John Malkovich

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2002

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

John Malkovich makes his film directorial debut this year with The Dancer Upstairs. He's best known for his laconic sophistication in films such as Dangerous Liaisons, In the Line of Fire and The Man in the Iron Mask. He was celebrated in 1999's Being John Malkovich, in which he played himself. Malkovich was born in rural America, where his family ran the local newspaper. He attended Illinois State University but soon changed his major from environmental studies to drama. He and two friends formed the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, an experimental theatre company, in 1976. Based in Chicago, it became one of the most exciting regional groups in America. Malkovich acted in, directed and helped on dozens of plays, while earning money painting houses and driving school buses.

In 1983 Malkovich made his New York debut in an off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's True West and won an Obie award for his performance. This led to the role of Biff in the 1984 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, in which Dustin Hoffman played Willy Loman. Their performances were captured for posterity in a film version a year later. John has received three Oscar nominations for Places In The Heart, The Killing Fields and In the Line of Fire.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Who Knows Where The Time Goes by Nina Simone Book: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Luxury: A cappuccino maker

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2002, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an actor. His style is dark and dangerous. You may have seen
0:28.9	him as the amoral lecher in the film Dangerous Liaisons or as the would be Presidential
0:34.1	Assassin in In the Line of Fire. In fact he was brought up in a big noisy family in a
0:39.7	small town in Illinois and having read drama at university founded with fellow actors Chicago's
0:45.6	Steppenwolf theatre. He first became noticed in a play about two brothers who smash
0:50.6	up their mother's home. He went on to star on Broadway opposite Dustin Hoffman in Death of a Salesman.
0:57.0	He's just finished his first film as a director,
1:00.0	The Dancer Upstairs, about a manhunt in a Latin American republic in the throes of revolution.
1:05.2	Brooding sexuality may be his public face, but in private he enjoys his garden and his family.
1:11.3	If I have a presence, it's because I'm relaxed he says I've never had
1:15.9	nerves never once he is John Malkovich. It's extraordinary John never to have
1:21.8	nerves on the stage how do you explain that?
1:25.0	It is very strange. I can remember in the very early days of Steppenwolf,
1:30.0	when we had an opening night, we had a little sort of niche under the makeup table,
1:36.0	and I would just put on my makeup and go to sleep,
1:40.0	and they would have to sort of wake me up and say,
1:42.0	hey, the show's starting. and they would have to sort of wake me up and say,
1:42.5	hey, the show's starting.
1:44.3	And then you walk straight on and do it.
1:45.8	Yeah.
	...

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