John Malkovich
Actor, director and producer John Malkovich is a leading figure of both stage and screen. He has had a profound impact on American theatre as a guiding member of Chicago's groundbreaking Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and he has intrigued filmgoers with his finely etched screen performances for nearly twenty years. In 1998 John Malkovich joined producing partners Lianne Halfon and Russ Smith in forming the production company Mr. Mudd, whose first production was the celebrated film Ghost World. His feature directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs starring Academy Award® nominee Javier Bardem, followed in 2003. As an actor and producer, John Malkovich most recently wrapped principal on two Mudd productions. The Libertine stars Johnny Depp and Samantha Morton in a biopic about John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester. The other is Art School Confidential, directed by Terry Zwigoff and written by Screenwriter/Cartoonist Dan Clowes, both of Ghost World fame.
Malkovich is one of cinema's most in-demand actors, and works frequently in both American and international productions. He has worked with many of cinema's leading directors, making indelible impressions in such films as: Liliana Cavani's Ripley's Game, Spike Jones's Being John Malkovich, Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady; Wolfgang Petersen's In the Line of Fire; Gary Sinise's Of Mice and Men; Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky; Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons; Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun; Paul Newman's The Glass Menagerie; Roland Joffé's The Killing Fields; and Robert Benton's Places in the Heart. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actor, in 1985 for Places in the Heart and in 1994 for In the Line of Fire. His performance in Places in the Heart also earned him the Best Supporting Actor Award from the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review. In 1999, he won New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor for Being John Malkovich.
He most recently appeared in Eragon based on the bestselling novel, Klimt based on Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, and the motion-capture film Beowulf directed by Robert Zemeckis. Malkovich has several projects currently in production, including Clint Eastwood's The Changeling and the Coen Brothers' film Burn After Reading.
Malkovich is a longstanding member of the groundbreaking Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. He joined the company immediately upon completing college, and between 1976 and 1982 he acted in, directed or designed sets for more than fifty Steppenwolf productions. Malkovich's debut on the New York stage in the Steppenwolf production of Sam Shepard's True West earned him an Obie Award. Other notable plays include Death of a Salesman; Slip of the Tongue; Sam Shepard's State of Shock; and Lanford Wilson's Burn This in New York, London and Los Angeles. He has directed numerous plays at Steppenwolf, including the celebrated Balm in Gilead in Chicago and off-Broadway; The Caretaker in Chicago and on Broadway; Hysteria; and Libra, which Malkovich adapted from Don DeLillo's novel.
Malkovich has also acted in several acclaimed television productions and won an Emmy Award for his performance in the telefilm Death of a Salesman, directed by Volker Schlöndorff and co-starring Dustin Hoffman. Other television credits including the recent miniseries Napoleon and the acclaimed HBO telefilm RKO 281, both garnering him Emmy Award nominations.
In addition to directing The Dancer Upstairs, John has directed three fashion shorts (Strap Hangings, Lady Behave, Hideous Man) for London based designer Bella Freud. His French stage production of Hysteria was honored with five Moliere Award nominations (2003) including best director.
In his role as producer, he and his partners have several projects on their slate. Presently, Fox Searchlight is set to release the Mandate/Mr. Mudd produced picture Juno. Juno stars Ellen Page as the title character, a whip-smart teen confronting an unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Bleeker (Cera). Juno finds her unborn child a perfect set of parents: an affluent suburban couple, Mark and Vanessa (Bateman and Garner), longing to adopt. Luckily, Juno has the support of her parents (Simmons and Janney) as she faces some tough decisions, flirts with adulthood and ultimately figures out where she belongs.
Directed by Jason Reitman. Minneapolis-based journalist and author Diablo Cody penned the script. Lianne Halfon, Russell Smith and John Malkovich produced along with Mason Novick. Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane of Mandate Pictures are the executive producers. Juno premiered as the surprise hit at the Toronto film festival, it won the top prize at the Rome film festival, and has continued to win critical and audience awards at festivals. The comedy was just nominated for 4 separate Spirit awards including Best Picture.
Which Way Home, a documentary by Sundance award winner Rebecca Cammisa, is the story of children crossing the border from Mexico into the United States and was developed with HBO. Shot in Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala and the American southwest, is currently in post-production and will be released in the summer 2008.
In the spring, he and partners will re-team with filmmaker John Walter (How to Draw a Bunny) on his adaptation of Lawrence Joseph's novel Lawyerland, which Walter is directing. Lawyerland is a work of fiction chronicling downtown Manhattan lawyers in the late 1990's, and is a scathingly hilarious view of the chasm between the spirit of the law and its practice.
In development is Triple Crossing, an adaptation of the first novel by Los Angeles Times' award-winning Paris bureau-chief, Sebastian Rotella, a thriller that centers in the most lawless triangle on earth, the South American triple borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.
Also in development is a classic crime drama set in modern Europe, with Ray Winstone attached to star and partner John Malkovich attached to direct.