Christopher Walken may be most widely identified for his “stranger or more intense” roles, but his latest film gives the 69-year-old Oscar winner (for 1978’s “The Deer Hunter”) an opportunity to get in touch with his kinder, gentler side.
In “A Late Quartet,” Walken plays the cellist and guiding force of a renowned string quartet, alongside co-stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Mark Ivanir. When he’s diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and decides to retire, the remaining members of the group begin to drift apart.
We talked to Walken about how he prepared for “A Late Quartet” and why the role was a welcome change of pace.
Q: Do you play any musical instruments in your own life?
A: No, I’ve never been able to play anything. I took piano and guitar lessons as a kid, but I never really had a knack for it. My big, clumsy hands aren’t really designed for that.
Q: How did you prepare to play a cellist in this film?
A: I met with a teacher three times a week and took a lot of lessons in order to simulate the hand movements. It’s much harder to fake playing a stringed instrument compared to something like the piano or the trumpet, because the use of your hands is so prominent. I never got to the point where I could actually play, but I was able to learn how to fake certain things — the bow strokes, the fingering. It was quite difficult.
Q: What sort of research did you do in order to portray your character’s Parkinson’s disease?
A: I didn't need to do an awful lot, because it's described in the movie as just the onset of Parkinson's. I met with a wonderful woman who'd been a dancer and was afflicted with the disease. She'd been dealing with it for a dozen years, and dealing with it beautifully, because it never would have occurred to me that she had Parkinson's if I hadn't already known. There were certain little things I had to do — crossing my arms occasionally, which isn't something I ordinarily do, because that's one characteristic of people with the disease; holding on to a table or a chair to steady my balance; concentrating on how I walked up or down stairs.
Q: What most appealed to you about this project?
A: It’s often a combination of things — the director and the other actors involved, the script as a whole or my character in particular. In this case, I was the first actor (director) Yaron Zilberman approached, and it was a very different type of role for me, playing this kindly father figure of sorts. I don’t often get a lot of those roles. Usually, I’m doing something a lot stranger or more intense, so this was a nice opportunity. I’d like to get more parts like this.
Q: The longer you’re at it, does it keep getting harder to find new challenges like that?
A: In a word, yes. But, throughout my career, I’ve never really been the sort of actor who’s specifically looking for things that test me. It’s more about just looking for the next best job offer. I don’t have a lot of other outside interests. I don’t have any kids or hobbies. I don’t do a lot of traveling. My main thing has always been just going to work.
Q: A main theme in the film is about how the dynamics of the quartet itself are more important than the egos of the individual members. Is the same true of actors working in a tight-knit ensemble like this one?
A: Very much so. It’s less about our own personalities than it is about our relationships with one another and our ability to play and function together. We walk into a theater or onto a soundstage, with a given amount of time to do what we do best, and it’s all about being primed and ready to do as well as we can, whether it’s the two or three hours it takes us to perform a play or just the five minutes we have to shoot a take.
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