Walken: I love putting on a show

Christopher Walken has stopped doing impromptu dances.

The legendary actor is best known for playing the villain in movies like True Romance. But he also has a knack for dancing and was the subject of a viral video compilation of his best moves earlier this year. But instead of inspiring him to keep going, the montage made him reign in his groove.

“I always kind of liked putting on a show, you know. For a long time, if I was in a scene, and I just had a moment where I felt free to do that, I would throw in a little step,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “People started to bring it up and I thought, ‘Yeah, you’re overdoing that.’ So I’ve stopped.”

The 71-year-old’s most famous dance steps were showcased in Spike Jonze’s 2001 video for Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice. While Christopher now has to be coaxed a little more to take to the floor, at the time, it was a no-brainer to get involved.

“You think, ‘Well, do it now!’ You know, you get too decrepit to dance,” he confessed.

The Pulp Fiction star first got into showbusiness because of his mother. While his dad worked at a bakery, his mom focused all her attention on making her three sons stars.

“My mother was a—what’s the word'—a fan,” he recalled. “She loved show business.”

Christopher progressed from a child performer to working with a 17-year-old Liza Minnelli while at college. But then the star started being taken seriously as an actor, and his career moved in an altogether different direction.

“There was a funny confluence of things: In Annie Hall I was this suicidal brother, and then I did The Deer Hunter, where I shoot myself,” he said, the latter role winning him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. “So there was kind of a dark thing.”