John Malkovich, interview: 'I don't see myself as a celebrity, more like a blank page'

Directing his first London play, making a film that won't be released for 100 years, dressing up as Salvador Dali - it's all in a day's work for John Malkovich, as he tells Katie Law
The movie you'll never see: Malkovich has finished a film that won't be released until 2115
©Stella Pictures Limited

John Malkovich is sitting on a sofa in a private suite at Number One Aldwych drinking coffee. He’s just come from his farmhouse in the Luberon, in Provence, where he and his Italian partner of more than 25 years, Nicoletta Peyran, spend several months of each year.

He’s been in London to cast a new play, Good Canary, by Zach Helm, which will play at the Rose Theatre in Kingston in September — and has spent the past few days auditioning actors. Most of them are still in their twenties. “They’re very good and very well trained and pretty much all of them have an extraordinary American accent, which you wouldn’t have found 20 years ago,” says the actor and director, who at 62 is sporting an elegant grey white beard and neatly trimmed hair.

Have actors got better? “They’re different — improvement is hard to say. If you watch Gielgud or Richardson on YouTube, I’m not sure there’s much to improve,” he replies gently in that inimitable drawl, which manages to be both polite and menacing.

Set in New York, Good Canary tells the story of a novelist on the cusp of success and its effects on his relationship with his amphetamine-addicted wife. The production, its first in English, marks his debut as a London director and, he says, he’s looking forward to it. It has already been performed to sell-out audiences in Mexico and Paris (where it won two Molière Awards for Best Director and Design), so choosing to stage it at the Rose has let him keep the same set production thanks to the size and layout of its stage.

“The theatre culture here is so strong and London audiences are sophisticated and rewarding. When I’ve seen really good things here, I sense great appreciation from the public and that they don’t take it for granted. It’s not just that you have great actors and directors but also so many great writers,” he continues. “You could count the amount of serious playwrights in France since Molière on less than the fingers on two hands, and arguably on one. Here, it’s about two hands a year.”

©Stella Pictures Limited

Malkovich is busier than ever as a movie actor thanks to his chameleon gift for playing the good, the bad and the ugly. “Being a director helps you to learn to shut up and try things when you’re acting,” he says. And he’s become a cult figure for a whole new generation thanks to his seemingly effortless ability to morph from sci-fi hero to serial killer, from fashion designer to photographer’s muse.

Later this year we’ll see him in Deepwater Horizon, Peter Berg’s film about the BP oil spill disaster, with Mark Wahlberg and Kate Hudson — “very interesting, good cast and great script”. Then comes “a little film with a friend of mine, Damian Harris”, which turns out to be Wilde Wedding, an extravagant comedy where he picks up again with Glenn Close, his onscreen lover in Dangerous Liaisons.

A film we won’t be seeing is 100 Years. The clue is in the subtitle: The Movie You’ll Never See; he’s taking the Robert Rodriguez-directed film to Cannes in a safe and has set a release date for November 2115. “I was intrigued by the concept of working on a film that nobody would ever see in my lifetime.” We’re also unlikely to see him in the Dylan Thomas biopic Dominion, with Rhys Ifans, for the more banal reason that the film is having financial problems.

Still, he’s about to start filming Lech Majewski’s Navajo fantasy, Valley of the Gods, “a Polish art film” in which he plays the richest man on Earth opposite Josh Hartnett and Charlotte Rampling. Unlocked, a thriller set in London with Noomi Rapace and Michael Douglas, is all but finished except that he has been asked to shoot some extra scenes, rather to his annoyance given his frantic schedule.

The behaviour is symptomatic of the whole movie industry, he says, which has become “very chaotic” compared to how it was. “You don’t know if it’s going to happen anymore, and when they say it’s going to happen invariably it isn’t. At one time, we knew a year beforehand what we were doing, what the shooting schedule was and when your flights were. Now it’s five minutes before. For someone like me, who does a lot of things, it’s nightmarish.”

©Stella Pictures Limited

Malkovich splits his time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Provence, where he and Peyran have taken up wine-making. “We make rosé from cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir, which I probably enjoy a little too much, but for [Nicoletta], it’s a lot of work.” They’ve just started selling it — in California, Russia and Poland — under the graphically designed label, LQLC.

He still spends most of his life on the road. “How many times have I been across the ocean? A thousand times; it’s crazy and I’m not 30.” Then there are the fabric fairs for his couture menswear line. He has always loved sewing — friends describe him as impeccably dressed — and he recently brought out his first menswear collection under his own label. The natty blue-and-white check suit he’s wearing is presumably John Malkovich?

“Yes, this is just a wool with a tiny bit of elastic in it,” he replies modestly, apparently keener to plug the women who designed his tie. Does he design for himself? “No, not really, I’ve just finished the spring-summer collection a few weeks ago.” Is it profitable? “Oh God, no,” he laughs. So it’s a vanity project? “I like to think anything I do is a vanity project. I wish. No, to me it’s really another form of self-expression, that’s all. I sew. I mean, I design everything, I draw everything, I choose every fabric and every element and every stitch.”

He loves undressing almost as much as dressing up, as is evident from The Malkovich Sessions, a lavish new book of photographs of Malkovich taken over 17 years by American photographer Sandro Miller. In the section titled Homage, Malko poses for Miller in a series of spookily familiar iconic portraits: Malko as Dali, Malko as Marilyn, Malko as Lennon, Malko as Diane Arbus’s Identical Twins. Malko, ever the chameleon. Even the portrait of Malko as Malko, dressed in a Chinese green silk suit, sees him blend into the green background.

“I never think of myself as a celebrity. I may very well be or very well not be, but most especially for the purposes of this I think of myself more like a blank page,” he says in the book. A kind of reverse reprisal of Spike Jonze’s 1999 cult hit, Being John Malkovich, in which other characters took turns to inhabit his head.

Latest film reviews

1/99

Malkovich seems to enjoy making life difficult while appearing not to. Or is it the other way around? He caused a storm when he told the Cambridge Union Society in 2002 that he’d like to “just shoot” the journalist Robert Fisk, along with George Galloway, for their views on Israel and Palestine. But time appears to have mellowed him — or perhaps he’s been badly burned — and while he remains as disillusioned as ever about politics, his take on Donald Trump is that he doesn’t have one.

“I’m always reticent talking about things like that, principally because I don’t know the people or anything about them. Generally, though, we get the kind of politicians we deserve. Obviously there’s a massive rejection of business as usual, which he [Trump] has cottoned onto and used. But I won’t be voting.”

He hasn’t voted in the US presidential election since George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon in 1972. “There’s too much BS, too much money and too much ideological corruption in politics, and now, seemingly, with quite a few emotionally disturbed people on both sides screaming at each other like four year-olds. Why bother? I don’t get it.”

The Good Canary is at the Rose Theatre, Kingston (rosetheatrekingston.org; 020 8174 0090) from Sept 16 to Oct 8. The Malkovich Sessions, published by Glitterati Inc, is out now.

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT