Top 211 Quotes & Sayings by Christopher Walken
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Christopher Walken.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.
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.
Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.
I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.
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 father passed away a couple of years ago, but he was very old. He was almost a 100 years old. And, you know, he had a very good life. He came to America and he had a good life.
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.
Morning is the best time to see movies.
There's an impression that actors make a lot of choices. I just take what's there.
I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore.
I don't carry lucky charms, but I believe in those things.
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.
I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre, and that's really where my training is.
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.
As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.
I have been in movies that I thought I wasn't very good in.
I think I'm getting a little bit of Alzheimer's. Just a little.
Even in the limo, I buckle my seatbelt. I got that seatbelt on before the car moves.
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.
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 was never a child actor. I was a child performer.
They have a kind of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby thing going on.
I try not to worry about things I can't do anything about.
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 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.
I think that a good movie creates its own world, and that world needn't refer to anything that's real. If it's consistent, if it's entertaining, if it's interesting, it justifies its being there.
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.
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've never crashed a wedding. When I was a kid I, of course, used to crash parties. Crashing a wedding is difficult though because you have to have the suit, and you have to have information in case someone catches you. You have to know at least some names and something.
I'm not much of an analyzer or a psychologist.
I make movies that nobody will see. I've made movies that even I have never seen.
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.
As an actor, I'm rather hit and miss; I throw a lot out there, and some of it works and some of it doesn't.
I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.
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.
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.
Somebody said to me that I speak English almost like somebody for whom English is not their first language.
When I was a kid, my parents gave me piano lessons and guitar lessons for a while, but I was never very good at it. I have big, sort of awkward hands. It's hard to keep going when you don't get any better.
Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.
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.
No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing.
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.
I come from a part of New York that was almost entirely immigrants. I was born in America, but all of my friends' parents, everybody's parents, including my own, had come to America from Europe.
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.
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.
You hear about things happening to people - they slip in the bathtub, fall down the stairs, step off the curb in London because they think that the cars come the other way - and they die. You feel you want to die making an effort at something; you don't want to die in some unnecessary way.
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.
I don't much like being directed. I enjoy being allowed to play.
I'm scared of everything. I think it's only sensible to be that way.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I've been to Chicago a lot - it's one of my favorite places. My wife is from Chicago, and I worked in the theater there a lot.
At its best, life is completely unpredictable.
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.
I grew up listening to people speaking broken English. I probably picked that up. And I probably speak English almost as a second language.
I'm not sure I'd write a good cookbook, but I might make a good cooking show.
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.
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