“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.”
– Christopher Walken
“I never know when I am being funny, and the other way too. I don’t think you can think about that. I don’t think you can try to be funny. Some people are just funny.”
– Christopher Walken
“There’s something dangerous about what’s funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.”
– Christopher Walken
“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?”
– Christopher Walken
“I always like to watch comics and it’s interesting that you can tell if someone’s funny in 10 seconds.”
– Christopher Walken
“My hair was famous before I was.”
– Christopher Walken
“Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.”
– 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’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.”
– Christopher Walken
“I think early on I knew what I was going to do and it was based a lot on familiarity but it was also because I didn’t have a lot of skills. There was nothing I wanted t be. I didn’t want to be a doctor. I wanted to be in show business.”
– Christopher Walken
“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.”
– Christopher Walken
“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
“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
“I’ll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.”
– Christopher Walken
“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.”
– Christopher Walken
“There probably aren’t a lot of actors my age who tap dance.”
– Christopher Walken