and I've made movies that I thought we're going to be very successful that, you know.
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.
Some people can do things and get away with it. Comics are famously like that. Why is it that some guys can say the most horrible things and it's not offensive, it's funny?
I was born in America but all of my friends' parents, everybody's parents, including my own, had come to America from Europe. Many people in my neighborhood hardly bothered to learn English.
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.
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.
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 think I'm getting a little bit of Alzheimer's. Just a little.
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.
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.
At its best, life is completely unpredictable.
Is typecasting really a problem?
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.
When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go; they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV.
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 don't carry lucky charms, but I believe in those things.
My favorite characters are the ones that are the most successful movies.
