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John Malkovich

With a body of work spanning more than 25 years, John Malkovich is one of the most compelling minds in entertainment. His celebrated performances span the range of thought-provoking indie films to big-budget franchises while taking on the roles of actor, director, producer and artist. John recently finished shooting Transformers 3 with director Michael Bay, opposite Shia LaBeouf, and has wrapped a number of highly anticipated films for 2010 and 2011. These include Red for Summit Entertainment, in which he stars opposite Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman.

Malkovich was seen in the Coen brothers' comedy Burn After Reading as part of a stellar ensemble featuring Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton. The film premiered at the 2008 Venice Festival. He also reteamed with Clint Eastwood in the critically acclaimed film The Changeling, alongside Angelina Jolie and Amy Ryan, produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment. In the film, Malkovich portrays an activist reverend who champions the poor and disenfranchised.

Other credits include Gilles Bourdos' Afterwards; Sean McGinly's The Great Buck Howard, which had its premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; Disgrace, an independent about a Cape Town professor who, after having an affair with a student, gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics; Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf, opposite Angelina Jolie; and Brian W. Cook's Color Me Kubrick. He also starred in Raoul Ruiz's Klimt, Liliana Cavani's Ripley's Games, Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady, Gary Sinise's Of Mice and Men, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky, Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons, Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, Paul Newman's The Glass Menagerie and Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields.

Malkovich has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor — for Robert Benton's Places in the Heart (1985) and for Wolfgang Petersen's In the Line of Fire (1994). His performance in Places in the Heart also earned him the Best Supporting Actor Award from the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review. In 1999, he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor for Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich.

In 1998, Malkovich joined producing partners Lianne Halfon and Russ Smith to create the production company Mr. Mudd, whose debut film was the celebrated feature Ghost World, directed by Terry Zwigoff. In 2003, Malkovich followed this up with his own feature directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs, starring Academy Award winner Javier Bardem. Other Mr. Mudd credits include The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp and Samantha Morton, and Art School Confidential, also directed by Zwigoff and written by screenwriter/ cartoonist Dan Clowes. In 2008, Mr. Mudd landed its biggest box-office and critical success with Juno, starring Ellen Page, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. The film, distributed through Fox Searchlight, received an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody) and three nominations for Best Motion Picture, Best Actress (Ellen Page) and Best Director (Jason Reitman). Malkovich also served as executive producer on the documentary How to Draw a Bunny, a portrait of artist Ray Johnson, which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and the Prix de Public at the famed Recontre Film Festival in Paris. The film was also nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for best documentary in 2003.

Malkovich's mark in television includes his Emmy Award-winning performance in the telefilm Death of a Salesman, directed by Volker Schlöndorff and co-starring Dustin Hoffman. Other notable credits include the miniseries Napoleon and the acclaimed HBO telefilm RKO 281, both of which garnered Malkovich separate Emmy Award nominations.

Between 1976 and 1982, Malkovich acted in, directed or designed sets for more than 50 Steppenwolf Theatre Company productions. His debut on the New York stage in the Steppenwolf production of Sam Shepard's True West earned him an Obie Award. Other notable plays include Death of a Salesman, Slip of the Tongue, Sam Shepard's State of Shock, and Lanford Wilson's Burn This in New York, London and Los Angeles. He has directed numerous plays at Steppenwolf, including the celebrated Balm in Gilead in Chicago and Off- Broadway, The Caretaker in Chicago and on Broadway, and Libra, which Malkovich adapted from Don LeLillo's novel. Malkovich's 2003 French stage production of Hysteria was honored with five Moliere Award nominations, including Best Director. In addition to his film directorial debut on The Dancer Upstairs, Malkovich has directed three fashion shorts (Strap Hangings, Lady Behave, Hideous Man) for London designer Belle Freud. He recently received a Moliere Award as Best Director for his production of Zach Helm's Good Canary in Paris. As a guiding member of Chicago's landmark Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Malkovich — as a producer, director and actor — has undoubtedly had a profound impact on the American theater landscape.


Note: This profile was written in or before 2010.
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John Malkovich Facts

Birth NameJohn Gavin Malkovich
OccupationActor, Producer
BirthdayDecember 9, 1953 (70)
SignSagittarius
BirthplaceCharleston, West Virginia, USA
Height6' 2" (1m88)  How tall is John Malkovich compared to you?

Selected Filmography

Mulholland Falls
Deepwater Horizon
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Red
Red 2
Secretariat
Of Mice And Men
Being John Malkovich
Warm Bodies
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