Walken on the Web - The Christopher Walken Fan Site: 'A View to a Kill' Page 5

THE PLAYERS - PEOPLE IN FRONT OF THE CAMERAS (Press Kit Booklet - continued)

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN - Max Zorin

Academy Award-winner Christopher Walken portrays Max Zorin, a mysterious industrialist who becomes James Bond's principal adversary in A View to a Kill. And although he explains that "I hate talking about acting, because I always sound ridiculous," Walken offers his observations about the process he used to create Zorin on the screen.

"The difficulty lies in the fact that I think of myself as rather nice. The trick with playing a villain is to invert yourself -- to turn inside out, and think of all the most awful things that you could be. I had to think about what Zorin had in mind -- a man who would murder millions of people without a moment's hesitation," Walken recalls.

Born and raised in Astoria, a section of Queens, New York, Walken has been performing since the age of ten. At that time, he joined two older brothers to become the third child actor in his family to appear in television programs that were broadcast live from New York in the Fifties.

Encouraged by his father, a baker, and his mother, a lover of the theater, Walken first set his sights on becoming a choreographer. After dancing his way through his adolescence, he won his first off-Broadway job in a revival of the revue, Best Foot Forward, in which he appeared with another young hopeful named Liza Minnelli. He made his Broadway debut at seventeen in Elia Kazan's production of J.B. by Archibald MacLeish.

After a two year stop at Hofstra University to study English Literature, Walken returned to Broadway for the musicals High Spirits and Baker Street. As a member of the West Side Story touring company, he met his wife, Georgianne.

Walken soon began to accumulate prestigious theatrical prizes, including an Obie for Kid Champion, a Theater World Award for The Rose Tattoo, and the Clarence Derwent Award for The Lion in Winter. As the actor explains, "After Lion, I stopped dancing and started talking."

In 1970, Walken made a noteworthy motion picture debut in The Anderson Tapes. Roles in The Happiness Cage, Next Stop, Greenwich Village, Roseland, Santa Fe-1836 [webmistress note: a.k.a. Shoot the Sun Down], The Sentinel and Annie Hall followed. He mixed these early film roles with such stage work as Hamlet with the Seattle Repertory Company, a triumph in Camus' Caligula at the Yale Repertory Company, in Miss Julie and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, for which he won the Joseph Jefferson Award, at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Early in 1977 [sic], he was greeted with rave reviews for his performance in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Irene Worth.

Walken's major motion picture break was the role of Nick in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, starring Robert De Niro. Critical praises and popular acclaim for his performance were capped with a New York Film Critics Award and an Academy Award, both for Best Supporting Actor in 1979.

Later reunited with director Cimino to portray a compassionate gunfighter in Heaven's Gate, Walken continued his film career with such films as Dogs of War, Pennies from Heaven, Brainstorm, and The Dead Zone. Most recently, he has appeared in the pre-Broadway production of Hurlyburly, under the direction of Mike Nichols, at New York's Promenade Theater.

In coming to the role of Max Zorin in A View to a Kill, Walken noted that "my fifteen year-old nephew will be the same age I was when I first saw Dr. No when he sees this film. Being in the movie house, looking down the gun barrel and watching Bond walk into frame -- I remember it all very well. I remember Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love, trying to strangle James Bond on the train...and now, here I am, trying to kill James Bond myself."

When asked how he was chosen for the role, he explains, "Frankly, I don't know how these things come about. I suppose it's a bit like a process of elimination -- who's available and who isn't. You never know if it is because someone saw you, or that your name just came up for discussion with several others. I've been very lucky over the years -- and I am happy I had this chance, even though it took a long time to film.

As director John Glen observes, "I think it's fairly tough to play a Bond villain, because you have to invent the background of the character to make him multi-dimensional. I was able to discuss Zorin's background with Chris, and I think that helped him decide to take the role. He was much more interested in who Zorin was than in what Zorin was going to do -- what made him tick is what Chris responded to.

"Now that the film is finished, I've really no idea what I'll do next," Walken concludes. "But then I never know -- and I really like that. Academy Award or not, that stays constant."

The Walkens reside in Connecticut and New York.

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Photos and content on this web page were reproduced from the MGM/UA Entertainment Co. press kit
for A View to a Kill issued in 1985 to publicize the movie's release.

updated 07/31/2007

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