“That guy was sick”: the depraved character Christopher Walken was glad to see the back of
It’s intended as a compliment, but Christopher Walken just has one of those faces that make him perfectly suited to playing sinister characters. This is an assessment that casting directors all over Hollywood have clearly been in full agreement with for decades.
Never mind the fact he loves few things more than a classic musical and has been dancing at any opportunity since his earliest days, it was inevitable that his razor-sharp cheekbones, wild eyes, and trademark simmering intensity were going to be constant sources of inspiration for filmmakers seeking the perfect nefarious performer.
Not that he ever came close to being typecast when Walken was simply too good, too versatile, and too well-rounded as an actor to be stuffed into a box, but he’s often delivered his best work when tasked with presenting a malevolent aura. The star prefers to leave his work at the door, but on one occasion, he was so troubled by his own character that he struggled to shake it.
By his own admission, though, Walken has his limits. He’s adamant that he’s “always refused to do something that has offended me” after being “offered potential roles that are totally vulgar,” but he was so convinced by the strength of the material that he signed up for Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers anyway.
The Taxi Driver writer’s 1990 adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel stars Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett as Colin Mayhew and Mary Kenway, a married couple on holiday in Venice who encounter Walker’s mysterious and enigmatic Robert while out seeing the sights.
The pair soon get a great deal more than they could have ever possibly bargained for after finding themselves powerless to resist being drawn into a twisted game of stalking, psychosexual manipulation, sadomasochism, voyeurism, murder, and depravity that they don’t even realise they’ve become a part of until it’s too late.
It’s a truly skin-crawling performance on Walken’s part, with Robert, a master manipulator who derives great pleasure from interjecting himself into Mary and Colin’s life before tearing it apart from the inside out. “It was the only time I played someone who affected me,” he admitted to The Independent. “That guy was sick. I was very happy when I finished it.”
For somebody with such a lengthy career – never mind one to have played their fair share of bastards along the way – it speaks volumes of the depths Walken was forced to mine in order to embody such a reprehensible antagonist that he was desperate to shed the character the second The Comfort of Strangers wrapped.
Not that it dissuaded him from ever playing a villain again, but he’s never quite gone to such extremes as he did when he brought the twisted aristocrat to life on-screen.
