Picking our favorite scenes from Christopher Walken's fifty years of professional acting was an incredibly daunting task, made even more difficult by the master actor's astonishing range. Do we go heavy on the early-period Walken, all wired with intensity, as seen in The Deer Hunter and The Dogs of War, or do we fill the list up with more recent roles, where he's grown into his sly weirdness and plays off it with knowing self-awareness, like Wedding Crashers and Balls of Fury? Or do we just concentrate on his amazing TV appearances, interviews, and miscellaneous weirdness? Well, we chose to have our cake and eat it too - what follows are eleven awesome moments from all over the map, from the beginning of his career to the present day, with both Oscar-winning roles and bizarre obscurities equally represented. And you thought it couldn't be done.
Top 11 Christopher Walken Moments
Top 11 Moments of the actor Christopher Walken.
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By K. Thor Jensen December 12, 2007 |
Walken takes off in "Weapon of Choice"
Interestingly enough, the role Christopher Walken may be most famous for isn't in any of his movies. Instead, it's his performance in the Fatboy Slim video "Weapon of Choice," directed by Spike Jonze. In the clip, Walken stars as a beaten-down businessman in an empty hotel lobby. When he hears the strains of the tune wafting from a nearby boom box, he embarks upon a crazy confetti explosion of uncontrollable fancy dancing that starts out great and quickly escalates to unbelievably great. As Walken launches into a hands-free cartwheel down the hallway, you quickly begin to realize that something more is at play here than his four years of dance study at the Professional Children's School. And then he launches himself off of a balcony and begins flying around the mezzanine, and we're in pure magicland. The video won six MTV awards and VH1 voted it the greatest music video of all time. We're inclined to agree.
