{"id":662525,"date":"2026-10-31T08:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/662525\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T08:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:28:12","slug":"john-malkovich-im-72-years-old-so-the-end-is-nigh-im-aware-of-that-every-day-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/662525\/","title":{"rendered":"John Malkovich: \u2018I\u2019m 72 years old. So the end is nigh. I\u2019m aware of that every day\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Malkovich<\/a> and Steve Buscemi<\/a> form quite a pair. The former, upright in a western shirt decorated with (appropriately, as we shall see) cantering horses, speaks slowly in the style of an eccentric, but friendly, potentate. Buscemi, more informal, throws in merry asides from the corner of the room. What a way to spend an afternoon.<\/p>\n

I last saw Buscemi<\/a> about two years ago, alongside Aidan Quinn, in a staged reading of Sam Shepard\u2019s play Ages of the Moon at the Abbey Theatre, in Dublin. They have now made it into a film.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Aidan directed. We\u2019re submitting it to Sundance, and we\u2019ll see what happens,\u201d he bubbles.<\/p>\n

He was then shooting the hit TV series Wednesday in Dublin. Was that fun?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, we loved it there,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were in Dalkey. We rented a house. Oh man, when I wasn\u2019t working I was in the pub at four o\u2019clock, having my Guinness. It was just the best feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are in London principally to discuss the old friends\u2019 work on Martin McDonagh<\/a>\u2019s incoming Wild Horse Nine. Praised at its premiere at Venice International Film Festival \u2013 where Malkovich won best actor \u2013 the serious comedy follows two CIA operatives as they visit Easter Island, almost 4,000km out in the Pacific, in the run-up to the notorious Chilean coup of 1973. <\/p>\n

Malkovich plays the troublingly experienced Chris Carlisle. Sam Rockwell is the younger, less weathered Lee Chesterfield. Buscemi, as their station chief, frets in Santiago.<\/p>\n

It has long been claimed that the US intelligence services were involved in the coup that overthrew Chile\u2019s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. McDonagh\u2019s screenplay does nothing to undermine that theory. Indeed, Malkovich\u2019s terminally ill character, often hinting at personal involvement in the JFK assassination, is a walking (and leaky) encyclopedia of US imperial malfeasance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things I knew well because I had written and directed an adaptation of Don DeLillo\u2019s novel Libra, which is the exact same take,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"WildWild Horse Nine: Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich. Photograph: Diego Araya Corval\u00e1n\/Searchlight Pictures <\/p>\n

He did indeed stage a version of DeLillo\u2019s riff on Lee Harvey Oswald for Chicago\u2019s storied Steppenwolf theatre company in 1994.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as Chile goes, I do a piece called The Infamous Ramirez Hoffman, from Roberto Bola\u00f1o\u2019s book Nazi Literature in the Americas, which is about a Chilean air-force cadet and sky-writing poet and serial killer and torturer of left-wing students under the Pinochet regime. So both are topics I was long familiar with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wild Horse Nine is cracking entertainment, strong on intrigue and wise about mortality, but I do wonder what these two Americans made of a London-Irish man like McDonagh poking around in their country\u2019s dirty laundry.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccurate is accurate,\u201d Malkovich says with a fluvial laugh. \u201cIt seems a very clear-eyed view \u2013 a very likely view \u2013 of a still-contentious story. Although I don\u2019t think it should be contentious at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this all ancient history now? How many viewers will recall the terrible cynicism of the contemporaneous US intelligence services? Then again, maybe less has changed than we would like to believe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are means and ends, and it is supposed that the means are justified by the ends,\u201d Malkovich says. \u201cI understand the ends. They might argue that, without such things, all of South America and all of Europe and all of Asia \u2013 the whole domino theory \u2013 would have been communist or Soviet or some kind of satellite states. Much of Europe was, of course, but some means are just not justifiable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SteveSteve Buscemi. Photograph: Bobby Doherty\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

Malkovich, now 72, and Buscemi, a sprightly 68, are old enough to remember the Kennedy assassination. They can certainly recall the turbulent aftermath.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up hearing these conspiracies,\u201d Buscemi says. \u201cI have an early memory of seeing Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

Really? He can remember seeing that mysterious nightclub owner murdering the chief suspect in the JFK shooting? <\/p>\n

\u201cI was watching it with my mother. I couldn\u2019t believe it. So there\u2019s something there. I don\u2019t know what it is. But it just seems unlikely that he acted alone. Reading the script, it was actually sort of surprising that Martin made that decision: oh yes, the CIA was involved in this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world has long been puzzled by John Malkovich. Raised in southern Illinois \u2013 his father was a conservation director, his mother a newspaper proprietor \u2013 he was still in his mid-20s when, in 1976, he helped establish Steppenwolf with Joan Allen, Gary Sinise and Glenne Headly (his wife from 1982 until 1988). <\/p>\n

Decent smallish roles came along over the next decade in films such as Steven Spielberg\u2019s Empire of the Sun and Roland Joffe\u2019s The Killing Fields. He scored an Oscar nomination in 1985, for Places of the Heart. But, until his impressively smooth turn in Dangerous Liaisons, from 1988, he was seen chiefly as a theatre man. <\/p>\n

By the end of the century his peculiar screen persona \u2013 urbane extraterrestrial with a musical voice \u2013 was sufficiently understood for Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman to riff on it in the offbeat comedy Being John Malkovich.<\/p>\n

What are his politics? I have heard that he hasn\u2019t voted since George McGovern lost the 1972 US presidential election to Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would be correct,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Why? The sums tell us that must also have been the first presidential election in which he voted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m realistic,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t we all need to add our own tiny contribution to change? <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is change?\u201d he says gnomically. \u201cThese things didn\u2019t happen under the last administration or the one before? Of course they did. They happened under Kennedy. By the way, the CIA assassinated the president from Vietnam, too \u2013 of South Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WildWild Horse Nine: Steve Buscemi, Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich. Photograph: Diego Araya Corval\u00e1n\/Searchlight Pictures <\/p>\n

Malkovich is referring to the death of Ngo Dinh Diem during the 1963 coup in the Republic of Vietnam. Pay attention. This interview is increasingly taking on the quality of a late James Ellroy book.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a whole other planet. Elections? I\u2019m not a big party person,\u201d the actor says. \u201cI don\u2019t look at a problem and resort to ideology as the fixer of that problem. I resort to a solution as being the way to fix a problem. That doesn\u2019t necessarily need to be by political party A or political party B. We have a lot of problems we should concentrate on solving, not concentrate on keeping political power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Malkovich and Buscemi \u2013 an unmistakable Brooklyn boy, who worked as a New York City firefighter \u2013 came up through the world of theatre. Neither has yet deserted the medium. I wonder if that sets them apart from actors who found their feet on screen. I sense a dedication to \u201cthe word\u201d from these actors.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me they aren\u2019t even cousins,\u201d Malkovich says of the two disciplines. \u201cActing in theatre is a completely different thing than acting in film. But I could care less if somebody has a theatre background. You have to have a theatre background to like it. It\u2019s a very hard thing to enter into after you\u2019ve done movies, because there\u2019s a lot you won\u2019t understand about it. To me, you either have the theatre bug or you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

We know theatre will survive. Someone will always be yelling out Shakespeare or Pinter to a gathering, however small. But cinema looks to be in the throes of another nervous breakdown. It survived telly. It survived video games. Can it now survive streaming? It is a very different business from the one Malkovich first encountered in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s changed is the impetus to get somebody to a movie theatre,\u201d he says. \u201cThis really started happening long before Covid. To get someone to see something that is for adult human beings and not a fanboy thing, that\u2019s very difficult \u2013 and made more difficult by each technological advancement and platform that arrives. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was 19 you would go to see Last Tango in Paris at a theatre 170 miles away \u2013 at the university town of the University of Illinois in Champaign. That was the only time you\u2019d ever see it. It wouldn\u2019t exist otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t put off the sportification of art forever. Malkovich is high on the list of most distinguished living actors never to have won an Oscar. He has been nominated twice \u2013 for Places in the Heart, in 1985, and for In the Line of Fire, in 1994 \u2013 but probably did not come close on either occasion. <\/p>\n

\"InIn the Line of Fire: John Malkovich in Wolfgang Petersen’s 1993 film. Photograph: Columbia Pictures <\/p>\n

His time may now have arrived. Virtually every awards pundit has him neck and neck in a two-horse race with the Irish actor Andrew Scott, who is moving as Ian Charleson in Elsinore, for the best-actor statuette.<\/p>\n

Does Malkovich concern himself with the campaign or does he leave all that to the strategists at Searchlight Pictures?<\/p>\n

\u201cI really let other people deal with it,\u201d he says. \u201cStudios like Searchlight make these kind of films. There are a few others, but not many any more. Because many of the big studios, if they exist any more, went for these tent-pole superhero thingies.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Andrew Scott could be unbeatable at the Oscars. Unless this happensOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t have Batman on your side, Academy Award nominations can help generate interest in your films.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to get people into the theatre, and that\u2019s the way that\u2019s been chosen \u2013 maybe by Harvey Weinstein, maybe by others \u2013 to make it a kind of year-long campaign. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not chosen by me. I\u2019m not a campaigner. But I told Searchlight I would do it. I\u2019m doing it as much as I can because I go away to direct a play for two months in Japan. I do it for the film because that\u2019s the way to get people to see the film in the cinema.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t always such a palaver.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like that at all. No, that\u2019s true. You got a nomination. You said, \u2018Oh well. Oh cool. That\u2019s fantastic.\u2019 If you went, okay. If you didn\u2019t, okay. You went and Prince blew you a kiss. You sat by Sir David Lean. I watched the elephants from Passage to India pooping in the foyer of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and being followed with shovels. It was great. It was fine!\u201d<\/p>\n

Malkovich recalls, back then, driving up to the auditorium with his manager, the late Phyllis Carlyle, who warned him there would be a lot of people milling about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Okay, well, let\u2019s just go in the side door.\u2019 I remember she was right in my face, this far from my face. She went like this\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He clicks his fingers loudly in my direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said, \u2018Honey, there\u2019s no side door to the Oscars!\u2019 And I was, like, \u2018Okay, easy.\u2019 But things have changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WildWild Horse Nine: Steve Buscemi, John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell with director Martin McDonagh (centre) and costar Mariana di Girolamo. Photograph: Vivien Killilea\/Getty <\/p>\n

Malkovich looks well in the comfortable surroundings of a luxury hotel. The voice is strong. His humour is still sharp. He manages, however, a fragile poignancy in Wild Horse Nine. Chris Carlisle has a sinister background, but we come to admire his dry fatalism in the face of his own death. There is much about mortal endings here. That must have given Malkovich pause for thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Martin already expressed it beautifully,\u201d Malkovich says, referring to McDonagh\u2019s script. \u201cHe is someone at the very end of his life \u2013 actually past his due date, past his expiration date. He got six months, and he forgot that he has already had those six months. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, there is not much to explore in that. Only in the sense that I\u2019m 72 years old. So the end is nigh, and that could be today, tomorrow or in 10 years. Or one year. Or three months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malkovich says this in an impressively even tone. There is nothing Beckettian in the delivery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m aware of that every day,\u201d he says. \u201cI have two small grandchildren. You hope you live long enough to help them, be involved in their lives, as long as you can. But apart from that I\u2019ve had a wonderful life, and if it ends, okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

He smiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, it will definitely end. But if it ends today or tomorrow, then that\u2019s the way it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wild Horse Nine is in cinemas from Wednesday, November 4th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi form quite a pair. The former, upright in a western shirt decorated with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[96622,298321,458,78204,210195,298318,146,85,46,72911,217807,298319,58449,3220,3871,298320,30047,130477],"class_list":["post-662525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-andrew-scott","tag-augusto-pinochet","tag-celebrities","tag-cia","tag-david-lean","tag-don-delillo","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-john-malkovich","tag-lee-harvey-oswald","tag-martin-mcdonagh","tag-oscars","tag-prince","tag-roberto-bolano","tag-sam-rockwell","tag-steve-buscemi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}