If Christopher Walken (1943-) is not the best character actor performing right now , then he is close to the top of that list. When I think of Mr. Walken, the following movies scenes pop into my head. His Colonel Koons telling young Butch Coolidge about the history of Butch’s watch in the classic Pulp Fiction (1994). His interrogation of Dennis Hooper in True Romance (1993). And of course playing Russian roulette with Robert DeNiro in The Deer Hunter (1978).
Christopher Walken has been appearing in movies since 1969. He became an overnight sensation 8 years later with his Oscar® winning performance in The Deer Hunter (1969). After a few lead roles, he pretty much slipped into supporting roles. It is a role that suites him pretty well.
His IMDb page shows 133 acting credits since 1969. This page will rank 73 Christopher Walken movies from Best to Worst in five different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.
Christopher Walken Movies Ranked By Combination of Box Office, Reviews and Awards (UMR Score) *Classic UMR Table (the one with all the stats is the second table)
Christopher Walken Movies Can Be Ranked 5 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort by Christopher Walken movies by his co-stars
- Sort Christopher Walken movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Christopher Walken movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Christopher Walken movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Christopher Walken movie received.
- Sort Christopher Walken movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Christopher Walken Table
- Fifteen Christopher Walken movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 48.38% of his movies listed. 1992’s Batman Returns is his biggest box office hit.
- An average Christopher Walken movie grosses $58.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 30 Christopher Walken movies are rated as good movies…or 46.15% of his movies. Pulp Fiction (1994) is his highest rated movie while Gigli (2003) is his lowest rated movie.
- Ten Christopher Walken movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 15.38% of his movies.
- Five Christopher Walken movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 7.69% of his movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00. 26 Christopher Walken movies scored higher that average….or 33.84% of his movies. The Deer Hunter (1978) got the the highest UMR Score while Gigli (2003) got the lowest UMR Score.
Check out Steve Lensman’s Christopher Walken You Tube Video
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Wow this page needed some love. (1) Added some new photos. (2) Added a mobile friendly table. (3) Fixed some errors in the table….like missing co-stars and duplicate movies. (4) Fixed some SEO issues. (5) Fixed some “Cogerson Movie Score” text issues. In short….there was some serious dust on this page which was originally written in 2011.
Just added Steve’s Christopher Walken Video To This Page. Out thoughts on that video.
Been a Walken fan since his performance in The Deer Hunter blew me away. 40 movies? Thinking I have seen most of them…let’s find out. 40 through 31. Seen all 10….not thinking there is a good one in the bunch. America’s Sweethearts, Last Man Standing and Click would be the ones I liked the most.
30 through 21….perfect again….though it has been so long since seeing Dogs of War…I barely remember it…for some reason I get it mixed up with Gibson’s Attack Force Z. View To A Kill is a dreadful Bond flick.
20 through 11…10 for 10…thinking I might be 40 for 40…that does not happen much.
Favorites would be #19 Seven Psychopaths, Wedding Crashers and Jersey Boys…which really surprised me.
Top 10….seen them all….#7 Sleepy Hollow has his first screen kiss #5 The Dead Zone…probably his best leading man role #4 True Romance…his scene with Dennis Hopper is one of my all-time favorite scenes. #3 Catch Me If You Can…..good movie. #2 Pulp Fiction….one of my all-time favorite movies. #1 The Deer Hunter….what a performance! So that is 40 for 40…I guess I am a big fan of his. Voted up and shared . FYI….when looking at our Walken page….the tally is 61 Walken movies seen.
Great post Bruce, cheers. It was a toss up between The Deer Hunter and Pulp Fiction for the no.1 spot, the scores were close, I think Deer Hunter was a worthy winner. Pulp Fiction topped Sam Jackson’s chart but does it top Bruce Willis’s or Travolta’s?
Yep The Dead Zone was a rare lead hero role for Walken, it must be one of his own personal favorites. Your tally 40 out of 40? impressive! You really do like Walken. I’ve seen 29 of the 40, Flora 5 from this chart, 8 altogether. Thanks again for the comment, vote and share, it is appreciated.
I first became aware of Chris Walken when he excelled himself in the 1978 The Deer Hunter [though as I’ve said before I’ve never seen it as I don’t like war films] and it was possibly that movie that brought him to the attention of most filmgoers. Amazingly he had been under the radar on TV and in the occasional movie since 1953 when he was just 10 years of age.
He seemed booked for big things on the back of Deer Hunter but maybe being associated with the gigantic flop Heaven’s Gate stalled whatever momentum he might have had because he never really developed into one of the top stars.I regard that as a great pity because with his good looks, strong [albeit at times nervous-looking] personality and fine acting ability I feel he really SHOULD have achieved considerable stardom .
Certainly he has always entertained me more than the Stallones,The Johnsons and the Stathams all put together – even with The Meg thrown in! Accordingly I very much welcome your Walken video and for me the best POSTERS in entries 40-21 are Nine Lives, Communion, Nick of Time, Prophecy, two superb ones for A View to a Kill, Blast from the Past, Rundown [with Chris showing The Rock how acting is done] The Dogs of War, Kill the Englishman, the Funeral and Last Man Standing.
The last named was a 1996 remake of Kurosawa’s 1961 classic Yojimbo starring Tishiro Mifune [which IMDB awards an 83% critical rating compared with a 64% for the Willis outing]. I never saw Mifune’s film but did see the Willis version which I enjoyed and if I recall correctly Demi’s X played the part that Mifune undertook in the 1961 version. As you know I regarded Bruce Willis in his heyday as superior to most other action stars and have been campaigning for some time now for Teach to admit Willis [and Chuck] to one of the Cogerson “greatest stars” lists, but my words of wisdom have fallen on deaf ears
All STILLS along with video entries 1-20 will be covered in my Part 2 tomorrow. Meanwhile enjoy your weekend.
Hi Bob, they tried to turn Walken into a top billed leading man back in the early 1980s but eventually he slipped comfortably into valuable supporting actor status, joining the likes of Dafoe and Malkovich.
Good to see Bruce has a page for Walken. I think my next bunch of actors are listed on his index page. Bruce doesn’t always remember to add his latest subjects to the index page. Is Malkovich on there?
Looking forward to p.2. Have a nice weekend. Don’t watch too many action movies, or at least turn the volume down. Think of the neighbors. 😉
The neighbors be d****d – they have a yappy little dog that keeps me awake at times. If Dwayne or Jason made personal appearances along with their movies I’d set them on the neighbors!
Malko’s not yet in Bruce’s index but I’ve noticed that there is usually a gap of a day before a new page gets indexed.
Write to u again in the morn.
Christopher was another modern star with a very prolific output of movies and 74 of them are covered in the table above. 16 of them crashed Bruce’s magical 100 million dollar barrier in adjusted domestic grosses but in none of the 16 was he THE star and in only 3 of them [all large cast ensemble pictures] could he be said in a stretch to be ONE OF the stars.] By my manual count the other 58 movies have a total adjusted domestic gross of approx. $1.1 billion in the table, a paltry average of around $19 million per movie. Chris certainly didn’t fall down in the acting stakes though In fact IMDB lists 23 wins and 34 nominations across board that Christopher received for acting and IMDB ranks Chris 54th in it’s “Ultimate” list of the 100 greatest actors ever
POSTERS in entries 1-20 of the video, my own pick of which are Heaven’s Gate, 7 Psychopaths, Jersey Boys, a Late Quartet [one of his finest performances in my view] King of Manchester , Brainstorm, Hairspray, the two classy for Jungle Book, True Romance, an absolutely outstanding foreign language one for Pulp Fiction and the 1st one for Deer Hunter.
Superb STILLS in entire video I think are (1) the opening two with kitty, which well complement part of Chris’ opening quote! (2) with Depp (3) in A View to a Kill [because of Chris’s performance one of my own fave Bond flicks back in the days when I found the series watchable. It is probably 20 years since I watched an 007 movie] (4) with Alan Arkin and Little Al (5) in the 1980 Dogs of War the movie I though was going to cement Chris’s stardom after Deer Hunter, but Bruce gives it a miserable adjusted domestic gross of just $17.7 million, though a fine 75% critical rating. (6) solo from Brainstorm (7) with Matthew Broderick (8) in Dead Zone [possibly my favourite film in which Chris had the lead] (9) in Catch Me if You Can (10) in Pulp Fiction (11) the ensemble scene from Deer Hunter and (12) Batman Returns.
This time The Oracle has already spoken and you and he agree on 3 of Walken’s Top 6 Best Reviewed with you going for True Romance, Batman Returns and Dead Zone in your 6 and The Work Horse plumping instead for Jungle Book, Antz and Annie Hall. Certainly I agree with your choice od Dead Zone and I will confess that the ORDER of WH’s Top 3 took me somewhat by surprise. As said I haven’t seen Deer Hunter so I can’t comment on whether you were right to make it No 1 whilst Work Horse makes it No 3, but because he included the to me lightweight Antz in his Top 6 shall we take away his Work Horse title and turn him into The Headless Horseman?
A thoroughly satisfying video presentation throughout, worth a 98% rating.
Love Christopher Walken. The type of actor that makes every movie better. Glad to see Steve gave him a Lensman You Tube video. My happy moment regarding Christopher Walken is the fact that he was one of the first people to get a page. Actually minutes after publishing the page at Hub Pages…..I got two comments from people that were unknown to me…and no it was neither Flora or Steve. I remember thinking…..hey maybe people are actually checking out my pages. That is a 7 year old memory now. Just looked it up…..my first real comment (not from friends or family) was from GameBoy70…..who wanted to know why Annie Hall was not initially ranked…ahhhhh the memories.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, box office info, trivia and comparison, it is appreciated. Glad you liked the posters and stills.
You like Christopher Walken but have not seen The Deer Hunter? The film he won his only Oscar for. Okay granted it is a violent movie, the russian roulette scenes are a bit nasty. You don’t like war films but you love westerns, and there are killings in westerns, maybe it’s ‘loud’ movies you don’t like? Explosions?
I liked him in The Dead Zone too, I was going to say an underrated film but it’s in the top 5 in my chart. It’s reputation has grown over the years, easily one of the best Stephen King adaptations.
I also enjoyed Brainstorm, a fun slice of sci-fi which sadly has the stigma of Natalie Woods tragic death by drowing during it’s production. She finished most of her scenes and some of her dialogue was given to another actor towards the end of the film.
Brainstorm was ahead of it’s time, hinting at virtual reality years before it became ‘reality’. With the twist that it’s a persons recorded ‘thoughts’ that you are experiencing not a computer simulation. Dead Zone and Brainstorm would make an interesting double bill.
Two Chris Walken films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Pulp Fiction and The Deer Hunter. No 9s but there are 12 films scoring 8 out of 10 including – True Romance, Catch Me if you Can and The Dead Zone.
Top rated at IMDB is Pulp Fiction and no.1 at Rotten Tomatoes is The Deer Hunter. Bruce has Pulp Fiction at no.1 on his critics chart, the scores were close but I decided The Deer Hunter should be no.1 on Walken’s video chart.
I didn’t include Annie Hall, Walken had a small role as Diane Keaton’s brother, I added The Anderson Tapes instead, he had a bigger role as a member of Sean Connery’s team of burglars.
“I asked this girl to go to the prom and she said she would but that she had a boyfriend, an older guy. Then she took out her wallet and showed me a picture of this handsome guy with the hair, the teeth, who looked like a Greek statue. I thought, “All right”, and then I asked to see it again and said, “This is not a photograph. You cut this out of a magazine.” She got farmisht and said, “Yes, you’re right, I did. I’m so madly in love with him. His name is Elvis Presley.” She went with me to the prom. I had her in a compromising position. That’s what you get for lying.”
“The thing I have trouble with, because I’m so dependent on knowing my lines, is that if suddenly somebody says, “Here’s a big speech. You’re going to do that instead,” I get lost. At that point, I understand why Marlon Brando loves cue cards.”
“My father had his own bakery, and it was closed one day a week, but he would go anyway. He did it because he really loved his bakery. It wasn’t a job.”
“People always comment about my hair. It is unusual for a man my age to have so much.”
Another oddball actor on monday.
HI STEVE Excellent comprehensive feedback to my Walken posts.
It’s nothing to do with noise or any one particular thing that I don’t like war films – I simply dislike the genre for itself in the way that some folk don’t like westerns for example. My brother in Oz can’t stand sci-fi or horror films or any movie to do with the supernatural.
Another brother doesn’t like weepies whereas I love them. My son hates movies with small-guy heroes like Ladd and Pacino in them whereas I don’t usually take to films with big guys like The Rock in them. I like films such as Kirk’s Paths of Glory though as the war was just incidental in that one and it was really a courtroom dram packed with human interest.
I don’t like movies that sentimentalize the aftermath of war and even the presence of Bruce’s Box Office Queen wouldn’t induce me to watch again Best Years of Our Lives. As the saying goes ”One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”
All 4 of your quotes are first class and worth remembering if one is a film buff. The mention of Brando is particularly interesting because
1/According to Chris Marlon made contact with him to discuss a variety show that Mumbles wanted Chris and himself to be involved with but it never materialized.
2/At the time of Brando’s death in 2004 he was collaborating in a fictional film about an Indian boy who looks like the young Marlon and whom a talent scout brings to Hollywood to be the “new Brando” Footage from old Brando films was used in it and Christopher Walken was signed as the star. It was shown at a prominent film festival and may even have won an award. However it was never released in cinemas and all reference to it seems to have gone from every source that I have researched including Chris’ filmographies, and they changed its name so many times that I can’t even remember what it was called.
I have often wondered if it was pulled for political reasons as the Indian boy goes to the States to live the “American Dream” but ends up being incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay by George W Bush’s regime as a suspected terrorist.
Certainly it seems like the type of strange project both Chris and Mumbles would have wanted to be involved with. I’m not one for conspiracy theories but reportedly Wayne’s Jet Pilot completed in 1953 was kept out of circulation for a time as among other things it was perceived as so “Gung Ho” that it might have hurt the Eisenhower 1956 presidential re-election campaign. It was eventually released in 1957 after Ike was safely back in the White House
Awesome…I love Christopher Walkin and can’t wait to see Seven Psychopaths. Walkin is definitely one of the strangest and interesting actors working today. I’m actually shocked that The Prophecy did that well. I know it’s a cult, underground movie, but it’s one of my favorites with Walkin in it.
Hey rabbit75…thanks for the visit to my newly remodeled hub. Seven Psychopaths is getting great reviews…but it’s first Friday box office total was not too promising….so if you want to see it at the movies….you might have to hurry and do so.
That being said…it was great to see Walken back in theaters….5 years is too long of an absence for “one of the strangest and interesting actors working today” . As for Prophecy…the first one actually made some coin at the box office….and was actually a pretty good movie…I have not seen the sequels which went straight to DVD release. Thanks for the votes and the share…they are both greatly appreciated.
HI STEVE Further to my post yesterday I have finally managed to track down some information about Walken’s involvement with the film about the Tunisian boy who was a Brando look-alike, was lured to the States for the “American Dream” and ends up in Guantanamo Bay as a suspected terrorist courtesy of George W Bush.
Locating reference to it is easy when an old man finally remembers the title. Selective memory is a curse and would you believe me ? if I told you that at the moment I cannot remember the title of a single Myrna Loy film, though something about a Thin Woman keeps hovering about at the back of my mind!
The “Walken” film began shooting when Marlon was still alive and the Great One personally and Christopher Walken were signed to appear in it. When Marlon died the movie was reworked as a semi documentary as much about Brando himself as about the Tunisian Boy, and Chris Walken was replaced by Christian Erickson. The film, which runs about 90 mins, was shown at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and a few foreign festivals but thereafter seems to have disappeared.
If you google Always Brando (2011) on both Wikipedia and IMDB you can read about it if you’re interested. Wiki gives the best description of the movie’s convoluted production and title changes but as you are a fervent “rater” of movies the full IMDB User’s Review may be of particular interest to you.
However, although we now know why it does not appear in Chris’ filmography, neither site explains why the film did not get at least an art house distribution. In the User Review on IMDB a Tunisian Brando fan rubbishes it and calls it an “insult” to his idol but IMDB gives it a reasonable 68% rating and it won the Black Pearl award, which seems to be some kind of vague award like Robert Taylor’s coveted Cowboy of the Century one. Certainly it doesn’t look now as if Always Brando is going to catapult the Great Mumbler’s grosses above those of Miss Loy in the Cogerson charts –
Just like that region of grassy hills outspread
A realm of our thoughts knows days and nights
And summers and winters, and has fed
Ineffectual herds of vanished delights. [1817-JOHN KEATS]
Interesting Brando trivia Bob, thanks.
Did you ever find out what this missing film was called?
As a young man why were you so interested in weepies and Deanna Durbin instead of war movies and Gene Kelly? Was it your upbringing? Do you cry easy?
I’ve been watching a season of old British war movies these past few weekends – The Dam Busters, Sink the Bismarck, The Cruel Sea, Battle of the River Plate and Dunkirk. I did sneak in one US war film – Thirty Seconds over Tokyo – which wasn’t as good as I remember it, the raid on Tokyo is the highlight and it’s too little too late, the rest of the film was just dull drama, the guys, their wives and the usual training sequences.
HI STEVE Why does one person like John Wayne and another prefer Gary Cooper? As a theme war doesn’t appeal to me and it’s nothing to do with pacifism or gore or anything like that – I simply find the genre boring. By the way though I loved a lot of those Brits who used to form almost a stock company in British war films -Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden,John Mills, Alec Guinness and of course my Dirk, but not in war films themselves.
I love music and am a music collector but I found most of the songs in Hollywood musicals dull though I did go to see a lot of them because I liked watching the actual stars such as Fred, Gene and of course my Doris and Deanna.
Though a great Crawford fan I didn’t particularly like the weepies themselves of her heyday because I found many of them contrived and stilted, with the exception of one or two like Colman’s 1942 Random Harvest However I loved many of the later ones such as Sirk’s Written on the Wind, Magnificent obsession and All the Heaven Allows in the 1950s and the even later Sleepless in Seattle. Anything Myrna Loy was in made me weep regardless of the subject matter or genre !!
I don’t know why it is that “one man’s meat is another man’s poison” so I’m afraid I’ve no off the peg answer for you. Two pieces of potentially good news for you though as you like war films and action movies –
1/My youngest brother is a fanatic for British war movies in particular and has watched many time the 5 you’ve listed. Actually The Cruel Sea does hold a nostalgic spot for me as it was the first war movie I ever saw [at the age of 11] before I realised I didn’t like the genre. It adds to the nostalgia that the movie house in which I saw it [The Strand Belfast] is just across the road from me and is in fact the only one of the old pre multi-screen theatres in Northern Ireland still standing or used at least as a cinema..To ensure its continuing survival it is state-subsidised.
2/I am in the middle of watching the 2014 action movie Non Stop – and enjoying it because in Liam Neeson the film has an action hero who can actually act [62 awards/nominations according to IMDB That’s bound to be the case of course because he comes from Ballymena Northern Ireland about half an hour’s drive from where I live. A Dan-like link is that he was born the year I went to see The Cruel Sea [1952].
Hi Bruce, looking forward to Seven Psychopaths, loved director Martin McDonagh’s previous film – In Bruges – highly recommended if anyone missed it.
Hey Steve….thanks for the visit…..I did not know the director of In Bruges was same as the director of Seven Psychopaths….that makes me even more interested in seeing his new movie….as always your contributions to my hub are always greatly appreciated.