Not acting at all himself

Sipping tea on a sunny winter morning in West Hollywood, Christopher Walken sees a bird perched on a tree branch in an outdoor patio. The bird, a common little house sparrow seen at any restaurant picking up bread crumbs, interrupts his thoughts.

“Hey there, little bird,” he says softly. “I’m going to give you some bread, little bird.” But there is no bread to give and he is in the middle of an interview. So instead, he stares at the bird for several seconds, creating an awkward silence.

Whether it’s a bird, a siren or a daydream, Walken has a hard time focusing on the topic at hand -- him. It becomes obvious that Walken, one of Hollywood’s most outrageous character actors, is a gentle, if eccentric, soul.

He seems to loathe talking about himself and, when he does, he deliberately understates his accomplishments. Although he has been a performer since age 9, he is altogether ill at ease talking to strangers. He once told a friend he wished he had a tail like a dog so that people could know what mood he was in before they approached him.

But he seems unlike the personas he has created for a variety of characters: freaks, murderous fathers, mad scientists, twisted and sick Vietnam vets -- even a headless horseman.

A friend, artist and director Julian Schnabel, says he often wants to shield Walken from certain social situations. “He’s like a deer in the headlights,” said Schnabel, who has known Walken for more than a decade. “He is a very, very modest person.”

Moviegoers can see him now in “Catch Me If You Can,” as Leonardo DiCaprio’s father, Frank Abagnale Sr. -- a Willy Loman-like character constantly deluding himself and his family with grand ideas. His performance as an endearing loser, goes against type for Walken -- he doesn’t kill, threaten or frighten anyone in the movie.

But despite the aura of menace he has created around himself, his life outside of acting seems almost mundane on paper. He is a creature of habit.

He has been married for 35 years to Georgianne Walken, lives in a comfortable house in Connecticut, is a “fish and vegetable” kind of guy, always stays at the Chateau Marmont whenever in Los Angeles (for 25 years now), exercises every day and owns a Volvo -- although he does not drive it, because, as Schnabel says, “he is afraid of crashing.”

Any excitement in his life, Walken admits, is due to his career. “I mean, I’m from Queens,” he said, with the accent.

Recalling his beginnings as a movie actor in the 1978 Academy Award-winning film, “The Deer Hunter,” he says, “I don’t particularly like to do anything dangerous. And here I was in Bangkok. I was in the jungle and in the mountains. Being an actor has taken me places that I never would have gone to.... It’s been a very interesting life.”

If he sounds reflective, it’s because he is. His role in “Catch” awakened feelings of mortality.

Set in the swinging 1960s, Walken’s look as Abagnale Sr. -- the wool trenchcoat, short-brim fedora and lace-up pointed shoes -- reminded him of his late father, Paul, a German-born baker.

“I would pass myself in a window and I would see my father,” said the 59-year-old actor. “It’s shocking and it brings you to terms with certain things. You are going to get old and you are already old.”

But working with directors such as Steven Spielberg shows how relevant Walken continues to be after more than 50 years in show business (he starred in live television as a child in the 1950s.).

Even though he is such a known figure -- indeed one who had a skit devoted to his eccentricities on “Saturday Night Live” and is a member of the show’s Five Timers Club -- he still seems shocked that people recognize him or his work.

At one point during the interview, a stranger approached Walken and said he deserved an Oscar for his “Catch” performance. Walken was completely taken aback.

“I haven’t heard anybody say that to me,” he said after the man left. “Who was that?” he asked himself. “He was just a lone ranger who came and went.” He drifted into thought and for a few more seconds peered into the space where the man had stood.

Spielberg, who had never worked with Walken, said he was impressed with the actor’s ability to finesse a character.

“He has some of the best natural instincts of anyone I’ve worked with,” said Spielberg. “I really think he likes to surprise himself. He comes prepared with some basic ideas of how to play the scene, but after the cameras are rolling, his instincts kick in.”

Later this year, Walken will star in such commercial fare as Jerry Bruckheimer’s “Kangaroo Jack,” “Helldorado” with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and “Gigli” with Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.

Ne Ronald Walken, Ronnie, as he is still called by childhood friends and family, was the middle child of three boys. Their mother, who was Scottish, enrolled all three in dancing classes when they were kids.

Walken learned to sing, dance and act. He was hooked. “In those days ... being a triple threat was something to aspire to,” he said.

As a young man in New York, Walken was a “backup boy” for Belgian nightclub chanteuse Monique Van Vooren. One night, before introducing him to the audience, she turned to him and said: “You know, Ronnie is OK. But I think tonight I call you Christopher. I like Christopher,” and with that he was christened with his stage name.

“I just said, ‘Cool!’ ” he recalled, laughing, rolling the tip of his tongue on his thin, angular upper lip. “She was so gorgeous. Really hot, let’s face it, that’s the word,” he said. “She had that European thing.... “

He drifts off again.He can use some sparkle on this particularly difficult morning. The Chateau Marmont may be charming, but its age makes it prone to major disruptions like a water main bursting inside the crotchety building, leaving all guests without water, a puddle in the entryway and a gigantic hole in the lobby ceiling. Walken is feeling sweaty since he went on a treadmill and hasn’t been able to take a shower.

“Excuse me if I smell a little,” he said demurely. But his hair (which he once said was famous before he was) is very deliberately coiffed, shooting straight up above his wide forehead.

“I like that mane kind of thing,” he says. “It’s sort of leonine.” The effect is more like someone who stood in front of a windmill with a bottle of Aquanet.

His talent at portraying loonies (perhaps partly because of his hair) has granted him the staying power.

Walken’s career took off with his heartbreaking portrayal of an optimistic young American sent to Vietnam in “The Deer Hunter,” in which he starred with Robert De Niro and then-unknown Meryl Streep. Walken won his first and only Academy Award for supporting actor as the sweet-faced, lanky working-class kid, Nick, who is unable to cope with the aftermath of war.

After auditioning more than 200 actors for the part, director Michael Cimino went with Walken even though he had never starred in a film. Cimino said there was a tenderness in Walken’s eyes that immediately reminded him of Nick -- who was based on Cimino’s close friend.

“Many people have a very strange take on Chris,” said Cimino. “I don’t see that at all.... He has a real sweetness of personality.... He is a guy who is very much a loner, in the best sense. He likes to be alone. He is an incredibly reflective guy.”

Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” more than 15 years later, solidified Walken’s place in America’s pop culture pantheon. He practically stole the movie with his cameo as Capt. Koons in the “Gold Watch” monologue. It begins so adoringly, like the telling of a bedtime story about the legacy a father has left his son, and degenerates into a surreal, deadpan delivery of the uncomfortable, yet secure, placement of the gold watch during his years as a prisoner of war in “the Hanoi pit of hell.”

New generations of MTV fans were later introduced to him with the 2001 Fat Boy Slim “Weapon of Choice” video, directed by Spike Jonze (“Adaptation”). Jonze said he had seen Walken dance on “Saturday Night Live” and sent him a letter hoping to cast him in the video. Walken jumped at the chance.

Even for the MTV crowd, Walken managed to look cool, tap dancing in a business suit to a techno beat, bursting into a tap routine vaguely reminiscent of Fred Astaire’s classic walk up a wall, ceiling and floor in “Royal Wedding.”

“I thought, what would be the most exciting visual you would want to see in that song?” said Jonze. “There is nothing I wanted to do more than film him dancing for that video.”

But around that time, Walken’s career needed a little fine tuning. Having starred in more than 90 pictures, he found himself tagged as an actor who was regularly the best part of a terrible movie.

Once represented by William Morris, he is now guided by Toni Howard and Risa Shapiro at ICM (who represent the likes of Michael Caine, Jennifer Connelly and Samuel L. Jackson). Even with a career behind him that included “Annie Hall,” “Pennies From Heaven” and “At Close Range,” he said he was surprised that Howard and Shapiro would accept him as a client.

“They invited me and those are big guys! Girls, I mean,” he rambled. He then fell into another awkward silence. “I was very pleased,” he continued. “I was sitting at home trying to get me a job.”

His new agents want him to be more selective and work mainly with big-name directors. But Walken has a hard time holding back. He lives for work.

“I don’t have hobbies,” he said. “I don’t like to travel, although I do travel a lot to interesting places because of the movies. I don’t have kids. I have a wife but she is the casting director for ‘The Sopranos’ and lots of other works so she is busy.”

Besides, when he is working, he says, he has “a better lifestyle.”

“I eat better because I want to stay thin,” he said. “My mind is active because I am worried about something. It’s just not good to sit around.”