Christopher Walken quotes:

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 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'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 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.

Morning is the best time to see movies.

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.

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

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.

At its best, life is completely unpredictable.

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.

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 grew up listening to people speaking broken English. I probably picked that up. And I probably speak English almost as a second language.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.

Also for me it was different because I play a lot of villains and in this one I play a dad and I play a good guy, basically. He's the Secretary of the Treasury. I never had a job 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.

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

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.

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

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'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.

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

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

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.

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'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 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 much like being directed. I enjoy being allowed to play.

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.

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

I've been married for 46 years, and I live in a nice house, my grass is always cut, I pay my bills, and my cat loves me!

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'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.

My hair was famous before I was.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

A good actor is like a racehorse or a Ferrari. If a cylinder is missing on a Chevy, it's doesn't matter that much. But if something's not working right on a Ferrari, it makes a big difference. It's the three percent that makes the difference between good and great. It's a fine line. If you're not there, it's very painful.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

In the theater you rehearse in order to do the performance. And in the movies the rehearsal and the performance are kind of the same thing. You're figuring it out and hopefully the camera is pointed at you when you're doing it.

I got to playing villains-I don't know how. I think it's like anything else, in the movies in particular that if you establish yourself as something and you're lucky enough to keep getting hired. You know, there are guys who play the guy who gets the girl, guys who are the best friend of that guy, there's the funny guy, the villain.

Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving on the road at night I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.

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.

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.

There are people who are able to plan their career, their future, but I've never had any talent for that. I just do things and hope for the best. Say yes, take a chance, and sometimes it's terrific and sometimes it's not.

I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls, and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why.

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.

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.

Also, I think there are huge reactions sometimes, which are also mysterious.

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.

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

I know that whenever I think about death, I come up against a stone wall.

Too many young actors are strutting about and doing films without having developed some of the depth you need to bring off certain kinds of roles. I think that's the problem with the system, where a lot of younger actors who haven't had a chance to develop suddenly become stars.

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.

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

I feel like you are this or that because other people say so. I wouldn't know how to play a psychopath. I don't think about it that way. You think about playing the scene but if the other people say that guy is crazy, then you are.

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'm not much of an analyzer or a psychologist.

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.

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.

I play a lot of, maybe a little bit, cartoonish people. I've been a Bond villain, and I play a lot of villains, people who want to take over something.

By the time I was 7, I did walk-ons, catalogue modeling, you name it. In the Queens where I grew up, you didn't go bowling on Saturday; you went to dancing school.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre, and that's really where my training is.

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.

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

I certainly have never been an actor who can play the Everyman guy - or, I don't tend to get those parts. I've tended to play eccentrics. I've played a lot of villains, of course.

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 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.

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?

My life has been wonderful. Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.

I always like to watch comics and it's interesting that you can tell if someone's funny in 10 seconds.

I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.

I'm better off not socializing. I make a better impression if I'm not around.

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.

There's not a lot of talking between actors - either between actors or between actors and directors. People think that they sit in rooms and talk about psychology and motivations. I don't think that happens much.

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.

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 have this theory about words. There's a thousand ways to say 'Pass the salt'. It could mean, you know, 'Can I have some salt?' or it could mean, 'I love you.' It could mean, 'I'm very annoyed with you'. Really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.

I make up different names for my cat all the time - Flapjack, Bowtie, Popcorn. But he's really, "Hey you, cat."

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...

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

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 look for good possibilities in movies. I don't look for perfection.

There's an impression that actors make a lot of choices. I just take what's there.

It takes a very long time to read a script. I'll look at a script, but there are so many scripts. I remember once being at the dentist, and the guy was doing my teeth and telling me about the screenplay he'd written and he said, "Will you read it?" And I said "Oh...okay." And it turns out that it was about a dentist!

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.

Because if I don't know my lines, I really don't know what I'm doing.

I try not to worry about things I can't do anything about.

I've made one or two movies that I haven't even seen, because they were never released. I have made things that I never even saw. But I will always go see the movie I'm in.

Well, you know what they say. A bullet always tells the truth.

I suppose in order to succeed at something you have to be very persistent. I've never done that.

I have a lot of trouble with scripts. I have a lot of trouble imagining things while I'm reading them.

If I show somebody something that I've written and they say, "Eh...alright," I just put it away and I never show it to anyone again. But I know people who won't take no for an answer, and eventually someone pays attention.

It's impossible for me to play a part without thinking about the audience.