John Malkovich’s four greatest movies: “That’s a pretty good performance”
For many of us, Being John Malkovich was a truly groundbreaking film when it emerged in 1999. It was probably the first real example of a ‘meta’ movie, and certainly the first in which an established Hollywood star allowed their real-life persona to form the subject of a mainstream cinema release.
Spike Jonze’s film was seen as a bit of a surreal oddity at the time, but it was far more than that. Prior to its release, Hollywood stars were seen as almost untouchable people who might be smiley on the evening chat shows, but were very serious about their work. Malkovich, for one, was certainly viewed as the American equivalent of a bit of a thesp, a dramatic actor who could nevertheless do big budget, as his role in 1996’s Con Air showed.
But with Being John Malkovich, he jumped with both feet into a bizarre comedy fantasy that was penned by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind writer Charlie Kaufman and told the story of a down-on-his-luck puppeteer in New York City who finds a hidden passageway that leads directly into the mind of Malkovich.
It was surprising in some ways that the film got made in the first place; one producer and even Malkovich himself asked why the subject of the movie wasn’t something like ‘Being Tom Cruise’ to give it a better chance of success. But Kaufmann insisted, because, for one thing, he liked how the name sounded, and then, despite being ‘half-horrified’ when he read the script, Malkovich signed on.
Co-starring John Cusack and Cameron Diaz, it was part commentary on the public’s obsession with celebrity culture, and part satire that speared those celebrities’ own vanity, and one memorable scene sees Malkovich walk into a restaurant where every single person has his own face and can only speak by saying his surname.
Predictably, it was critically far better received than it performed commercially, winning three Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe nods, but perhaps surprisingly, it isn’t a film that Malkovich ranks as one of his best from his six-decade career. Instead, when asked by GQ about the films that he believes represent his finest work, he selected two very well-known performances and two less so.
He said: “Well, I think a little-seen film I did that no one paid the slightest attention to, but I think it was not a bad performance. It was called Colour Me Kubrick. I played a gay English failed travel agent who went around the UK pretending he was Stanley Kubrick, based on a true story. That’s a pretty good performance.”
Malkovich followed that up with his two best-known performances with some humility, noting, “I think Dangerous Liaisons, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, is a good film. I’m OK in it. I’m sure other people could have done better, but it’s fine. I think [Clint Eastwood thriller] In the Line of Fire is fine. I did OK. What else have I done? I don’t know. Even something like Sheltering Sky, I think it is what it is.”
While for many years the 1988 period drama Dangerous Liaisons was probably Malkovich’s most famous role, In the Line of Fire from 1993 earned him an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’, while Sheltering Sky was a romantic drama made a few years earlier about a couple played by Malkovich and Debra Winger who journey to North Africa in the hopes of putting a spark back into their ailing marriage.
