Aside from work, what do you believe in?

If we take style to mean a manner of doing something, could you articulate the John Malkovich style? Not really, because it’s not something I think about much — what I am or what I do. But I’ve always felt style is the only constant in life. By style I mean, simply, the way you move through life. If you get sad news, how do you respond? What do you do if you’re angry, if you’re amused, if you’re moved? That’s what style is. It’s not really up to me to say what mine is.

The book has a long interview with you where you say: “I’m capable of belief, at least inside the theater. Outside of the theater, not so much.” Why? Because that’s what my life has taught me. It took me seven years of analysis to learn that when people said something, it isn’t necessarily what they meant. I’m not very clever. I remember once meeting the head of a country — I won’t say which one — at a dinner one night after a performance in a faraway land. He kept telling me about how uncorrupt the country was because he was running it. I think he’s still in prison. That’s what I mean. Theater, it’s a perfect world. Life is more like making a movie: push a boulder up a hill every day and hope it doesn’t flatten you. So I’ve always felt most at home in the theater — at home with myself, my emotions, my colleagues, their emotions, with how we express them. That’s harder to find in life.about:blank

Aside from work, what do you believe in? I believe in people, generally. I believe in humanity, somewhat. I have a great mistrust of ideology. Maybe even more than I do religion. I’m not a believer, but I don’t make some big show of it. I’m wary of all the things that people believe that make them think they’re them.

Aside from Charlie Sheen’s work, what might you turn to when you’re trying to combat existential malaise? I’m not very existential because I’m not profound. So many people think a lot about this or that. I don’t think about this or that. I just do this or that.

Hard to say. That’s my problem.

That makes me think of your being able to find belief in the theater more easily than outside. So many things in life are kind of unsolvable and therefore, at a certain point, incredibly tiresome. People feel that and then absolutely know the opposite is true. As they say in New Jersey, “g’head.” I don’t know.

I want to go back to the line that you quoted from “Death of a Salesman”: “Life is a casting off.” You’re 70 now. What are you casting off? You have to let go of the past, of connections. At this age, there are people who are dead now that were very close to me. There are people I love to have a conversation with — who I sometimes dream of and have the conversation in dreams — that I’ll never see again. That’s a natural part of life. You have to let it go. It’s cast off in the sense that it’s allowed to float away. It’s also not weighing you down. It’s gone.about:blank

And what are you holding on to? Family, work, friends. Not as many as I used to because some people close to me didn’t choose to maintain that relationship, and sometimes I didn’t choose to, which, of course, is everyone’s choice. I just, as Joan Didion said, play it as it lays.

— John Malkovich, excerpts from “John Malkovich on (Really) Being John Malkovich” interview by David Marchese (NY Times, January 28, 2024)

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Portrait: Swissgart