Early Life
Named for actor Ronald Colman, Walken was born Ronald Walken in Astoria, Queens. His mother, Rosalie Russell (May 16, 1907 – March 26, 2010), was a Scottish emigrant from Glasgow, and his father, Paul Walken (October 5, 1903 – February 23, 2001), moved from Germany in 1928 with his brothers. His father owned and operated Walken's Bakery in Astoria, Queens. He was raised a Methodist.
Influenced by their mother's own dreams of stardom, he and his brothers, Kenneth and Glenn, were child actors on television in the 1950s. As a teenager, he worked as a lion tamer in a circus. Walken went to Hofstra University but dropped out after one year, having gotten the role of Clayton Dutch Miller on an Off-Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward, co-starring with Liza Minnelli, who played Ethel Hofflinger. Walken initially trained as a dancer in music theatre at the Washington Dance Studio, before moving on to dramatic roles in theatre and then film.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)