Biography
A great many people - critics, entertainment
writers, moviegoers and theatergoers alike - have been dazzled by the manifest gifts
of American actor John Malkovich, but Malkovich himself is not one of them. When, shortly
following the release of 1992's Of Mice and Men, an interviewer asked him what he thought
of the critical accolades routinely accorded his performances in film and theater, the
intense thespian's frank reply was, "I don't think talent is anything to be flattered
about. I have a facility for what I do, but so what? It's only because I don't have to
make a living in car repairs that I seem like a cool guy. If I had to make a living doing
car repairs, I wouldn't seem like a cool guy at all. I'd seem like a jerk." Rarely
less than candid - and frequently caustic - in his remarks to members of the
entertainment media, Malkovich nonetheless experienced little trouble finding work in his
chosen profession over the first 20 years of his career. With the benefit of a solid stage
résumé founded on heralded appearances in such classics as Sam Shepard's True West and
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Malkovich made a smooth transition to films during
the mid-'80s. Though he became known to mainstream movie audiences primarily for the
cold-blooded criminal masterminds he played in the thrillers In the Line of Fire and Con
Air, Malkovich rapidly earned a well-deserved critical reputation as one of the most
innovative screen stars of his generation.
By his own account a small-town kind of guy, Malkovich was born in tiny Charleston,
Illinois, and reared in the nearby coal-mining burg of Benton. Though he never had any
formal acting experience as a child, he did throw some pretty impressive tantrums:
whenever he was in a snit, his older brother and younger sisters would lock him out of the
house and taunt him with chants of "mad dog." At age 7, the moody youngster
attended a production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, an experience that profoundly
affected him and sowed the early seeds of what would one day bloom into a consuming
passion for theater. His high school years, however, were marked mostly by his interest in
music and athletics: grossly overweight as a freshman, Malkovich lost 70 pounds in just
ten weeks by sticking to a strict, self-imposed Jell-O diet and became a starting
defensive end for the football team; he also played the tuba in the school band, and
picked up the guitar in his spare time. At Eastern Illinois University, he briefly pursued
a major in environmental studies, with the intention of entering the same line of work as
his career-conservationist father; instead, he ended up loitering around the drama
department with his girlfriend. The romance flamed out, but Malkovich's long-dormant
interest in theater flared up and he transferred to Illinois State in search of a more
robust drama program.
At Illinois State, Malkovich gained his first acting experience in a lead role in a
small-scale student production of Harold Pinter's The Lover. An indifferent student since
high school, Malkovich spent his after-class hours strumming his guitar at local coffee
shops; he eventually left Illinois State, without a degree, in 1976. At the behest of
fellow students Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry, Malkovich traveled to the Chicago suburb of
Highland Park, where an old chum of Perry's, a young dreamer named Gary Sinise, had
founded a local theater in the basement of a church building. Not long thereafter,
Malkovich, Kinney, and Perry became founding members (along with seven other actors) of
Sinise's brainchild, the Steppenwolf Theater Company.
While Steppenwolf was getting off the ground, Malkovich worked variously as a bookstore
clerk, a dishwasher, and a bus driver; somehow he also found time to involve himself in
over 50 Steppenwolf productions staged within a span of six years. In 1982, he wed fellow
Steppenwolf player Glenne Headly and scored his first New York-theater triumph alongside
Sinise in an off-Broadway revival of True West. Just two years later, Malkovich made his
big-screen debut in Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields. The small-town drama Places in the
Heart, released later that same year, featured Malkovich in the role of a blind boarder, a
portrayal that earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
Though he remained heavily involved in theater, both with Steppenwolf and in other venues,
Malkovich's movie career burgeoned steadily with seven roles essayed over the next four
years. With the 1988 release of the costume drama Dangerous Liaisons, in which he and
Glenn Close played jaded French aristocrats who entertain each other by sullying the
sexual purity of Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman, and Keanu Reeves, Malkovich proved
himself a thoroughly competent leading man. The film's title took on ironic significance
when he involved himself in an off-camera affair with co-star Pfeiffer during the Paris
shoot. Headly happened to be filming the ominously titled Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in the
French Riviera at the time, and she flew to Paris to confront her hubby after rumors of
his dalliances with Pfeiffer surfaced in the tabloids.
Eventually, Malkovich ended up both divorced from Headly and on the outs with Pfeiffer. To
compound matters, his career faltered slightly, losing steam through a string of
little-seen character roles, and peaking only slightly with a visible performance as
Lennie in pal Sinise's screen adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. One year
later, Malkovich resurfaced with a vengeance, going mano-a-mano with Clint Eastwood as In
the Line of Fire's psychotic antagonist, a characterization for which he collected a
second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
With four movies in release in 1996 (including a riveting take on the dual part of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the Julia Roberts vehicle Mary Reilly), and with a lead role in the
high-octane plane-hijacking thriller Con Air following in 1997, Malkovich restored his
cinematic profile to its pre-Liaisons glory. Making a bold departure from his
characteristically villainous screen persona, he buckled his swash as aging Musketeer
Athos alongside fellow notables Jeremy Irons, Gerard Depardieu, Gabriel Byrne, and
Leonardo DiCaprio in 1998's The Man in the Iron Mask. For his next feat, Malkovich played
a Russian gangster to Matt Damon's poker player in John Dahl's gambling flick Rounders.
Since 1992, Malkovich has kept house with scholar Nicoletta Peyran, whom he met on the set
of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky; they have two children and divide their time
between residences in Europe and the U.S. Proof of Malkovich's expanding visibility
arrived in theaters in late 1999 in the form of the indie production Being John Malkovich,
a wildly inventive film developed by R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe and helmed by
award-winning music-video director Spike Jonze. Playing in theaters concurrently with
Being was French director Luc Besson's The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, in which
Malkovich portrayed an effete King Charles VII. And there is plenty of other news for
Malkovich aficionados: he and producing partner Russ Smith are currently developing no
less than eight films. Of these, the most intriguing are The Gold of Exodus, a true-life
account of the search for the biblical Mt. Sinai to be directed by indie god John Sayles
(who has already penned a script); and Libertine, a biopic in which Malkovich will direct
himself and Johnny Depp. Malkovich is also set to team up with William Hurt, Tim Roth,
Claire Danes, and Claire Forlani for a film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry
Orchard.
Source:
Mr Showbiz