And Walken has certainly earned it, if only by being born. Blessed by a lopsided angularity, wide eyes and profuse and prominent hair, he looks a part: his part. Walken often plays a Jekyll/Hyde bad guy, possessed by a singular sort of introspection, as if he's the only character who gets a dark joke. He's been called "the thinking man's weirdo," and he doesn't seem to mind his self-imposed typecasting. "I think I've made my own kind of acting, my own kind of roles," he has said to The New York Times.

Walken's onscreen success isn't solely the result of his gloomy glare, however.

Rosalie Walken, Christopher's mother, dragged Walken (then "Ronnie") and his two brothers all over New York for radio, television and stage auditions. His brothers left the showbiz early on, but Christopher kept acting and made his Broadway break at age 15, acting in Elia Kazan's "J.B."

Oddly, Walken kept to the stage for more than a decade, winning awards for such parts as the King of France in "A Lion in Winter" even without the help of his trademark weird looks. In the early '70s, Walken acted in a smattering of films but didn't make his cinema mark until he won a small part in 1977's "Annie Hall."

Thanks to Woody Allen's bit-part boost, Walken walked into a supporting role in "The Deer Hunter," a film about Vietnam veterans that won him an Oscar.