Creator / John Malkovich

"I have driven school buses, sold egg rolls and painted houses, and I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I hadn't gone into acting. Mind you, it's a great life, going around pretending you're other people and getting paid ridiculous sums of money for it."

John Gavin Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor of Croatian, English, Scottish, French, and German descent.

He is known for playing creepy psychopaths extremely well, and has made his fame in films such as The Killing Fields, Empire of the Sun, Dangerous Liaisons, Con Air, In the Line of Fire, and Being John Malkovich. A master of the Creepy Monotone, and can either be quietly understated or be a Large Ham of astronomical proportions. He also appeared in a cameo in Adaptation. during the filming of Being John Malkovich.

He has now branched into the small screen, having played the infamous pirate Blackbeard in NBC's Crossbones, the recurring role of Grigor Andolov in Showtime's Billions, Hercule Poirot in the BBC's The ABC Murders, a Pope opposite Jude Law in HBO's The New Pope, and a hapless NASA scientist in Netflix's Space Force. He is also the owner of a fairly popular restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal. And also appeared in the song SPICY by CL.

Malkovich lost most of his life savings by investing in Bernie Madoff's fraudulent Ponzi scheme in 2008, and has said that since that time he's become both more prolific and much less selective about the quality of the films that he agreed to appear in.

Filmography

• The Killing Fields (1984) — Al Rockoff
• Places in the Heart (1984) — Mr. Will
• Death of a Salesman (1985 TV) — Biff Loman
• Empire of the Sun (1987) — Basie
• The Glass Menagerie (1987 TV) — Tom
• Dangerous Liaisons (1988) — Vicomte de Valmont
• Of Mice and Men (1992) — Lennie Small
• Shadows and Fog (1992) — Paul the clown
• Heart of Darkness (1993) — Kurtz
• Alive (1993) — Old Carlitos
• In the Line of Fire (1993) — Mitch Leary
• Con Air (1997) — Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom
• The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) — Athos
• Rounders (1998) — Teddy KGB
• Being John Malkovich (1999) — John Horatio Malkovich
• The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) — King Charles VII of France
• Les Misérables (2000) — Javert
• Shadow of the Vampire (2000) — F. W. Murnau
• Knockaround Guys (2001) — Teddy Deserve
• Ripley's Game (2002) — Tom Ripley
• Adaptation. (2002) — Himself ^note as himself
• Napoléon (2002) — Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
• Johnny English (2003) — Pascal Sauvage
• The Libertine (2004) — King Charles II of England
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) — Humma Kavula
• Colour Me Kubrick (2005) — Alan Conway
• Eragon (2006) — Galbatorix
• Beowulf (2007) — Unferth
• Changeling (2008) — Rev. Gustav Briegleb
• Burn After Reading (2008) — Osborne Cox
• Jonah Hex (2010) — Quentin Turnbull
• Red (2010) — Marvin Boggs
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) — Bruce Brazos
• Red 2 (2013) — Marvin Boggs
• Cesar Chavez (2014) — Bogdanovich Senior
• Casanova Variations (2014) — Giacomo Casanova
• Penguins of Madagascar (2015) — Dave the Octopus
• 100 Years (filmed in 2015, to be released in 2115) ^note A film directed by Robert Rodriguez that is not supposed to be watched until 100 years have passed, mirroring the 100 years it takes to create the final blend of the Louis XIII French cognac brand, which sponsored the thing.
• Deepwater Horizon (2016) — Don Vidrine
• Bird Box (2018) — Douglas
• Mile 22 (2018) — James Bishop / "Mother"
• Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) — Piers
• The ABC Murders (2019) — Hercule Poirot
• Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile (2019) — Judge Edward D. Cowart
• Home Movie: The Princess Bride (2020) — The Clergyman
• The New Pope (2020) — Sir John Brannox / Pope John Paul III
• Ava (2020) — Duke
• Mr. Blake at Your Service! (2023) — Andrew Blake
• Ripley (2024) — Reeves Minot

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Tropes found in his works:

• Bald of Evil: He's bald and plays a lot of evil bastards. He even said going bald allowed him to go from playing brooding lovers and generic leading men to more interesting villain and character actor roles.
• Creepy Monotone: One of his trademarks is to make pretty much any line of dialogue sound terrifying by saying it in a slow, drawling and nearly robotic manner.
• Cunning Linguist: He's fluent in French due to having lived in France for years, although he still has a distinctive American accent. It's best seen in the original version of Mr. Blake at Your Service!, where he has no Same Language Dub.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of his characters are very witty, although usually in a very insulting way, and are masters at withering insults.
• Fake Nationality: Numerous examples:
  • Fake Brit in Mary Reilly, Colour Me Kubrick, Crossbones, The New Pope and Mr. Blake at Your Service!.
  • Fake Russian in Rounders and Billions.
  • He has played Frenchmen in Dangerous Liaisons, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, Les Misérables, Napoléon, and Johnny English.
  • He starred as Agatha Christie's iconic Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot in The ABC Murders.
• Faux Affably Evil: Many of his villains are exceptionally polite and definitely not to be trusted.
• Grumpy Old Man: Throughout the 2000s and 2010s he's played a lot of cantankerous, bitter old men. It's often a shock for people used to these roles to see what a laid back, introspective person he is off-camera.
• Jerkass: No one plays condescending, irritable, egotistical or just plain unpleasant men like Malkovich.
• Large Ham: When the situation calls for it, he can bring the ham in spectacular fashion.
• Production Posse: He was directed four times by experimental Chilean filmmaker Raoul Ruiz.
• Renaissance Man: Accomplished in acting, directing, fashion design, and business ownership.

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