Some actors are famous for their looks. Others are renowned for their private lives and off-screen antics. And a select few are well-known for something very different: their voices.
The likes of Alan Rickman and Patrick Stewart are a couple of examples, with Christopher Walken also always appearing in lists of the most iconic and unique Hollywood voices of all.
Having appeared in over a hundred different movies and TV shows, Walken is a beloved and highly successful actor who can look back on a truly stellar career. He started acting as a child, appearing as an extra every now and then, and even as a narrator on the 1953 TV show, The Wonderful John Acton.
He got his first starring role in The Happiness Cage (1972), but it was arguably in Woody Allen’s 1977 film, Annie Hall, that he really started to become well-known to audiences.
In that classic movie, he played Duane Hall, the homicidal brother of the eponymous Annie Hall, and demonstrated his talent for playing slightly unhinged personalities.
Since then, he’s gone on to appear in countless classic movies across a real spectrum of genres, with some of his finest and most memorable performances coming in movies like The Deer Hunter, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Seven Psychopaths, The Dead Zone, and Catch Me If You Can.
Walken’s innate acting ability, piercing blue eyes, and unique hairstyle, which he decided to adopt in honor of Elvis Presley.
As revealed in Christopher Walken A to Z: The Man – The Movies – The Legend written by Robert Schnakenberg, have helped him to make an instantly recognizable and iconic figure in the world of TV and film.
But it’s arguably his voice that has come to define Walken best of all. Indeed, Walken famously voiced a key character in 1998’s Antz and also demonstrated his voice acting ability in The Jungle Book (2016). He’s also taken to performing spoken-word pieces from time to time, reciting stories, songs, and poems.
Many people claim that listening to Walken’s voice is a soothing experience, so the thought of hearing the great man reading you a bedtime story might sound rather special.
Well, back in 1993, as reported by the Metro, on a UK TV show called Saturday Zoo, Walken was asked to read a story we all know very well: The Three Little Pigs.
Dressed up in a cute colorful sweater, Walken put on an absolutely masterful performance, really making the story his own. He claimed on the show that he’d always wanted to entertain children on national TV, and he lived out that dream in style, spinning each word with his unique accent and delivery.
The clip of Walken has been viewed millions of times online, with countless people commenting on how amusing and entertaining it is and praising Walken for his unique delivery and hilarious improvised additions to the story. Some commenters have even urged the star to release an audiobook.
Walken’s fantastic ability to turn a simple story into such unique, high quality entertainment is no accident. He’s been acting all his life, knowing from a very young age that he wanted to get into show business. He started off in musical comedy, and has referred to himself as a “show-off”.
Over the years, Walken has been honored with several awards and nominations for his greatest performances. He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1978 for his appearance as Nick Chebotarevich in The Deer Hunter, and his incredible career has seen his films rack up over $1 billion in the United States alone.
He’s also well-known for being quite open to new roles, rarely declining projects and trying to take on as much work as possible.
He says that he looks at each new role as a learning experience and once stated that he’d love to play a simple family with a “nice little house… no guns and no killing, but nobody offers me those kind of parts.”