When Christopher Walken refused to speak to his co-stars: “We never said a word”
As I’ve grown older, I’ve become somewhat anaesthetised to the idea of stardom. Life has simply taught me that famous people are literally just people, and so sharing the same airspace with them shouldn’t warrant any sort of hysteria. But then, I watched Christopher Walken in The Outlaws and quickly realised that my hardened exterior had a slight chip.
Because during that show, I watched the Hollywood legend film a scene in Bristol’s Lockleaze suburb, a gritty area of the city where my rat-infested third-year University house resided. Suddenly, the idea that I was breathing the same musky air as Walken ignited a childlike fire in me that made me marvel at the stardom of his career.
After all, I would say Walken warrants that slight relapse in my resolve. Because he isn’t just any television star, he is perhaps the most beloved and impactful actor of the last 50 years. I’ve watched him play pivotal roles throughout several stages of my life, be it The Deer Hunter with my father at Christmas, or the trashy Wedding Crashers with my said rat-plagued housemates.
He defined the idea of untouched stardom until he came to Lockleaze and existed within touching distance. But I wondered, what would it have been like, had we bumped into one another in that cold, grey neighbourhood? Well, I would never truly know, but his Wedding Crashers co-star Keir O’Donnell gave me some insight.
While filming the 2005 comedy, he softened any reputation of A-list intimidation by becoming a deeply human and unglamorous co-star to the young actor. He remembered, “At a certain point, he really treated me as his own son.”
Adding, “When we were shooting out in Maryland, I started to get a little bit of time off. I got a knock on my trailer door, and it was Christopher Walken’s driver. The trailers were a little far from set, so they would drive him to set. The driver was like, ‘Mr Walken is going to set right now, and he wants to know if you wanted a ride’. I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m shooting right now.’ But he said, ‘Oh no, he requested you. Can you go with him?'”
He continued, “I go out, and there’s Walken sitting in the back of this Lincoln Town Car. I get in the back, and he just looks at me and smiles. He doesn’t say anything. We just drive up to set, and they drop us off. After that, it started happening every day. He’d get called to the set, I’d get a knock on the door from his driver, and he’d say, ‘Mr Walken is going to the set, and he wants to know if you wanted a ride.’ I still don’t know to this day if he was just messing with me, or if he liked the company, even though we never said a word to each other. Either way, it was a special moment for me.”
Adding, “I definitely do know this: The more that you hang around with Walken, the more you realise that even if you did get an answer, you’ll constantly question if that was reality or not. That’s the magic that is Christopher Walken.”
That well of humanity is arguably what has made Walken one of the most beloved actors in history. His acute ability to understand people’s emotions certainly goes hand in hand with the profundity of his performances, but nevertheless, we live in a society where stardom is treated with such reverence that it is simply unfathomable to imagine someone like Walken being quite that kind. Maybe it was the humble streets of Lockleaze, slowly rubbing off on him.
