Christopher Walken feels blessed to have had the chance to sing and dance onscreen as many times as he has.
It’s not a huge number of films — four, by his count, running from “Pennies from Heaven” (1981) to “Hairspray” (2007) — but they still stand as proof that Walken once thought he might, in fact, be a song-and-dance man rather than an actor. He initially trained as a dancer in musical theater.
“I’m lucky to have made four, when they’re not making them anymore; four is a lot for this day and age,” Walken says, a note of marvel in his voice.“If I’d been an adult in the 1930s and 1940s, I might have been in a lot of musicals.”
At age 69, Walken has done just about everything else in a career that stretches back to his role as a cast regular on a 1953 TV series “The Wonderful John Acton,” as a 10-year-old. The Oscar winner has amassed a list of more than 100 film and TV credits, two more of which reach screens this fall.
In Martin McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths,” opening Oct. 12, Walken actually plays one of the more normal characters: an aging gentleman named Hans who happens to be a dognapper.
Hans and Billy (Sam Rockwell) kidnap dogs, then collect the reward when the owners post flyers in the neighborhood. But they, along with a sozzled screenwriter played by Colin Farrell, find themselves being pursued by a vicious gangster (Woody Harrelson), whose Shih-Tzu they’ve snatched.
The film is a violently witty meditation by playwright-filmmaker McDonagh (“In Bruges,” Broadway’s Beauty Queen of Lenane”) on, among other things, loyalty, friendship, action-movie conventions and the ways a story can be told.
“His intelligence is palpable — Martin’s, I mean,” Walken says of McDonagh. “He writes wonderful words — it’s all just right in front of you. And, as a director, he’s wonderful. He was always clear on what he wanted; he was very prepared, very practical in the way he worked.”
Meanwhile, in “A Late Quartet,” opening Nov. 2, Walken plays an aging cellist who throws the future of a renowned string quartet into question when he announces plans to retire.
“ ‘Late Quartet’ is a very interesting part for me,” Walken notes. “It’s an unexpected part. I’m kind of the dad of the group.
“For a long time, I looked younger than I was. Now, I’m starting to get parts for fathers, for uncles, for grandfathers. That’s interesting. That’s another kind of thing altogether, to get to play a human being.
“Maybe I can get away from a lot of the stuff I’ve done, a lot of these villains and strange people.”
Known as a character actor — with a reputation for being a bit of a character himself — Walken would surprise people who met him in person, according to his co-star, Rockwell.
“The misconception is that Chris is ‘out there,’ that he’s a space cadet or weird in some way,” says Rockwell, who worked with Walken previously in McDonagh’s Broadway play, “A Behanding in Spokane.”
“He’s actually quite lucid; Chris doesn’t miss a trick. He’s very socially available, very witty and affable. He’s surprisingly accessible — and a lot of guys who have been around as long as he has really aren’t.”
Source : nydailynews[dot]com
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