John Malkovich Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED

- I'm John Malkovich, and this is the "WIRED Autocomplete Interview." [gentle music] Whoa, excuse me, stop there. [gentle music] "John Malkovich, long hair." Well, I had very long hair until it fell out when I was probably 23 or 24. And it's probably not ideal for an actor, but really, I don't care at all. "John Malkovich, OREOs." OREOs probably refers to having to eat tons of OREOs during the filming of a movie called "Rounders." I think they liked that it was big. It's a fairly out-there performance, I'd say, where I played a character called Teddy KGB, who ate OREOs constantly. "John Malkovich quotes." "Rounders," "Pay that man his money," or from "Dangerous Liaisons," "It's beyond my control." And I think those are probably the most quoted that I can think of. "John Malkovich, Ripley." It's a series of books, wonderful books. I think, about a pretty solidly sociopathic young boy who grew up in New York and goes to Europe, and starts a whole new life, let's say. He starts it by doing things to people that aren't very nice. Eventually, I ended up playing Ripley in a film called "Ripley's Game," and the film was done in about 2000, 2001, with the Italian director, Liliana Cavani. "John Malkovich, 'The New Look,'" takes place during the end of the Nazi occupation in Paris. All the action centers around principally two figures, Coco Chanel played by Juliette Binoche, and Christian Dior, who is played by Ben Mendelsohn, but also includes the designers Balenciaga, Balmain, Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, et cetera. And I play Lucien Lelong, who owned his own fashion house and he employed all of these great designers, including Christian Dior. Broadway, I only did "Death of a Salesman" in 1984, which was with Dustin Hoffman playing Willy Loman, the titular salesman. The hardest thing I think about Broadway or any, say, American or English theater where I've also worked is the eight-show-a-week thing, which is also conversely the only thing that makes it economically feasible at all, and also weirdly, artistically, generally, the more tired you are, the more sick you are of doing something, the better it is. It's just the way it works. "John Malkovich, 'Con Air,'" a film from the '90s produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, of course, had great success in producing movies, principally, I guess, you'd say, action movies. Directed by Simon West with the cast of Nicholas Cage, Johnny Cusack, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, David Chappelle, oddly enough, believe it or not. Super popular film, which people will still like. "John Malkovich, video game." I did a video voiceover. Sometimes when you do things like that, you have a line, which, let's say, might be underwhelming, and they ask you to do it 3000 times in 3000 variations. When you just go, 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 we just make up a better line, and then we won't need 8,000 readings, but maybe we just need 10 or 12." "John Malkovich, 'Dangerous Liaisons.'" "Dangerous Liaisons" is a novel by a French artillery officer called Choderlos de Laclos, end of the 18th century. We did a film of it. We, being Stephen Frears, Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer, Keanu Reeves, Uma Thurman, and that was in 1988. It was felt that I was very miscast. In the words of Charlie, Willy Loman's next door neighbor in "Death of a Salesman," I think I was liked, but not well liked. "Can John Malkovich speak French?" Yes, I've done three or four films in French, I had a house there for 30 years. I speak French, but you find with languages, it's something you really have to practice. I did a film of Joan of Arc with Luc Besson, and I had a driver, he was called Bruno. I loved Bruno because when I asked him something like, "What time is the call tomorrow?" He would answer everything like this, but everything, [John speaking French] and sometimes they abbreviate it just to say [speaks French]. I don't know. One day we were driving through the town he grew up in. I asked him, "What's the name of the river?" [John speaking French] "John Malkovich when he was young." I grew up in a little town called Benton, Illinois. It's about 300 miles straight south of Chicago, Illinois. I read a lot and loved sports. "John Malkovich, 'Empire of the Sun.'" "Empire of the Sun" is a film Steven Spielberg asked me to do. It was based on the book by J.G. Ballard. I played a kind of ne'er do well traveler, let's say. Steven is the only person I ever worked with who I felt could make a movie alone. He's quite a good actor. He has the best recipe for tuna fish. He knows how to make the best shaving cream for props. He knows how to fly the model planes. "John Malkovich, children." I have two children. They're grown up now and we have a granddaughter. I don't like to talk about them much so, not for any reason except just to leave them alone. "John Malkovich, Bill Hader." One of the times I did "Saturday Night Live," he played an Italian character who was, I think, Italian Italian. The joke was he didn't really speak much English and he spoke with a very heavy accent. It just made fun of the way I speak, which is sort of overly clear and super mannered. Funny skit 'cause he's funny. "Where does John Malkovich live?" I live in Massachusetts. We have a little granddaughter, and she's there. Before, it was because it was a very quick trip to Europe where I still work. "John Malkovich, 'SNL' Christmas." This is referring to a skit I did. I read to small children about what would really happen if Santa had a sleigh with some flying reindeer, and everyone catches on fire and everyone dies, and it's all impossible and they just have to live with it. "John Malkovich, clothing." I said once on "Saturday Night Live," "Hi, I'm John Malkovich and these are my clothes." Clothing, I think, probably refers to the fact that I did the '24 or '26 fashion lines, men's wear collections. "John Malkovich, 'Killing Fields.'" "Killing Fields" was a movie which was about the journalist Sydney Schanberg covering the gang who took over Cambodia. I learned a lot of things, I think, mostly about filmmaking. I learned a lot of Cambodian swear words and oddities from all my Cambodian colleagues on it. They were phrases like, "If you're not going to paddle the boat, at least don't leave your foot in the water." We made it through all of the boards. I was hoping for, "Why is John Malkovich famous?" But, bummer, I didn't get it, 'cause that's a great one, but I'm not sure it's answerable, is it? [gentle music]