John Malkovich

Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois, on December 9, 1953. He grew up in Benton, Illinois. His father, Daniel Leon Malkovich, was a state conservation director, who published the conservation magazine Outdoor Illinois. His mother, Joe Anne (née Choisser), owned the Benton Evening News daily newspaper and Outdoor Illinois. He grew up with an older brother, Danny, and three younger sisters, Amanda, Rebecca, and Melissa. In a May 2020 interview, he revealed that Melissa is his only surviving sibling. His paternal grandparents were Croatian immigrants from the vicinity of Ozalj; his other ancestry includes English, Scottish, French, and German descent. Malkovich attended Logan Grade School, Webster Junior High School, and Benton Consolidated High School. During his high-school years, he appeared in various plays and the musical Carousel. He was also active in a folk gospel group, with whom he sang at churches and community events. As a member of a local summer theater project, he co-starred in Jean-Claude van Itallie's America Hurrah in 1972. After graduating from high school in 1972, Malkovich enrolled at Eastern Illinois University. He then transferred to Illinois State University, where he majored in theater, but dropped out. He studied acting at the William Esper Studio.In 1976, Malkovich, along with Joan Allen, Gary Sinise, and Glenne Headly, became a charter member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. He moved to New York City in 1980 to appear in a Steppenwolf production of the Sam Shepard play True West directed by Sinise, for which he won an Obie Award. One of his first film roles was as an extra alongside Allen, Terry Kinney, George Wendt, and Laurie Metcalf in Robert Altman's film A Wedding (1978). In early 1982, he appeared in A Streetcar Named Desire with Chicago's Wisdom Bridge Theatre. Malkovich then directed a Steppenwolf co-production, the 1984 revival of Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead, for which he received a second Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award. Other Steppenwolf productions in which Malkovich has appeared include: The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, directed by H. E. Baccus (1979); Burn This by Lanford Wilson, directed by Marshall W. Mason (1987); and The Libertine by Stephen Jeffreys, directed by Terry Johnson (1996). He made his feature-film debut as Sally Field's blind boarder Mr. Will in Places in the Heart (1984). For his portrayal of Mr. Will, Malkovich received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also portrayed Al Rockoff in Roland Joffe's epic film The Killing Fields (1984). His Broadway debut that year was as Biff in Death of a Salesman alongside Dustin Hoffman as Willy. Malkovich won an Emmy Award for this role when the play was adapted for television by CBS in 1985. He continued to have steady work in films such as Empire of the Sun, directed by Steven Spielberg, and the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie (both 1987) directed by Paul Newman (who appeared in the film) and Joanne Woodward. He then starred in Making Mr. Right (also 1987), directed by Susan Seidelman. Malkovich gained significant critical and popular acclaim when he portrayed the sinister and sensual Valmont in the film Dangerous Liaisons (1988), a film adaptation of the stage play Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton, who had adapted it from the 1782 novel of the same title by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. He later reprised this role for the music video of "Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox. He played Port Moresby in The Sheltering Sky (1990), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and appeared in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen. In 1990, he recited, in Croatian, verses of the Croatian national anthem Lijepa naša domovino (Our Beautiful Homeland) in Nenad Bach's song "Can We Go Higher?" Malkovich starred in the 1992 film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men as Lennie alongside Gary Sinise as George. He was nominated for another Oscar, again in the Best Supporting Actor category, for In the Line of Fire (1993). He was the narrator for the film Alive (1993) and starred in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). Malkovich has hosted three episodes of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live. The first occasion was in January 1989 with musical guest Anita Baker, the second in October 1993 with musical guest Billy Joel (and special appearance by former cast member Jan Hooks), and the third in December 2008 with musical guest T.I. with Swizz Beatz (and special appearances by Justin Timberlake, Molly Sims and Jamie-Lynn Sigler). Malkovich was directed for the second time (after Dangerous Liaisons) by Stephen Frears in Mary Reilly (1996), a new adaptation of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tale, co-starring Julia Roberts. Malkovich also appeared in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), directed by Luc Besson, playing the French king-to-be Charles VII. Though he played the title role in the Charlie Kaufman-penned Being John Malkovich (1999), he played a slight variation of himself, as indicated by the character's middle name of "Horatio". Malkovich's directorial film debut, The Dancer Upstairs, was released in 2002. That same year Malkovich made a cameo appearance in Adaptation. He played Patricia Highsmith's antihero Tom Ripley in Ripley's Game (also 2002), the second film adaptation of Highsmith's 1974 novel, the first being Wim Wenders' 1977 film The American Friend. Malkovich's other film roles include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Eragon (2006), Beowulf, Colour Me Kubrick (both 2007), Changeling (2008), Red, Secretariat (both 2010), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and Red 2 (2013). In 2000, Malkovich was approached to play Green Goblin in Spider-Man (2002), but he passed due to scheduling conflicts and Willem Dafoe was cast in the role. In 2001, film director Michael Cimino had also approached Malkovich to star in his never filmed 3-hour long epic of André Malraux's Man's Fate, alongside Johnny Depp, Uma Thurman, Daniel Day-Lewis and Alain Delon. In 2009, Malkovich was approached and then cast for the role of the Marvel Comics villain Vulture in the unproduced Spider-Man 4. Malkovich played the title role in the film The Great Buck Howard (2008), a role inspired by mentalist the "Amazing Kreskin". Colin Hanks co-starred and his father, Tom Hanks, appeared as his on-screen father. In November 2009, Malkovich appeared in an advertisement for Nespresso with fellow actor George Clooney. He portrayed Quentin Turnbull in the film adaptation of Jonah Hex (2010). Malkovich in 2014 was the voice actor of Dave the Octopus in Penguins of Madagascar. In 2008, Malkovich directed in French a theater production of Good Canary written by Zach Helm, with Cristiana Realli and Vincent Elbaz in the leading roles, at the Comédia théâtre in Paris. Malkovich won the Molière Award for best director for it. He wrote and acted in The Infernal Comedy – Confessions of a Serial Killer, directed by Michael Sturminger, that toured many countries and venues between 2010 and 2013, including at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2010. This was an operatic production, about the life of the Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. In 2011, he directed Julian Sands in A Celebration of Harold Pinter in the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 2012, he directed a production of a newly adapted French-language version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris. The production had a limited engagement in July 2013 at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. He returned to theatre, directing Good Canary in Spanish in Mexico, then in English at the Rose Theater in London in 2016. Ilan Goodman, Harry Lloyd, and Freya Mavor were in the cast. Malkovich won the Milton Schulman Award for the best director at the Evening Standard Theater Awards in 2016. He appeared in Just Call Me God in Hamburg in March 2017. Malkovich wrote and starred in a movie called 100 Years (2016), directed by Robert Rodriguez. The movie is locked in a vault in the south of France, not to be seen before 2115. In 2018, Malkovich appeared in a three-part adaptation of Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders co-starring Rupert Grint for BBC television, playing the role of fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In 2019, Malkovich performed in London's West End at the Garrick Theatre, starring in David Mamet's new play Bitter Wheat. He also starred as the title character in the HBO drama series The New Pope (2020). On September 26, 2019, it was announced that Malkovich had been cast as Dr. Adrian Mallory in the Netflix comedy series Space Force. Malkovich has collaborated with Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė on many productions; by April 2023, there had been nine, and he has called her his "oldest, closest, colleague". In 1992 they both appeared in the Steppenwolf production of A Slip of the Tongue, which later played in Shaftesbury Avenue in London, directed by Simon Stokes. She also appeared in Libra, a play directed and adapted by Malkovich about Lee Harvey Oswald, and, in January 2011, she appeared with him in The Giacomo Variations at the Sydney Opera House, as part of the Sydney Festival. In April 2023, Dapkūnaitė acted alongside Malkovich in In the Solitude of Cotton Fields in Tallinn, Estonia.