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John Malkovich [1953-0] American

Rank: 102
Actor

John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, director, and producer. He has appeared in more than 70 films. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award nominations.

Design, Best, Dad, Education, Failure, Famous, Humor, Travel

Quote	Tags	Rank
Failure's a natural part of life.	Failure	101
I always wanted to be fashionable.		102
I like design, I like details, to me it is just another form of self-expression.	Design	103
Fashion is chaotic, and it can be an aggravation, too, but it is at its best when it allows you to express yourself.	Best	104
I don't lose my temper very often now, and if I do, it's well deserved.		105
People always say life is short. I've never been convinced of that - mine seems to have a tendency to go on and on.		106
I am inspired by the appearance of a bohemian of the new millennium.		107
I am inspired by the appearance of a bohemian of the new millennium. I thought it was necessary to update the figure of the bohemian, but not in the traditional way.		108
Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.		109
People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you'll never see the headlines say, 'Six billion people got along rather well today.' You'll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.		110
In New York in the Forties or Fifties, everybody's in a suit, an overcoat and a hat.		111
I know for a fact that a lot of actors are desperate and unhappy if their careers are not progressing at what they think is the correct rate. They just go crazy if they're not working. I don't feel I'd be that way. You can always get a few people together and put on a play. Maybe not in New York or L.A., but in a lot of other towns, you can.		112
If I had spent as much time in the weight room as I did designing football uniforms, I probably would have had a free college education.	Education	113
I just start with a pencil and paper. I don't want something too trendy, too fashion-forward. I don't want to make something I consider a regular person couldn't wear with blue jeans. But I don't want to make something that other people make, either - like a skinny black suit in a shiny material that you can buy anywhere.		114
If you don't interfere with me, I'll always do something really good.		115
Scary monsters are like Hula Hoops. They come in and out of fashion.		116
Utopia means elsewhere.		117
Nothing you do particularly matters. But I'm not sure that's a great excuse for doing it poorly.		118
Theater is so ephemeral, and I love that.		119
I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that - the ghosts you chase you never catch.		120
I haven't physically attacked anyone in a couple of years.		121
I don't care what other people think. I don't think it matters.		122
I'd hate to see any film I'm involved in fail, especially artistically but also business-wise.		123
It's not a gift of mine, but one given to me, to be able to criticise myself and not be crushed, by myself or by others.		124
I always liked clothes; since I was very, very young, I was interested. I studied costume as part of my theatre education.		125
I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it's obviously a form of stupidity.		126
I'm more comfortable with whatever's wrong with me than my father was whenever he felt he failed or didn't measure up to the standard he set.	Dad	201
I've permitted myself to learn and to fail with some regularity. And that is probably the one thing I was given, and that I'm still grateful for.		202
You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.		203
It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.		204
If you're too smart it can limit you because you spend so much time thinking that you don't do anything.		205
I don't understand how somebody wouldn't have a sense of humor about themselves.	Humor	206
Imagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part.		207
When you do a really good play, the audience and the performers are looking into the same looking glass, the same microscope. And the specimen they are looking at is human life and that's why I do it, that's why I like it.		208
I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.		209
Most filmmakers' entire body of knowledge is of other movies. When they describe things, they describe them in relation to other movies. That's why we have so many cyclical movies that look like other movies. But I'm not cynical. I even go to some of those movies.		210
I probably have more female friends than any man I've ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they're generally mentally tougher, and they're better listeners, and they're more capable of surviving things.		211
I have driven school buses, sold egg rolls and painted houses, and I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I hadn't gone into acting. Mind you, it's a great life, going around pretending you're other people and getting paid ridiculous sums of money for it.		212
I know fashion can be intensely goofy, but it is something I've always taken pretty seriously.		213
Even if you do succeed most people wouldn't notice anyway.		214
I'm more likely to lose my temper on a film set than almost anywhere. Often the level of idiocy is so exalted that it's impossible to comprehend.		215
I still have a temper, I suppose.		216
My father was a very contradictory man.		217
I don't want a trillion-dollar empire to run.		218
We have a tendency to think everyone's idiotic and everyone's only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There's great truth in that, I suppose, but then it's also not true.		219
I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.		220
I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.		221
Well, I like to have fun at work.		222
The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.		223
I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not treating patients.		224
'Secretariat' was such a magnificent animal, unbelievably beautiful and powerful. It's always nice to see something that close to perfection, a reason to celebrate.		225
I think 1973 was the nadir of fashion. When you watch the coverage from that era, you're struck by the astonishing ugliness of the clothes.		226
I'm very much a typical midwesterner, and I don't think the condition is curable.		301
Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it.	Design	302
I was never a fanatical movie person.		303
Most films, it doesn't matter if you see them or not.		304
I believe in humans.		305
I don't remember my life before I had children.		306
I'm not a very skeptical person.		307
Sigmund Freud said we act out our own dreams, but if you are only an actor you are not acting out your own dream. You are simply participating in someone else's dream.		308
We're all animals.		309
I'm a little bit of a fabric lunatic.		310
Most of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house all by themselves.		311
I'm not a Method actor. I don't believe acting should be psychodrama. I look within myself and see what I can find to play the role with. If I'm playing a blind man, I don't go around blindfolded for days. A lot of good actors would, but I don't go in for that very much. I like to just make it up as I go along.		312
I'll never be the biggest kind of star; I'll be like Bob Duvall, respected as an actor but a lot of people can't identify the face. I don't have the personality of a big star, or the looks of a Mel Gibson or a Paul Newman, or the style of a George C. Scott.		313
I lost seventy pounds eating nothing but Jello for 4 months. But of course there is great variety in the colors! I think, if I remember correctly, it's 230 calories for a whole bowl. Maybe 270? In the 5th month, I added fruit.		314
I grew up in the Midwest, quite far from any ocean or any beach, a million miles. I think for kids who grew up where I did, the idea of California, surfing and beach life was so exotic and glamorous.		315
I'm a little bit phobic about stains on my clothes, so I never travel without a little packet of organic stain remover.	Travel	316
I brought my first fall/winter line to New York, and it was confiscated by U.S. Customs. They asked, 'What is the value of this?' I said, 'I'm not so good with existential questions.'		317
I think when I went to psychoanalysis, I actually believed that people said what they meant. This was my whole problem.		318
I think with actors, if you just don't set about trying to crush their confidence immediately, you're usually OK.		319
Politics is not really my thing.		320
The most evocative thing to me is probably when a writer and a group of performers can collectively put together something compelling that asks the really simple question: 'How do we live?'		321
I don't want to be boring. But that's not always easy.		322
I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There's great truth in that.		323
I wouldn't say anything I ever did in film would be something I'd use the word proud about. I've done better work in the theater.		324
I'm supposed to be a pretty good theater actor.		325
My life before children I don't really remember. I've heard references to it, but I really don't remember.		326
Of course it's trivial, but then most things are.		401
There's a reason screens are only this thick.		402
You have to do things people see or you don't get to do anything.		403
I don't think my parents know what I do.		404
I wasn't really raised to be the type of person to have doubts.		405
I only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.		406
Where women are concerned, the rule is never to go out with anyone better dressed than you.		407
I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid.		408
I think people seem to sort of associate me with danger. And I don't see that at all.		409
I'm an atheist.		410
I don't mind what I play, really.		411
Quite often - a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too.		412
I mean, anything that money can be made off will never be a problem to make, no matter what it is.		413
You know, I'm really not interested in someone telling me that something's good or bad.		414
I like very much to do movies.		415
I've done quite a few big American films.		416
I'm not a control maniac.		417
I don't throw things or yell.		418
I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren't available to men before or after, just a very brief period.		419
Actors generally get to do things you probably shouldn't do in real life - well, at least as much as one might like to or be tempted to. Though I suppose a lot of actors just go ahead and do it, don't they?		420
Every country has their problems.		421
You can't take a play someone has directed and do whatever you want with it.		422
You have to play your characters, not like them.		423
Unlike my grandfather or my brother, I've actually been able to make some money at a racetrack.		424
Anybody doing something brings something to it.		425
It never occurred to me to be an actor.		426
You can be a mason and build 50 buildings, but it doesn't mean you can design one.	Design	501
I don't wake up drenched in sweat because I haven't been on stage in years.		502
I don't need to be liked.		503
I go around the world, working with all kinds of people who I love.		504
I prefer to conduct my life based on how I treat people.		505
I don't have a saviour or a royal family.		506
When you think of how history is revealed, we know certain things to be facts at certain periods of time, which turn out not to be so factual as time marches on.		507
Things are so much global and Americanised.		508
I never really did a western western.		509
I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character.		510
As an actor there are no drawbacks.		511
I'm more boring and more conservative.		512
I don't like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.		513
I don't mind tracksuits. At the track.		514
The projects I look for to produce or direct would not be ones in which I would want to act.		515
I don't really go through a process, it goes through me.		516
A dog that has rabies probably will do things it wouldn't do if it didn't have rabies. But that doesn't change the fact that it has rabies.		517
My father was an exceptionally strong influence on me.		518
I can see how, given a certain degree of sensitivities, proclivities and rage, I could have ended up differently.		519
I admire sensible, kind people. They're not often famous.	Famous	520
I love Chicago, but in a lot of ways it's a disappointment. You can work there for years and years, and because you're in Chicago, you don't get the recognition. It has some of the best theater in the country, but when they shoot a movie there, they bring in all their actors.		521
I have at times spoken with my peers and the head of the actors' union about why we're not paid when we appear in, say, a 'TMZ' production, but there seems to be no real interest in combatting it.		522

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