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John Malkovich, the Enigma

Everybody thinks they know what being John Malkovich means. After all, they've watched this year's recipient of the CineMerit Award shower, have breakfast, even have sex and confront his own ego.

In Spike Jonze's bizarre comedy BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, which turned the two-time Oscar nominee into a cult figure, the invasion of privacy was inconsequential. In real life, however, that is not the case - note the stalker who harassed the star in Central Park and then became the victim himself after Malkovich had quickly changed into cheaper clothes at home and picked up a Bowie knife. Anecdotes such as these bolster Malkovich's image as an ultra-eccentric but also reveal his eruptive emotional nature. Behind the facade of the measured, articulate, seemingly introverted actor lurks an explosive disposition. "I'm more likely to lose my temper on a film set than almost anywhere. Often the level of idiocy is so exalted that it's impossible to comprehend", admits Malkovich, who, over the years, has become somewhat more laid back.

Despite statements like these, bad guys, like the one he played in Wolfgang Petersen's IN THE LINE OF FIRE are just roles that he has played time and time again since Wolfgang Petersen's IN THE LINE OF FIRE - sinister characters he's attracted to whose inhumanity he condemns in real life. In his childhood, John's brother, who used to tease and beat up his chubby sibling, usually assumed those roles. With a traumatic background like that we can be glad he didn't become a prison guard - the only steady job, according to Malkovich, aside from being a teacher, in the small mining town in Illinois he grew up in. His parents would rather have seen him become a park ranger in Montana but fortunately for the world, Malkovich decided to become an actor. His ambitions were more amorous than creative. He  weil er einer bewunderten Schönen in ihre Theaterkurse folgte. He never had a plan for his career or life. He always developed an interest in what he happened to be doing at the time. That also applied to the many jobs that he had to take when he became a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company (founded in 1974) as well as film roles one would not usually expect from a stage actor.

Malkovich never had a problem with the balancing act between the artistic and the commercial. You feel the fun he's having being someone else. Whether it's a psychopath as in CON AIR and the comic book adaptation JONAH HEX or an explorer of the female psyche as legendary Viennese painter in KLIMT. Raoul Ruiz' surreal-feverish bio-pic may harbor his artistic roots as is the case with Volker Schlöndorff's allegorical THE OGRE, in which, as a simpleton who is fond of children, he ends up recruiting new blood for an elite Nazi school where they will learn to sacrifice themselves to an inhuman system. Malkovich's brilliance consists of not standing out in certain films, which, seen from his perspective, might convey the impression that they were made by aliens for aliens. Malkovich assimilates every role. He's the ultimate transformer, whether he's making angelic commercials for coffee pads with George Clooney or brutally killing a man for the Coen Brothers in BURN AFTER READING. Making the mild-mannered appear threatening is his specialty as is the internalization of emotions, masterfully illustrated in his performance as the icily reserved philanderer who, much to his own surprise, falls in love in DANGEROUS LIASONS.

Not without good reason is Malkovich said to have a European sensibility. He has worked with great European directors as Bernardo Bertolucci and Manoel de Oliveira.  Classics such as THE CONFORMIST and THE 400 BLOWS are two of his favorite films. This affinity, however,  goes beyond celluloid. For a long time, he made his home in the South of France. Italy is where his fashion label "Technobohemian" is manufactured, an important outlet for the declared 'fashionisto'. His family roots are in Croatia and France, and Austria is the home of a man he admires and not just as an atheist: Sigmund Freud. Malkovich once commented on the value of psychoanalysis, which he underwent for several years as a young man: "To me it certainly beats religion, which is only less expensive in the short term." This is a man, often labeled a cynic by the press, briefly revealing his psyche, a place he was privileged to visit in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH in front of a worldwide audience.

Courageous self-irony is another one of his qualities. In front of the camera he cultivates the image of an enigma, but behind the camera he lets his guard down. As the director of THE DANCER UPSTAIRS, a fascinating blend of authentic political thriller and touching love story, that is less obvious than in his work as a producer. GHOST WORLD with its teenager delving into unchartered life, THE LIBERTINE with its misanthropic but liquor loving aristocrat, and JUNO with its pregnant, under-aged heroine - all three are films that focus on outsiders who couldn't be more different and yet are representative of the projects that Malkovich's production company "Mr. Mudd" makes. His penchant for nonconformists and the exotic has people thinking they've seen through him and yet it all remains pure speculation. So how does John Malkovich tick? Bella Freud, British fashion designer, great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and Malkovich confidante knows: "He doesn't tolerate the empty, vacuous promises of Hollywood...I think of John as being like a great big lion who sits around benignly and every now and then flicks his tail and you feel this quake of fear."

Peter Koberger