Top 160 Christopher Walken Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “An audience is the most dangerous thing in the world, because they paid, and they’re looking at you. And they paid! And there’s a lot of them! And they cast a cold eye, because they paid. To be on the stage, you have to be very secure.”

— Christopher Walken

102. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

103. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

104. “It’s not necessarily how many minutes you’re on screen, it’s the material you have. It’s more important what it is you have to do than the amount of time you’re there.”

— Christopher Walken

105. “I’m not much of an analyzer or a psychologist.”

— Christopher Walken

106. “I have been in movies that I thought I wasn’t very good in.”

— Christopher Walken

107. “I think all men when they get older, they look at the mirror and they probably see their father a little bit.”

— Christopher Walken

108. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

109. “There’s an impression that actors make a lot of choices. I just take what’s there.”

— Christopher Walken

110. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

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

— Christopher Walken

112. “The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can’t. You know, it’s an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living.”

— Christopher Walken

113. “I have a lot of trouble with scripts. I have a lot of trouble imagining things while I’m reading them.”

— Christopher Walken

114. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

115. “If you play a king, it’s better if everybody treats you like a king.”

— Christopher Walken

116. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

117. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

118. “Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.”

— Christopher Walken

119. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

120. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

121. “I don’t even like holding them. Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as quick as possible.”

— Christopher Walken

122. “I was never a child actor. I was a child performer.”

— Christopher Walken

123. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

124. “If you’re an actor, a hard thing is to stick around, to stay viable. I try to do that by taking the opportunity to do something different every once in awhile.”

— Christopher Walken

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

— Christopher Walken

126. “Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.”

— Christopher Walken

127. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

128. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

129. “One of the difficult things about being an actor is to stick around.”

— Christopher Walken

130. “I’ve made a couple of movies in the jungle, and I don’t want to go back to the jungle.”

— Christopher Walken

131. “My favorite characters are the ones that are the most successful movies.”

— Christopher Walken

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

— Christopher Walken

133. “Well, I don’t play heroes obviously. I never played the guy who gets the girl. It might be interesting to do a part where I was a father in a functional family.”

— Christopher Walken

134. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

135. “There are movies that I’ve made where I thought I was going to be good, but when it was cut it together it wasn’t. And there are a lot of movies that, for one reason or another, just don’t become popular. So to me it’s always been a little bit of a roll of the dice. That’s the way it goes.”

— Christopher Walken

136. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

137. “There probably aren’t a lot of actors my age who tap dance.”

— Christopher Walken

138. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

139. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

140. “My background is in musical comedy.”

— Christopher Walken

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

— Christopher Walken

142. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

143. “There are certain directors where you know you’re going to be good or you’re not going to be there. There are people where you kind of know that if you miss the mark then it’ll probably not be in the movie and that’s very reassuring.”

— Christopher Walken

144. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

145. “In the theater you rehearse for a minimum of five to six weeks. And then you get to play it. Which means you get to get better. That’s the great thing about the theater.”

— Christopher Walken

146. “I’m a character actor. I have to find work in good movies where I can make something of my role. I’m a very lucky guy to be in that kind of position. It’s like a kid who dreams of becoming a baseball player and then he gets to play for the Yankees...”

— Christopher Walken

147. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

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

— Christopher Walken

149. “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.”

— Christopher Walken

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

— Christopher Walken