The secret behind Christopher Walken’s majestic head of hair: “It keeps your scalp loose”
When it comes to iconic Hollywood barnets, Christopher Walken’s trademark gravity-defying style has a very legitimate claim to being the best the business has ever seen.
Think about it for a minute: how many of Walken’s best roles have seen him adopt a wild hairstyle seemingly devised by a maniac on day release? Max Zorin’s platinum blonde ‘do in A View to a Kill suited his icy nature, while Max Schreck’s bouffant shock of silver hair in Batman Returns would be enough to stop anyone in their tracks. How about King of New York, where it looks like he’s just stuck his fingers in an electrical socket, or True Romance, where his unruly mane is dyed jet black and slicked back with enough product that it could probably act as a helmet?
Brilliantly, Walken has always been fully aware that he has a lot of hair, but better yet, that it also looks good styled in crazy ways. In fact, he even counts it as one of the main weapons in his acting arsenal, because it instantly draws the eye. “I’ve thought about my hair as an attention-getting device,” Walken revealed in 2012, “Somebody once told me that the best actors have a big head. I never had a big head, so I thought I’d make my head look bigger.”
Is this true? Did Walken purposely extend the size of his dome with ridiculous hairstyles because he heard large craniums equate to better acting? Maybe. Maybe not. But with him, anything sounds plausible, and that’s why he’s a kooky delight.
What’s the secret to Walken’s long locks, though, which have remained remarkably lustrous well into his 80s? Hell, even his hairline has shown little sign of receding. Plenty of Hollywood A-listers half his age would kill to have kept hold of their hair like him, and yet there he is, mocking them by flaunting it for everyone to see in Dune: Part Two and Severance. Surely, they cry, the man must have had some help over the years to maintain his mane, whether through surgical means or even a really excellent wig guy?
According to Rapunzel himself, though, the key to retaining his hair is simple: he still follows the advice given to him decades ago by his pal Anthony Perkins. “He said to me, ‘That’s some head of hair you got there’,” Walken told CBS News with a customarily dead-eyed Walkenesque expression, “’You know what you do? You just grab it every morning for five minutes, and you pull it forward. Just yank it as hard as you can’.”
Once again, this bizarre revelation begs the question: Is Walken being serious? Does the notoriously hard-to-read actor really think that pulling on his hair every day has kept it from leaving him high and dry over the years? Well, if he doesn’t believe it, he’s very good at sticking to the bit. “Every morning,” he insisted, “I just yank on it! It keeps your scalp loose”. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added, “I got a lot of hair for somebody who’s, you know, 87 years old!”
So, if you want hair like Walken, just pull with all your might, as the man who played Norman Bates suggested all those years ago. Of course, if you want a second opinion, you could consult our old friend medical science, but unfortunately, there are differing schools of thought on whether pulling on your hair will achieve the desired results.
You see, tugging lightly, like, say, during a scalp massage, has been proven to improve blood circulation and even stimulate the growth of hair follicles. However, “yanking” on your hair, as Walken claimed he’s been doing for decades, is more likely to cause hair loss and maybe even lead to alopecia. Lousy science!
