John Malkovich joins WIRED to answer his most searched questions from Google. What was the hardest part about being in "Death of a Salesman" on Broadway? Can he speak French? What does he think of Bill Hader's SNL impression of him? John answers all these questions and more!
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00:00 I'm John Malkovich and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
00:05 Whoa, excuse me. Stop there.
00:09 John Malkovich. Long hair. Well, I had very long hair until it fell out when I was probably 23 or 24.
00:23 And it's probably not ideal for an actor, but really I don't care at all. John Malkovich Oreos.
00:31 Oreos probably refers to having to eat tons of Oreos during the filming of a movie called Rounders.
00:41 I think they liked that it was big. It's a fairly out there performance, I'd say.
00:50 Where I played a character called Teddy KGB who ate Oreos constantly. John Malkovich quote,
00:59 "Rounders pay that man his money or from dangerous liaisons beyond my control."
01:09 And I think those are probably the most quoted that I can think of. John Malkovich Ripley.
01:17 It's a series of books, wonderful books, I think about a pretty solidly sociopathic
01:28 young boy who grew up in New York and goes to Europe and starts a whole new life.
01:41 Let's say he starts it by doing things to people that aren't very nice. Eventually,
01:46 I ended up playing Ripley in a film called Ripley's Game. And the film was done in about 2000,
01:55 2001 with the Italian director Liliana Cavani. John Malkovich, the new look, takes place during
02:06 the end of the Nazi occupation in Paris. All the action centers around principally two figures,
02:14 Coco Chanel played by Juliette Binoche and Christian Dior, who is played by Ben Mendelsohn,
02:22 but also includes the designers Balenciaga, Balmain, Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, etc.
02:29 And I play Lucien Le Long, who owned his own fashion house and he
02:35 employed all of these great designers, including Christian Dior.
02:44 [SIGHS]
02:46 Broadway. I only did Death of a Salesman in 1984, which was with Dustin Hoffman
02:54 playing Willie Lohman, the titular salesman. The hardest thing I think about Broadway,
03:01 or any, say, American or English theater where I've also worked, is the eight show a week thing,
03:10 which is also conversely the only thing that makes it economically feasible at all. And also
03:17 weirdly artistically, generally, the more tired you are, the more sick you are of doing something,
03:24 the better it is. It's just the way it works. John Malkovich, Con Air, a film from the 90s
03:31 produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, of course, had great success in producing movies, principally,
03:40 I guess you'd say, action movies, directed by Simon West with the cast of Nicolas Cage,
03:48 Johnny Cusack, Bing Raims, Steve Buscemi, David Chappelle, oddly enough, believe it or not,
03:57 super popular film, which people will still like. John Malkovich, Video Game. I did a video
04:06 voiceover. Sometimes when you do things like that, you have a line which, let's say,
04:14 might be underwhelming, and they ask you to do it 3,000 times in 3,000 variations. When you just go,
04:23 you know, I think I could do it if I were asleep. Pretty sure I can do it while I'm awake. Why don't
04:30 we just make up a better line? And then we won't need 8,000 readings, but maybe we just need 10
04:39 or 12. John Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons. Dangerous Liaisons is a novel by a French
04:47 artillery officer called Chauderlot de la Clos, end of the 18th century. We did a film of it,
04:54 we being Stephen Frears, Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer, Keanu Reeves, Uma Thurman, and that was
05:02 in 1988. It was felt that I was very miscast. In the words of Charlie, Willie Loman's next door
05:13 neighbor in Death of His Husband, I think I was liked, but not well liked. Can John Malkovich
05:19 speak French? Yes, I've done three or four films in French. I've had a house there for 30 years.
05:28 I speak French, but you find with languages, it's something you really have to practice. I did a film
05:36 of Joan of Arc with Luc Besson, and I had a driver, he was called Bruno. I love Bruno because
05:44 when I ask him something, like, "What time is the call tomorrow?" He would answer everything like
05:52 this, but everything, "Je ne sais pas." And sometimes they abbreviate it just to "C'est pas,"
05:58 I don't know. One day we were driving through the town he grew up in. I asked him, "What's the name
06:04 of the river?" "Je ne sais pas." John Malkovich, when he was young. I grew up in a little town
06:14 called Benton, Illinois. It's about 300 miles straight south of Chicago, Illinois. I read a lot
06:22 and love sports. John Malkovich, Empire of the Sun. Empire of the Sun is a film Steven Spielberg
06:32 asked me to do. It was based on the book by J.G. Ballard. I played a kind of ne'er-do-well
06:40 traveler, let's say. Steven is the only person I ever worked with who I felt could make a movie
06:48 alone. He's quite a good actor. He has the best recipe for tuna fish. He knows how to make the
06:56 best shaving cream for props. He knows how to fly the model planes. John Malkovich's children.
07:04 I have two children. They're grown up now and we have a granddaughter. I don't like to talk about
07:10 them much, so not for any reason except just to leave them alone. John Malkovich, Bill Hader.
07:19 One of the times I did Saturday Night Live, he played an Italian character who was, I think,
07:27 Italian-Italian. The joke was he didn't really speak much English and he spoke with a very heavy
07:34 accent. It just made fun of the way I speak, which is sort of overly clear and super mannered.
07:42 Funny skit, because he's funny. Where does John Malkovich live? I live in Massachusetts. We have
07:53 a little granddaughter and she's there before it was because it was a very quick trip to Europe
07:59 where I still work. John Malkovich, SNL Christmas. This is referring to a skit I did. I read to
08:08 small children about what would really happen if Santa had a sleigh with some flying reindeer.
08:16 Everyone catches on fire and everyone dies and it's all impossible and they just have to live
08:21 with it. John Malkovich's clothing. I said once on Saturday Night Live, "Hi, I'm John Malkovich
08:30 and these are my clothes." Clothing, I think, probably refers to the fact that I did 24,
08:38 26 fashion lines of menswear collections. John Malkovich, Killing Fields. Killing Fields was
08:46 a movie which was about the journalist Sidney Schomburg covering the gang who took over
08:54 Cambodia. I learned a lot of things, I think, mostly about filmmaking. I learned a lot of
09:01 Cambodian swear words and oddities from all my Cambodian colleagues on it. They were phrases like
09:09 "If you're not going to paddle the boat, at least don't leave your foot in the water."
09:18 We made it through all the boards. I was hoping for "Why is John Malkovich famous?" but
09:24 bummer, I didn't get it because that's a great one but I'm not sure it's answerable, is it?
09:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]