“I’d always played poetic, troubled American sons, so it just hadn’t occurred to me. “I never thought about playing aristocrats or seducers before,” he says. Along with many critics, he wasn’t even sure he was the right choice for the part. Acting, he says, should be “an act of imagination, not impersonation” one doesn’t have to be black to play the Muslim leader Malcolm X.Ī turning point in his movie career, which gave him the confidence that he could play anyone if only he made good use of his imagination, was the role of the vicious Vicomte de Valmont in “Dangerous Liaisons”. In fact, imagination and creativity are key to understanding an actor who has starred in nearly 40 films over only 18 years, including “Empire of the Sun”, “The Glass Menagerie”, “Of Mice and Men” and “Being John Malkovich”, and just directed his first, “The Dancer Upstairs”, yet still claims to have “no knowledge of what a real movie is”.īecause he sees “very little cinema” and doesn’t believe in formulas or recipes for success, for every picture Malkovich builds a world of his own, places his character in it, and then, unlike those colleagues who use historical records and research to define a role, “I make it up”. The most common adjective people use to express their opinions of him - both complimentary and dismissive - is “weird”, but, with a little imagination, most of what he says and does makes sense. The moment you utter a word supposed to illustrate a certain part of his character, you realise that another one, with quite a different meaning, would suit him much better. LOS ANGELES - John Malkovich fails all attempts to describe him, even though he is not necessarily an enigma.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |