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Christopher Walken A to Z: The Man, the Movies, the Legend
The Complete Guide To All Things Walken He’s been a dancer, a baker, a lion tamer, an award-winning actor, and a Hollywood legend. But Christopher Walken has never been the subject of a comprehensive biographical reference—until now. Here at last is a complete A-to-Z guide to this one-of-a-kind performer, featuring entries on everything from the Actors Studio (the legendary theatrical workshop where Walken spent eleven years as a janitor) to Zombie Movies (one of Walken’s favorite film genres). Along the way, readers will • Acting secrets and behind-the-scenes trivia from each of Walken’s 100+ films—everything from Annie Hall to Hairspray and beyond. • Recipes and kitchen tips from “Chef Walken”—including a look at his short-lived TV show, Cooking with Chris. • Walken’s music videos for Madonna, Duran Duran, and Fatboy Slim. • The secrets of maintaining his extraordinary hair. • Observations and reminiscences from Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, Woody Allen, Dennis Hopper, and countless others. Plus more bizarre B movies and Saturday Night Live appearances than you can shake a cowbell at! Complete with fascinating trivia and dozens of photographs, Christopher Walken A to Z offers the definitive look at a pop culture phenomenon.
340 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 1, 2008
14 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Robert Schnakenberg
56 books31 followersRobert Schnakenberg has been called "the Howard Zinn of nerd pop culture." He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Old Man Drinks, Christopher Walken A-to-Z, Secret Lives of Great Authors, and the New York Times bestseller The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray. His work has appeared in Penthouse.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
April 20, 2022
Trivia quiz at the pub. As impossible as it seems, there is a Prince of Pallor category. You hustle a side bet with the pub owner because you’ve read this book. You take the idiot to the cleaners. The pub is yours. There will never be quiz nights again.
This is not a biography but a précis of every movie, every character the notoriously private Chris Walken (he prefers Chris) has ever performed. There are also relevant quotes and points of view taken from hundreds of interviews. A great compilation that also includes such biographical notes as:
- Childhood friends and family still call him Ronnie. His birth name is Ronald though he changed it artistically to Christopher at the behest of singer and club owner Monique van Vooren, who thought that Christopher sounded more romantic than Ronald. Later he asked his agent to change his billing to Chris but people don’t like change and one producer even told him “if I paid for the full name, I’m getting the full name”;
- Despite having acted in over 100 films and his Oscar winning performance in The Deer Hunter notwithstanding, Walken earned himself a place in the Cathedral of Pop Culture and Hipness with just two scenes, coincidentally both written by Quentin Tarantino: a) The Sicilian Scene in , where he and Dennis Hopper deliver the dialogue as written, word-by-word (“one of the best scenes I’ve seen in my life and that has nothing to do with what I wrote” – Tarantino); and b) his one-scene cameo as Captain Koons, explaining to a young boy the provenance of a watch bequeathed by his late father in Pulp Fiction. (Additional trivia: James Gandolfini is standing behind Hopper playing Virgil, Vincenzo’s goon);
- He danced with Judy Garland at his teenage friend Liza Minelli’s sweet sixteen birthday party;
- “I don’t usually play dads. I play guys who want to dominate the world with uranium”;
- He does not touch sugar at all, under any circumstances. “There are very few things that get me tense. I can drink a lot of coffee. But if I have half a soda I get wired.”;
- He wrote his debut play (“Him”) about his hero, Elvis Presley, except that in Walken’s twist, Elvis didn’t die. He’s lost a lot of weight, became a transsexual and now he is married to a fat, alcoholic truck driver. But otherwise the King is doing well. The play went on in Broadway, in 1994 but didn’t win a Tony;
- With his brothers Ken and Glenn, he formed a veritable tag team of child actors, in the 1950s, appearing on such shows as Howdy Doody, Philco TV Playhouse and the Colgate Comedy Hour, where Little Ronnie once appeared in a skit next to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. That was the moment he decided to be an actor. The Walken boys cornered that market because when one of them couldn’t show up for a role, another brother would fill in for him;
- He never did therapy because, he said ”It would be like throwing money in the river for me to go into therapy. Why get rid of the things that are your friction? I can’t think of anything more tedious than an actor who’s got himself straightened out”;
- He enrolled in Hofstra University and at the same he signed up briefly with the Reserve Officers Training Corps. But one day, out of the blue, “I was sitting in Psychology class and it was spring. I was looking out the window and I just got up and left. Never had a second thought about it either";
- He watches very little television and confesses to never have watched Seinfeld or South Park but used to be a diehard fan of the original Iron Chef but he’s gone off the Food Network since it started over-relying on ads;
- In 1999 one of his dreams became a reality and he got his own TV cooking show: Cooking With Chris which aired as a segment on the Independent Film Channel’s magazine show Split Screen. Walken shared the spotlight with his friends and cooks Julian Schnabel, painter, director, and John “Cha Cha” Ciarcia, owner of many famous restaurants. The show lasted only one episode;
- He received dance training with legendary tap trainer Danny Daniels and later attended the Professional Children’s School (a prestigious showbiz academy on Manhattan’s Upper West Side). Sal Mineo and Marvin Hamlisch were also pupils at the time. Frankie Lymon was a classmate (Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers had an international #1 hit with “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” when Frankie was only 14);
- His first stage jobs were as a chorus boy in Broadway. His dramatic breakthrough came in 1966, age 23, in a production of The Lion In Winter;
- He worked as a janitor at The New York City Studio, birthplace of method acting. After 15 years of moving furniture around and changing lightbulbs, he auditioned and gained entrance in the late 70s. Some of his teachers include Ellen Burstyn, Lee Strasberg and Eliz Kazan;
- He is fastidiously neat and clean. An avowed net freak. He rarely eats out in restaurants because he does not like other people handling his food. He cooks for himself, even when he is on location shooting a movie. He carries all the ingredients for his meals in his extensive collection of Tupperware dishes, each with its very specific use;
- In 1963, at the age of 20 he quite college top play the character of “Dutch” Miller in a Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward which was also the theatrical debut of his good friend Liza Minelli. His reviews were very positive;
- He confessed years after playing Diane Keaton’s suicidal brother in Annie Hall that he had never read the script of the whole movie, only the two scenes he was in. But he liked the film when he saw it in its entirety. According to Woody Allen, those two scenes were cut out of the finished film and only re-inserted as an afterthought. Walken was so unknown that he is credited as Christopher Wlaken;
- As a trained actor, critics lauded him a few times for his performances in Shakespeare plays (Coriolanus, Measure for Measure). But mainly he was butchered (Prince Achilles, Iago, Hamlet, Romeo, Lysander, Richard II, Othello). He said: “Shakespeare has survived worse actors than me. I’m not going to put a dent in his reputation.”;
- He acknowledges that having worked in the three most accursed big budget bombs of all time is not a sign of distinction but having survived them, sets him apart: Heaven’s Gate, Gigli and The Stepford Wives. He also survived playing the villain in the worst James Bond movie ever, the one that makes Octopussy seem like a masterpiece, A View to a Kill.
And the last one, though I promise you there are tens more:
- During the summer of 1960 Walken worked as an assistant lion tamer for the Tarryl Jacobs Circus in New York City. His job was to pose as chief lion tamer Tarryl Jacobs’ son, complete with boots, jodhpurs, a red jacket, and a whip. Walken’s act consisted of entering the cage of a toothless, elderly lion named Sheba, cracking a whip, and exhorting the enfeebled beast to follow his commands. “She always had this look on her face like, ‘Oh no. We gotta do this again?’ ” Walken recalls. “And I’d take the whip and say, ‘Up, Sheba! Up!’ And she would go ‘Uuuuh!’ And then drop down and the audience would give me a huge hand.”
This is not a biography but a précis of every movie, every character the notoriously private Chris Walken (he prefers Chris) has ever performed. There are also relevant quotes and points of view taken from hundreds of interviews. A great compilation that also includes such biographical notes as:
- Childhood friends and family still call him Ronnie. His birth name is Ronald though he changed it artistically to Christopher at the behest of singer and club owner Monique van Vooren, who thought that Christopher sounded more romantic than Ronald. Later he asked his agent to change his billing to Chris but people don’t like change and one producer even told him “if I paid for the full name, I’m getting the full name”;
- Despite having acted in over 100 films and his Oscar winning performance in The Deer Hunter notwithstanding, Walken earned himself a place in the Cathedral of Pop Culture and Hipness with just two scenes, coincidentally both written by Quentin Tarantino: a) The Sicilian Scene in , where he and Dennis Hopper deliver the dialogue as written, word-by-word (“one of the best scenes I’ve seen in my life and that has nothing to do with what I wrote” – Tarantino); and b) his one-scene cameo as Captain Koons, explaining to a young boy the provenance of a watch bequeathed by his late father in Pulp Fiction. (Additional trivia: James Gandolfini is standing behind Hopper playing Virgil, Vincenzo’s goon);
- He danced with Judy Garland at his teenage friend Liza Minelli’s sweet sixteen birthday party;
- “I don’t usually play dads. I play guys who want to dominate the world with uranium”;
- He does not touch sugar at all, under any circumstances. “There are very few things that get me tense. I can drink a lot of coffee. But if I have half a soda I get wired.”;
- He wrote his debut play (“Him”) about his hero, Elvis Presley, except that in Walken’s twist, Elvis didn’t die. He’s lost a lot of weight, became a transsexual and now he is married to a fat, alcoholic truck driver. But otherwise the King is doing well. The play went on in Broadway, in 1994 but didn’t win a Tony;
- With his brothers Ken and Glenn, he formed a veritable tag team of child actors, in the 1950s, appearing on such shows as Howdy Doody, Philco TV Playhouse and the Colgate Comedy Hour, where Little Ronnie once appeared in a skit next to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. That was the moment he decided to be an actor. The Walken boys cornered that market because when one of them couldn’t show up for a role, another brother would fill in for him;
- He never did therapy because, he said ”It would be like throwing money in the river for me to go into therapy. Why get rid of the things that are your friction? I can’t think of anything more tedious than an actor who’s got himself straightened out”;
- He enrolled in Hofstra University and at the same he signed up briefly with the Reserve Officers Training Corps. But one day, out of the blue, “I was sitting in Psychology class and it was spring. I was looking out the window and I just got up and left. Never had a second thought about it either";
- He watches very little television and confesses to never have watched Seinfeld or South Park but used to be a diehard fan of the original Iron Chef but he’s gone off the Food Network since it started over-relying on ads;
- In 1999 one of his dreams became a reality and he got his own TV cooking show: Cooking With Chris which aired as a segment on the Independent Film Channel’s magazine show Split Screen. Walken shared the spotlight with his friends and cooks Julian Schnabel, painter, director, and John “Cha Cha” Ciarcia, owner of many famous restaurants. The show lasted only one episode;
- He received dance training with legendary tap trainer Danny Daniels and later attended the Professional Children’s School (a prestigious showbiz academy on Manhattan’s Upper West Side). Sal Mineo and Marvin Hamlisch were also pupils at the time. Frankie Lymon was a classmate (Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers had an international #1 hit with “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” when Frankie was only 14);
- His first stage jobs were as a chorus boy in Broadway. His dramatic breakthrough came in 1966, age 23, in a production of The Lion In Winter;
- He worked as a janitor at The New York City Studio, birthplace of method acting. After 15 years of moving furniture around and changing lightbulbs, he auditioned and gained entrance in the late 70s. Some of his teachers include Ellen Burstyn, Lee Strasberg and Eliz Kazan;
- He is fastidiously neat and clean. An avowed net freak. He rarely eats out in restaurants because he does not like other people handling his food. He cooks for himself, even when he is on location shooting a movie. He carries all the ingredients for his meals in his extensive collection of Tupperware dishes, each with its very specific use;
- In 1963, at the age of 20 he quite college top play the character of “Dutch” Miller in a Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward which was also the theatrical debut of his good friend Liza Minelli. His reviews were very positive;
- He confessed years after playing Diane Keaton’s suicidal brother in Annie Hall that he had never read the script of the whole movie, only the two scenes he was in. But he liked the film when he saw it in its entirety. According to Woody Allen, those two scenes were cut out of the finished film and only re-inserted as an afterthought. Walken was so unknown that he is credited as Christopher Wlaken;
- As a trained actor, critics lauded him a few times for his performances in Shakespeare plays (Coriolanus, Measure for Measure). But mainly he was butchered (Prince Achilles, Iago, Hamlet, Romeo, Lysander, Richard II, Othello). He said: “Shakespeare has survived worse actors than me. I’m not going to put a dent in his reputation.”;
- He acknowledges that having worked in the three most accursed big budget bombs of all time is not a sign of distinction but having survived them, sets him apart: Heaven’s Gate, Gigli and The Stepford Wives. He also survived playing the villain in the worst James Bond movie ever, the one that makes Octopussy seem like a masterpiece, A View to a Kill.
And the last one, though I promise you there are tens more:
- During the summer of 1960 Walken worked as an assistant lion tamer for the Tarryl Jacobs Circus in New York City. His job was to pose as chief lion tamer Tarryl Jacobs’ son, complete with boots, jodhpurs, a red jacket, and a whip. Walken’s act consisted of entering the cage of a toothless, elderly lion named Sheba, cracking a whip, and exhorting the enfeebled beast to follow his commands. “She always had this look on her face like, ‘Oh no. We gotta do this again?’ ” Walken recalls. “And I’d take the whip and say, ‘Up, Sheba! Up!’ And she would go ‘Uuuuh!’ And then drop down and the audience would give me a huge hand.”
August 9, 2019
Everything you ever wanted or needed to know about actor Christopher Walken from his movies to his interests to his opinions arranged in handy alphabetical points so you can read it right through or dip into it at random. A great guide to a really interesting performer. - BH.
June 14, 2010
Setup like an encyclopedia, a key word or phrase is used as an entry in this collection of facts about Walken. Names, movies & places lead into various trivia about him. It was interesting, but certainly not something I read for any length of time. While waiting for a commercial break or dinner to get ready, it was fun for short intervals, though. Movies are rated using a 5 star system & I found that I pretty much agreed with them. It turned me on to a couple of movies of his that I hadn't seen or watched in years.
February 19, 2020
It's "The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray", but for Christopher Walken: Stories, people, movies, things related to the Christopher Walken, in alphabetical order.
Is it good? Well, that's the point I can really say. One thing that annoys me is that most of what is said in the book comes from other sources; Walken is never interviewed, but all the information is taken from other books and interviews and whatnot, but nothing directly said for the book. Also, because I'm not a super-fan, I can't validate if things are interesting or not, so it ends up being a compilation of information about an (recluse, private) actor.
It may be good if you just found out about Christopher Walken and want some opinion about his movies, and what to watch next and such and get some information in the more boring scenes.
Is it good? Well, that's the point I can really say. One thing that annoys me is that most of what is said in the book comes from other sources; Walken is never interviewed, but all the information is taken from other books and interviews and whatnot, but nothing directly said for the book. Also, because I'm not a super-fan, I can't validate if things are interesting or not, so it ends up being a compilation of information about an (recluse, private) actor.
It may be good if you just found out about Christopher Walken and want some opinion about his movies, and what to watch next and such and get some information in the more boring scenes.
November 6, 2025
I liked the book and it is as advertised (all the Walken you need, basically). Films, family, stage work, view points ... there's a lot of it and one is going to know all about it. It's a good book to read in parts, as one can easily pick it up and put it down, but I wouldn't say it's a page turner. Fun idea, though, and if there were other books like this on Robert DeNiro or Cate Blanchett I bet they'd be interesting reads as well.
June 5, 2017
Interesting format: Topics (i.e. "Hair", "Driving") and movies listed alphabetically and discussed. More insight into Christopher Walken's can be gotten from his own quotes on imdb.com. Book is really author's reviews of Mr. Walken's acting vis a vis the movies themselves.
April 25, 2025
Genuinely delightful guide. Very opinionated about movies, and which are worth watching — which I like. Stuffed with fun anecdotes and extras, like an appendix of Walken quotes turned into zen poetry.
May 15, 2017
I enjoyed the book until right around S to T. Then it got boring. I guess no one's life should be A to Z'd. It needed more pictures and cowbell!
April 30, 2018
Entertaining. I now know another useless things about Walken I can talk about with people who will not listen to me or be interested as much as I am. Though, amazing.
May 31, 2018
It was fun.
November 21, 2019
Walken
To judge this book is a flawed exercise. It is a series of facts about Christopher Walken and should be regarded as a sacred text beyond judgment
To judge this book is a flawed exercise. It is a series of facts about Christopher Walken and should be regarded as a sacred text beyond judgment
July 16, 2023
This is an odd collection of weird trivia. I did learn a few interesting things but the format was just awkward.
March 6, 2019
You can read it for the juicy behavioural dissection of the man, but you will likely want to suspend reaching the last chapter as long as possible. One only hopes it could be serialised. Hilarious facts and observations about Walken, plus numerous details provided by former costars and his own wife. Walken's phobias (jungles, dirt) and love of cats, not to mention his own narcissistic comments are not without humor and his own unique charm. Every film is categorically explored and either recommended or dismissed, while the many failures are given a fair shake. If Fred Astaire, himself, can call a Walken movie a "piece of sh+t" while still admire his dancing, it shows the actor is worthy of his own dictionary. Walken's accounts of "The Deerhunter", working with Woody Allen and meeting Montgomery Clift are standout, as well as his childhood acting experiences and getting mugged in NYC.
March 4, 2013
I don't think there's a good biography out there on Walken, not one he's involved with anyway. So this is just a list of A to Z Walken things that gives you a pretty hazy picture of the guy (though I doubt clarity will ever ever happen). It gave me a lot of movies to add to my "to watch" list. One quote in the end by Julian Schnabel is worth noting, and I truely hope someone says this about me one day: "He's a very private person who lives in his head. When that is interupted, it interferes with his sanity."
September 29, 2008
While I’d rather just read a straight-up biography or collection of interviews, this was an ok little collection of Walken stuff. I haven’t paid much attention to anything cinema since the late 90s, so I was surprised that CW has continued to make movies at such a pace.
The gold binding is a nice touch, although the last few pages, where the author tries to make Walkenisms into poetry, should have been negated at the Bad Idea point, let alone published.
The gold binding is a nice touch, although the last few pages, where the author tries to make Walkenisms into poetry, should have been negated at the Bad Idea point, let alone published.
June 27, 2011
This book was amazing in that I learned a whole bunch of cool things about Walken that I didn't know. But I found that reading the book cover to cover was disorienting because of the a to z setup of the book. So I kept getting lost chronologically and had a hard time figuring out what things in his life came in what order. It would be better to use a general reference to all things Walken than as a biography to read as a narrative.
January 30, 2009
Made me go back and rewatch pretty much every movie Walken's ever been in. Which, if you weren't aware, is pretty much every movie made in the last twenty years. Jeez, that guy will do anything.
Great, fun little book that compiles all sorts of facts/trivia/random thoughts/weirdness from the genius Walken.
Great, fun little book that compiles all sorts of facts/trivia/random thoughts/weirdness from the genius Walken.
Want to read
November 12, 2008But why does Walken get his own encyclopedia while Dan Duryea A to Z and Thelma Ritter A to Z remain unwritten?
January 3, 2010
I heart Christopher Walken with many hearts. He is a strange man, and this book does nothing to disprove that. But now I have many strange facts to go with the strange man. Did you know Christopher Walken was born in Astoria NY? I think that means we have a little bond between us.
March 12, 2022
"The first day of shooting I walk up to Christopher Walken and I said, 'Should I call you Mr Walken or should I call you Chris?' He looks at me and goes, 'Call me Flash.'" --Michael Rosenbaum (co-star in Poolhall Junkies)
(And yeah, I have no idea why they've got him looking like Eraserhead.)
(And yeah, I have no idea why they've got him looking like Eraserhead.)
January 30, 2009
Coleslaw for everyone! Walken haiku! Great book to leave lying around and pick up for reference, or just a funny couple of pages. It helps to read all the quotes out loud in Walken-voice.
February 25, 2011
"I have a fever, and the only cure, is more cowbell."
November 20, 2013
Another Schnakenberg cut and paste of internet-sourced factoids.
October 29, 2014
Good, general book of his various movies and a bit of his history, but not a bio and too "gossipy" for my taste
January 27, 2025
Everything you wanted to know about Chris Walken but were afraid to ask and much more.
November 27, 2014
Just proved to me that Christopher Walken is one strange dude. :)
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews