The roles John Malkovich refused to play on the cheap: “I didn’t like the deals they made”
The actor John Malkovich may have been in nearly 90 films, but he’s remained one of the world’s most enigmatic actors. Some believe it’s because he’s just that eccentric, while others speculate that he’s just a quiet man who steers away from fame. However you like to see it, there’s one thing we know for certain about this actor – he’s played a wild variety of roles.
From the sinister, sensual Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons to the intelligent psychopath Cyrus “The Virus” in Con Air. Many people will recall him as gentle giant Lennie in the 1992 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, which they probably watched after studying the book for GCSE English Lit.
This wide variety of roles he plays probably helps with his cloak of mystery, as it hasn’t allowed him to be typecast. No one can say, “Ah, John Malkovich is this type of person because he plays this type of character” The most they can do is a “Wow, this man must be unique because we can’t pin him down.” He’s so enigmatic that even he starred as a slightly different version of himself in Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich, in which a puppeteer finds a portal into his mind. That alone surely has to be a unique achievement.
And, as his enigma would suggest, Malkovich has his fingers in many, many different pies even outside his screen career. Most notably, he is a charter member of the iconic Steppenwolf Theatre Company, an independent, non-profit theatre company in Chicago that has been the starting point for many actors. And, along with theatre and film, Malkovich has a long television career too. So, you could say he’s mastered the big three.
But, while he plays it smart as well as hard, mostly taking TV roles to pay the bills, there’s still a limit to what money can buy when it comes to John Malkovich. Somehow, the actor has managed to dodge the Marvel trap (until now), despite the money the MCU is known to make for actors. But, for him that’s exactly the problem: the money.
He explained to GQ why he hasn’t played a role in the MCU yet: “The reason I didn’t do them had nothing to do with any artistic considerations whatsoever. I didn’t like the deals they made, at all. These films are quite grueling to make…. If you’re going to hang from a crane in front of a green screen for six months, pay me.” So, while Marvel is known to bring in the big bucks, it still wasn’t enough to buy Malkovich’s time away from his preferred interests.
He put it frankly, “You don’t want to pay me, it’s cool, but then I don’t want to do it, because I’d rather be onstage, or be directing a play, or doing something else.”
But, clearly, someone somewhere paid enough to pull him away from his theatre endeavours for long enough to star in the upcoming Fantastic Four film. The film will officially see the Fantastic quartet become part of the MCU, along with Malkovich. And, it turns out, he’s not even that mad at it. After shooting, he realised that “it’s not that dissimilar to doing theater. You imagine a bunch of stuff that isn’t there and do your little play.”
