Christopher Walken is an American actor, who has appeared in more than 100 films and television programs. He was nominated for the same award and won BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Awards for Catch Me If You Can. His films have grossed more than $1 billion in the United States alone. These Christopher Walken quotes will motivate you.
Best Christopher Walken Quotes
- “I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I’m better off not socializing. I make a better impression if I’m not around.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “We have no way of knowing what lays ahead for us in the future. All we can do is use the information at hand to make the best decision possible.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
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“At its best, life is completely unpredictable.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I try not to worry about things I can’t do anything about.” ~ Christopher Walken
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“My favorite characters are the ones that are the most successful movies.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “There’s something dangerous about what’s funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I tend to play mostly villains and twisted people. Unsavory guys. I think it’s my face, the way I look.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I make up different names for my cat all the time – Flapjack, Bowtie, Popcorn. But he’s really, “Hey you, cat.”” ~ Christopher Walken
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“My hair was famous before I was.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
- “No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you’re doing.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I think all men when they get older, they look at the mirror and they probably see their father a little bit.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
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“Even in the limo, I buckle my seatbelt. I got that seatbelt on before the car moves.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I’ve done a lot of things I cringe when I watch and some things I’m proud of… Movies are strange. You have to be a little bit lucky with them.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
- “It’s very bizarre though when you get hired and then the director will say, “I know how this goes.” And you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, I thought that I was doing this” but basically what they really want, especially if they wrote it, is they want you to do it as they imagined it. It’s virtually impossible.” ~ Christopher Walken
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“I became very critical of zoos and circuses and keeping animals in captivity. I wish it was against the law.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I have a friend of mine who does me on his answering machine, and when I call him, I answer. It’s pretty strange.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
- “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
- “Growing up in New York is like living in a horror museum because there are so many strange people walking the streets and riding the subways. You learn to develop a tough front if you live here, just in case you get into any kind of trouble and you need to talk your way out of it.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “It’s true that I don’t think I’d be a good director. If I were a director, I’d try to hire the best people I could and then leave them alone. I don’t know much about cameras or lighting, so I’d make sure that I had a really good cameraman who understood lenses and lighting, and I say to him, “This is the scene we have to shoot and this is what I think it should be, you go do it.” Same with actors. But really, very good directors who know everything do basically the same thing. They hire you and then they leave you alone.” ~ Christopher Walken
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“As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “Bear suits are funny – and bears as well.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “Acting is a bit like being an athlete. You spend all your time getting ready to do something for two minutes. All the things that made my career in the movies happen took two or three minutes, which is the time that it takes for a ‘take’. In that time, something happens. That’s what people know you for, just like someone running the hundred metres.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
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“Because if I don’t know my lines, I really don’t know what I’m doing.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I’m scared of everything. I think it’s only sensible to be that way.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
- “In my personal life I’m very conservative. I’ve been married to the same person for nearly 50 years, I’m scrupulous about paying bills, avoiding debt. I’m very careful. But as an actor I’m pretty reckless. I’ve done a lot of things that, when I see myself on screen, I have to shut my eyes. And I’ve made a whole bunch of movies that nobody sees, including me.” ~ Christopher Walken
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“I look for good possibilities in movies. I don’t look for perfection.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
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“Guns make me very nervous. They’re dangerous. I’m more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
- “I remember from when I use to be a dancer, there is an expression among dancers, I had a T-shirt that said: SHUT UP AND DANCE.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
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“Onstage I have a natural chutzpa that audiences like. I’m out there.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
- “An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it’s a play or movie.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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
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“Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “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.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I do like to work. Some jobs are better than others. That’s the thing: You really don’t know. I’ve enjoyed making movies for lots of different reasons. Sometimes, it was the other people. Sometimes, it was the fact that I was really good in it. Sometimes, it was the location. Sometimes, it was the paycheck.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I’ve been very fortunate because I’ve been involved in things that very often lead to obscurity. I was in some pictures that were not successful whatsoever. I think people admire persistence. People notice that I’m still there.” ~ Christopher Walken
- “I don’t need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.” ~ Christopher Walken
