#4. Christopher Walken

Photo Credit: Twitter,historylvrsclub
Christopher Walken continues to shine on the big screen at the age of 75. The native New Yorker has been a movie mainstay since the 1960s, and over the years he’s proven he can do it all. Walken can play a tough, intimidating guy, a sensitive guy, and he can switch gears into comedy at the drop of a hat, as evidenced by his Saturday Night Live appearances. That cowbell skit is now burned into everyone’s brain who’s ever turned on a TV. His notable movie credits include The Deer Hunter, True Romance, Catch Me if you Can, and who can forget his memorable appearance in Pulp Fiction?
But before Walken became a famous actor, he had a very unusual job. When he was 16, he worked in the circus “taming” a lion named Sheba. Truly. He talked about it with Indiewire:
…he would do this big act with a dozen big cats. And then he would send them all out at the end and just leave this one old girl, and I would come in with my whip and I’d go like that and she’d sit up. But she was really more like a dog. It wasn’t really lion taming. She was very sweet.
Sweet or not, that’s pretty crazy, right?
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