The co-star Leonardo DiCaprio thought was out of everybody’s league: “He’s unlike anyone else”
You’d think that it would take a lot for the greatest actors of all time to be starstruck; for example, we can’t imagine Robert De Niro was taken aback by Zac Efron on the set of Dirty Grandpa, nor that Leonardo DiCaprio would be stunned into silence at the appearance of Ariana Grande in Don’t Look Up. Yet, the latter did have one supporting performance that he was utterly “blown away” by.
Understandably, the staggering moment of clarity came pretty early in the actor’s career, shortly after he’d risen to fame throughout the 1990s. Starring beside the aforementioned Martin Scorsese collaborator Robert De Niro in 1993’s This Boy’s Life, DiCaprio’s career sparked into action, collaborating with the esteemed filmmakers Baz Luhrmann and James Cameron before the decade drew to a close.
After such a successful decade, DiCaprio entered the new millennium as one of Hollywood’s most promising leading men, taking a lead role in the Danny Boyle drama The Beach before working with Scorsese for the very first time in 2002’s Gangs of New York. Jumping from one established filmmaker to another, DiCaprio continued his success with an appearance in the Steven Spielberg crime caper Catch Me if You Can in 2002.
Forget the likes of Cameron Diaz, Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, it was in the Spielberg movie that DiCaprio would be starstruck by one influential supporting performance. Playing a young, skilled forger who leads the FBI on a pursuit across the world as he takes up a number of different identities, DiCaprio leads the film alongside the likes of Tom Hanks, Martin Sheen and Christopher Walken.
Of the trio of iconic co-stars, it was Walken who made the biggest impression on the young star, with DiCaprio telling IGN that he was perfect for the role of the protagonist’s father, Frank Abagnale.
“He’s unlike anyone else, and I thought he was so well suited for this character,” DiCaprio stated, “I think it was a unique character for him to play. He was very much like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman or something like that. [Frank Abagnale, Sr] was a broken man. His spirit was broken…I’m so glad that [Christopher Walken] did this movie”.
There are a lot of things actors aspire to be. They might like to feel suave, or perhaps chameloenic in their ability to slide into different roles. They might like to be thought of as power or intelligent or any other adjective you can think of. But perhaps the greatest asset for any actor is to be unique, and Christopher Walken is certainly that.
A trained dancer, Walken only pursued acting as dancing parts began to give him more and more lines. His idiosyncratic cadence has meant that, whatever role he is in, Walken is able to deliver a truly memorable performance. And if number one on an actor’s wishlist is o be unique, then shortly after that must be the talent of being remembered.
Enamoured by his approach to acting, DiCaprio noted several high points of working with the Hollywood star but picked out just one that was his all-time favourite.
“I actually had a scene with him where it was one of my most memorable experiences making films,” DiCaprio brightly exclaimed, “The scene where I come back to see my dad and he’s talking about my mom and all of the sudden… he like kind of hyperventilates…And I was sitting there across the table from him while he was doing that, and it was completely unexpected. It wasn’t in the script. It was his own…completely his own doing”.
Unsure whether the excellent slice of acting was an improvised riff or not, DiCaprio was close to yelling “cut” but let Walken do his thing, explaining: “It’s a testament how he is as an actor. I was blown away. It is [one of those times] where you have a cinematic experience like that, where you are so forced into the world where you think that it’s actual reality”.
