What Happened to Christopher Walken?

In this episode of What Happened to this Celebrity, we look at the life and career of the great Christopher Walken.

Christopher Walken is one of a kind. No one else in Hollywood is quite like him, and for sure, no one else sounds like him. He’s a character actor who, in his later years, became so famous that, in some ways, he became a parody of himself even if he’s undoubtedly laughed his way to the bank. Indeed, despite being almost eighty, Walken is as busy as ever and shows no signs of slowing down.

Here’s the thing, though – when people do Walken impersonations or delight in his eccentricities, they tend to lose sight of the fact that in many of his roles, Walken is a pretty brilliant and versatile actor. If you know him most for his appearances on Saturday Night Live or in comedies, you owe it to yourself to learn more about the scope of his career, and that’s where this episode of What Happened to this Celebrity comes in!

We dig into Walken’s legendary filmography in this episode, which is written (with Mathew Plale), narrated and produced by Taylor James Johnson, and edited by Kier Gomes. From his Oscar win for Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, through some of his overlooked eighties work, such as the amazing At Close Range (opposite Sean Penn), and all the classics, including The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, King of New York and more, we pay tribute to a guy who’s one of a kind. After all, how many actors can go from playing a nightmarish horror movie villain in The Prophecy to making people laugh on SNL to cutting a rug in a Fatboy Slim video without breaking a sweat? This is the magic of Christopher Walken.

And – just for fun – here are my five favorite Christopher Walken movies. Let us know yours in the comments.

1. The Deer Hunter
2. The Dead Zone
3. King of New York
4. At Close Range
5. Suicide Kings

*Special mention to True Romance and Pulp Fiction, but he only has one (great) scene in both.