Christopher Walken
OR THE PHANTOM OF DESPAIR
Of all the actors in the rising new wave of Hollywood, Christopher Walken is without doubt the most unassuming and retiring .....

(Taken from an unknown French magazine).


In contrast to the Latin excesses of a Pacino, the almost frenzied showiness of a Nicholson or a Hoffman, or the narrow-minded brutality of a Stallone or a Sean Penn, Christopher Walken slips into the skin of characters whom he interprets with humility, even shyness, as if he were participating in the film purely by accident.
The memory of roles he has played remains, in the same way, hazy or confused and very few people can put his face to his name. For all that, his presence remains unforgettable and if one had to compare him to another actor, it would be De Niro. You find in him the same apparent coldness, the same icy stare, the same inner life behind his acting which allows a barely-disguised inner violence to show through.
Born on 31 March 1943 in Astoria, New York, Christopher Walken trod the boards from the age of ten, with the blessing of his baker father and of his mother who was passionate about the theatre. After some fleeting appearances on television, he enrolled in a modern school in Manhattan to make stage appearances in "Best Foot Forward", a musical comedy in which he appeared with Liza Minnelli.
Anyone who knows a little about the actor will be surprised to hear of such appearances, but this experience of stage and dance helped him to overcome an almost pathological shyness. Thus, at the beginning of the sixties, he could be seen in about 60 musicals, such as "West Side Story" which played throughout the USA.
In 1966, he decided to give up dancing to devote himself entirely to the theatre where he received several distinctions for his performances in "Kid Champion", "The Rose Tattoo" and "A Lion in Winter".
He landed his first big film role in Sidney Lumet’s The Anderson Tapes in 1970, but he was more noteworthy in Next Stop Greenwich Village as an out-of-step intellectual dandy. After that he was seen in Annie Hall and then in The Sentinel. His performance in The Deer Hunter earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Michael Cimino took him on again for Heaven’s Gate, which everyone knows suffered financial disaster.
From then on, Christopher Walken didn’t stop filming (The Dogs of War, Pennies from Heaven, Brainstorm) right up until The Dead Zone and At Close Range, his two latest works to date in which he could give free rein to his exceptional talent.
Between films, Walken likes to return to the stage ("Hamlet", "Caligula") which is an essential passion for him.
Whether by coincidence or the deliberate wish of the directors, Christopher Walken has for a long time been condemned to roles where his characters are a priori not very engaging, magnificent losers who find in death bound up with a suicidal gesture an illusory final redemption. From Nick, obsessed by Russian Roulette, in the superb The Deer Hunter, the moving Johnny Smith miserably rejected by the world in The Dead Zone, or the terrifying Brad Senior (a role which irresistibly reminds you of that played by Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter) in At Close Range, Christopher Walken always manages to confer a barely perceptible inner emotion on his performances. A mixture of calculated coldness and hidden fragility, the acting of this still little-known actor remains constantly fascinating.
Eternally doomed to failure, beyond repair, Christopher Walken carries his slightly weary form from film to film. This phantom of despair could turn out, unless someone notices him, to be one of the most unrecognised actors of his generation.