He isn’t as comfortable with this new day and age, where everything can be viewed online ad nauseam-part of the reason, perhaps, that Walken ascended from beloved actor to pop-culture icon after his viral appearances on Saturday Night Live and Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” music video. And that certainly doesn’t exist anymore.” They used a lot of kids, and I was there for that. In New York, there were 90 live shows from New York every week. At that time in television, everything was kind of one-off. There were no videotapes, so if you didn’t see Uncle Miltie on a particular night, you missed it. “In a whole neighborhood of people, you had one TV set, and everybody would go to the guy’s house to watch his TV. “The interesting thing about my career is that I was part of something that doesn’t exist anymore,” answers Walken, flashing back to his days as a kid actor on variety shows-“the early days of television after the second World War, when television was getting born, in the late ’40s and early ’50s.” Those were the days. I note the many iterations of Hollywood and entertainment he has seen-the Studio 54 days, the coked-up ’80s, the big-budget ’90s-and ask what has been his favorite to experience. You’re out there hustling.” He doesn’t regret the fact that he missed out on a “normal childhood” because “I don’t know what it would’ve been like. When you’re a child performer, you’re competitive. It gave me experience to do what I do as an adult. “It was an unusual education, and I’m very glad I had it. “It was very different from most childhoods,” says Walken. “That movie got beat up an awful lot, but I don’t really know why,” says Walken. Even Gigli-the film in which he delivered a nonsensical monologue about a Marie Callender’s pie à la mode. “I wish everything was terrific, but that’s not the way it works.” He maintains loyalty to his films, even the flops. You just take a chance, see what happens,” says Walken. “Marlon Brando said in some interview that being an actor was a role of the dice. Walken doesn’t kick himself when a project’s a bust. All through my career, sometimes things work out well and sometimes they don’t. So the choices that I make have more to do with the opportunities that are in front of me. I more or less just do what comes next,” says the actor. When I ask Walken about his trajectory, he balks-talking about his career as if he’s still the Queens day-player he was when he started in show business. But ultimately, he’s just another petty thief like everybody else." “We’re in this provincial world, and then in comes this charismatic figure like he’s just fallen to earth. “I like the idea of this man who fell to earth, this kind of almost alien presence in Bristol,” Merchant told press last year. The series was partly inspired by Merchant’s parents’ work in community service Walken seemed like a natural fit for the most far-out of these parts, given the actor’s inherent otherworldliness. Stephen Merchant was so keen to cast Walken that the British director and producer tracked down the actor at his Connecticut home to pitch him on the role. I don’t have a computer, but I of course used computers. “If you need to know the time you ask somebody, because everybody’s got one. “Having a computer for me is a little bit like having a wristwatch,” explains Walken. The kid must have been terrified, but Walken remembers it as “marvelous.” During a recent phone call, Walken recalls a long-ago trip to the Sicilian countryside where a child of about six years old pointed at him and called him “Max”-as in Max Shreck, the Batman Returns villain who throws Michelle Pfeiffer’s Cat Woman through a sky rise window. Even in other countries, though, he’s associated with his movie bad guys. Maybe it’s his cold blue eyes or the threatening whisper, or the fact that he doesn’t seem like a hugger. Walken has spent decades playing sociopaths, murderers, mobsters, and villains that give great monologues. Walken’s playing a longtime con-“a lying, thieving, selfish old bastard who can never be trusted,” his daughter warns her children-who needs a permanent residence where he can be placed under house arrest. The reunion isn’t motivated by love or affection, but criminal punishment. When we meet Christopher Walken’s character on Prime Video’s endearing new British comedy series The Outlaws, he is at the front door-greeting his daughter ( Dolly Wells), teenage grandson ( Guillermo Bedward), and granddaughter ( Isla Gie), after an eight-year estrangement.
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