Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken shot to a degree of fame with his performance in 1978’s Deer Hunter. Following its success is a series of slightly off-kilter but very entertaining appearances. Walken, then known as “Ronnie,” began his acting career as a child in the ‘50s with The Colgate Comedy Hour.

Born and raised in Queens, New York, Walken’s destiny is to be in show business. At 14-months, he posed with a couple of kittens for a calendar shoot. Ronnie’s mother had long-held ambitions to be an actress, and in the absence of realizing those ambitions, she crammed her three kids into as many auditions as she could. For two years in the early ‘50s, Ronnie and his brother Glenn shared the ‘Michael Baur’ role on the long-running soap Guiding Light. He got rid of Ronnie for good after an off-the-cuff remark from a buddy, and Christopher Walken was born.