There are rising stars in Hollywood and celebrities who come and go, but no one can argue with this statement: Christopher Walken is a legend in the entertainment industry! He has worked steadily for decades and has an impressive portfolio of work, but even someone of his caliber doesn’t call all the shots and make demands about which projects he takes.
Walken gave an honest interview to People, in which he admitted to taking jobs offered to him and never really being sure about the future. “I’m doing what I’ve always done,” he said. “People think that actors make a lot of choices. I’m not sure that they do. I certainly don’t. I take the job, the next best thing, because that’s what I do. I go to work.”
Walken is 82 and continuing to act, with some of his most recent acting credits including Severance (recently renewed for Season 3), The Outlaws, and Dune: Part Two. Do fans want to see more of him? You bet, but the Catch Me If You Can star admits he doesn’t know what his future holds. “So what comes next? I have no idea, but I never have. Generally, when I finish a job, I don’t know what’s coming next,” he said. Instead, he claims to be “looking forward” to “staying alive.”
Christopher Walken’s Acting Career Has Been Impressive, Even if It Started by Accident
This is not Walken’s first discussion about his work; hopefully, it won’t be his last. Still, it provides a fascinating glimpse into how he approaches his career, which he has previously confessed to starting by “accident.”
“I guess you can blame Woody Allen. He must have seen something in me,” he told The Guardian in 2021. Walken has proven himself to be a diverse actor, with roles that have earned him critical praise, but his recent comments echo earlier statements he made in this interview. “Very few actors choose their roles. We take them as they come,” he said. “Early on, I got a thing going playing people who were, let’s say, off-centre – gangsters, suicides, and all sorts of things. The best lesson I learned in acting was to do as little as possible.”
If he could have chosen every part he played, would his career look different from now? That would be impossible to know for sure, but with an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for the 2003 film, Catch Me If You Can, and an Oscar win in 1979 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Deer Hunter, we know he has done something right.
