Will in Robert Benton’s Places in the Heart (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor). Soon after the play closed, Malkovich flew to Thailand to portray an American photographer on Roland Joffe’s The KillingFields. People compared him with Brando and Dean. Malkovich’s performance as the crotch-scratching, nose-picking, terminally juvenile Lee won him the Clarence Derwent Award for outstanding newcomer, an Obie and the Joseph Jefferson Best Actor Award. In 1982, Malkovich’s quietly building career advanced to fast-forward with Steppenwolf’s New York production of True West. We just wanted to act and be irresponsible.” I think Steppenwolf was an attempt to create a refuge from the rest of the world. “It was a musky, incestuous group that had complete disdain for other types of theater. “There wasn’t an intellectual among us,” says Smith. Malkovich’s chum Russ Smith came on as a producer. By that time its membership had grown to include Malkovich, Sinise, Kinney, Perry, Tom Irwin, Laurie Metcalf, Moira Harris and Glenne Headly (whom Malkovich married in 1982). Malkovich joined and in 1980 Steppenwolf moved to its own theater in Chicago. “I thought, we’ve got to get this freak into our theater.” “It was the stupidest performance I’d ever seen,” said Sinise. Gary Sinise, who formed the group in 1974 with drama students Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry, caught Malkovich in a production of The Man Who Came to Dinner. It was at Illinois State that Malkovich was introduced to a small cadre of drama students who eventually became members of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. So he transferred to Illinois State University and began studying theater. His hair went down to his shoulders and was spiked on top like Rod Stewart’s…It was clear even then that John was not a guy who was going to be sitting in a treetop with binoculars, looking for forest fires for a living.” He was very self-conscious he wore ’40s gangster-style clothes and platform shoes. I think I’ll try this.'” When I asked Russ Smith if even then Malkovich displayed a flair for the dramatic, he replied: “Oh, there was most definitely an actor there. “She was taking theater classes and John followed her into the drama department one day and said, ‘Hmmm. He became infatuated with “the coolest girl on campus,” says his fellow classmate and close friend Russ Smith. But by the time Malkovich reached college and was deep into his required courses of botany and biology, he had acquired an appreciation of other kinds of natural beauty-mostly women. “We knew every kind of flower, plant and rock formation,” he recalls. It sounds idyllic, but in the next breath he’ll tell you that the entire family fought like wild animals all weekend long.ĭespite the occasional bloodletting, those trips gave each of the children a solid appreciation of natural beauty. “We were always charging off to look at the eclipse from the Kentucky light,” he says. It was an unruly ménage of seven: five restless kids, mom and dad. Malkovich remembers childhood weekends spent camping in the woods, hunting for arrowheads, canoeing up the Ohio River. He wanted to be a forest ranger, he says, “Because at that age not knowing what you want to do, you go into the family business.” And the family business was ecology: Malkovich’s father was a conservationist who edited Illinois Magazine, a scholarly environmental journal. At the age of 19, Malkovich left his hometown of Benton, Illinois, packed off to nearby Eastern Illinois University and enrolled in the environmental studies program. Becky Johnston found him well turned out, as usual, in his new apartment in Los Angeles.Ĭhances are if John Malkovich hadn’t fallen in love in college he’d be fighting forest fires in some national park right now. So in honor of his continuous success, here we revisit his cover story from Interview‘s March 1989 issue.įrom Steppenwolf’s True West to Dangerous Liaisons, spellbinder John Malkovich has brought intensity and whimsy to all his roles. Next year, he will appear in Unlocked and Deep Water Horizon, and yesterday, the Illinois native celebrated his 62nd birthday. Known for roles in films such as Dangerous Liaisons, In the Line of Fire, Places of the Heart, Being John Malkovich, and more recently, Burn After Reading and even Penguins of Madagascar, Malkovich’s versatility and intriguing nature allow him to remain a staple of the screen. Actor and director John Malkovich first appeared on the screen in A Wedding (1978) and has yet to slow down since.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |