John Malkovich

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and two and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:23

My castaway this week is an actor. His style is dark and dangerous. You may have seen him as the Amoral Letcher in the film Dangerous Liaisons or as the would-be presidential assassin in In the Line of Fire. In fact, he was brought up in a big, noisy family in a small town in Illinois, and having read drama at university, founded with fellow actors Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre.

Presenter0:47

He first became noticed in a play about two brothers who smash up their mother's home. He went on to star on Broadway opposite Dustin Hoffman in Death of a Salesman.

Presenter0:57

He's just finished his first film as a director, The Dancer Upstairs, about a manhunt in a Latin American Republic in the throes of revolution.

Presenter1:05

Brooding sexuality may be his public face, but in private he enjoys his garden and his family.

Presenter1:11

If I have a presence, it's because I'm relaxed, he says. I've never had nerves, never once. He is John Malkovich. It's extraordinary, John, never to have nerves on the stage. How would you explain that?

John Malkovich1:24

It is very strange. I can remember in the very early days of Steppenwolf when we had an opening night, we had a little sort of niche under the make up table and I would just put on my makeup and go to sleep and they would have to sort of wake me up and say, Hey, um the show's starting.

Presenter1:43

Hmm.

Presenter1:44

And then you walk straight on and do it.

John Malkovich1:45

Greater than do it.

Presenter1:46

But at some point you have to think through who that character is. I mean, Bernardo Bertolucci, the director who's a great you've worked with him, he's a great fan of yours, he says you've got to do it somewhere. I mean, do you do it at home in the night or something? How do you know who that character is when you walk on without that preparation?

John Malkovich1:52

Yeah.

John Malkovich2:01

On stage, of course, it's very different because you re rehearse sometimes for a long period.

John Malkovich2:07

And I have a tendency also to treat performances like a rehearsal. I mean, I don't so much worry about what I did last night or what so-and-so did last night or what anybody said about it.

John Malkovich2:21

I try to continually investigate the character.

Presenter2:26

Um

John Malkovich2:26

Yeah.

Presenter2:27

But so it's a natural kind of on-the-hoof research. You don't like that kind of analytical research that some actors go in for, do you?

John Malkovich2:34

Uh not terribly so. I mean, it doesn't appeal to me enormously unless it's something very specific.

Presenter2:43

Didn't you refuse to learn how to bow for dangerous liaison? The sort of eighteenth century head of bowing entered and you said you must be joking.

John Malkovich2:52

He was there to check our bows, as it were, and um.

John Malkovich2:56

I did a bow and he said he knew two thousand bows from the period and that wasn't one he was familiar with and I said, Well now you know two thousand and one.

John Malkovich3:05

What about

Presenter3:06

What about when you were the blind man in in Places of the Heart? Again, you were supposed to go and spend six weeks at a blind school and you again you didn't.

John Malkovich3:14

No, I went to the used car lot. Bought yourself a motor installer. Yeah, bought myself a Studebanker, Silverhawks.

Presenter3:16

Bought yourself a motor instead of

Presenter3:21

But why didn't you why didn't you need to know how to tap, how to cane, how to read bricks?

John Malkovich3:26

I went for almost two hours, and looked around, and I saw, I think, what I needed to see. Um normally I don't do that kind of work, but principally because I'd rather make it up.

John Malkovich3:41

I think analytical or behavioural study.

John Malkovich3:47

Really at some point will land at imitation, not imagination.

Presenter3:54

Okay, so uh and now you're a director, which I want to talk about later on, but now you have to imagine you're going to be cast away on a desert island and you take only eight pieces of music with you.

Presenter4:03

Tell me about the first one you want to take.

John Malkovich4:06

This is a Van Morrison song which which I think is from a disc called Back on Top if I'm not mistaken, called When the Leaves Come Falling Down. I've always so loved his voice. He always has this sort of hopeful sense of loss. Um I particularly like this this song.

Speaker 34:28

I saw you standing with the wind

John Malkovich4:31

Uh

John Malkovich4:32

Down the rain

John Malkovich4:36

In your face

Speaker 34:42

And you would think about the wisdom of the leaves.

John Malkovich4:47

Uh

John Malkovich4:49

And the place?

Presenter4:55

Anne Morrison and When the Leaves Come Falling Down. Um John Malkovich, you've played a lot of um volatile characters, a lot of aggressive characters, a lot of sinister characters. It does seem that you had quite a lot of training in high-powered argument in your childhood. It's a pretty kind of noisy household, as I said.

John Malkovich5:12

Yes, very

John Malkovich5:14

My father was a fantastic man and he was an eighty second airborne parachutist and he had that sort of Croat kind of volcanic temperament which would just seem to come out of nowhere.

Presenter5:28

Did you inherit that?

John Malkovich5:30

Yeah, sure. Much less so than him, though. Much less so.

Presenter5:32

And your brother?'Cause you had an older brother than you, Danny.

John Malkovich5:35

My brother actually

John Malkovich5:37

Even less so than me. I mean, my brother's a sort of enormous kind of gorilla-like figure. And Barry Strong was a terrific football player, American football player.

Presenter5:49

But he apparently had a pretty repulsive way of waking you up in the morning when you were kids.

John Malkovich5:53

Yeah, I had the great good fortune to share a bedroom with him my whole childhood and my wake-up call really normally would be him sitting on my head and farting. That would be, you know, good morning, it's nine AM.

Presenter6:09

But it you learn to take it, obviously. One can see that there must have been something smouldering under the surface there. He was a big fellow, so he was kind of.

John Malkovich6:14

Desert.

John Malkovich6:15

Yes, sir.

Presenter6:16

Bully and you had a temper.

John Malkovich6:18

First of all, I I think violence to a certain extent

John Malkovich6:22

Is absolutely natural. It's human. Whether it's desired or not is a second question, but I think it's very human.

Presenter6:29

How violent did it get?

John Malkovich6:31

Oh, very violent. I mean, I knocked him through windows, I chased him with the fireplace poker, I slit his throat with the butcher knife, we hit each other with bats, with fists. He tried to run me down in a car once in the yard.

John Malkovich6:46

I mean not good.

John Malkovich6:49

Not good.

Presenter6:49

And your mother apparently kind of stood by and what?

John Malkovich6:50

Mother

John Malkovich6:53

My mother was you know, she's quite philosophical and and a very good sense of humor and

John Malkovich7:00

She would just always say, No, you're brothers, you can't kill each other And you know, we would always sort of think, But why?

Presenter7:08

But isn't it fascinating that the play that you eventually did and were discovered in I mention it in the introduction, True West on Broadway was actually about two brothers who were pretty murderous towards each other and this mother who stood by?

John Malkovich7:19

Not

John Malkovich7:21

Yeah. It's very strange that and my mother

John Malkovich7:26

came to see that play and my brother, but the character I played in that play is essentially my brother, and like that character.

John Malkovich7:35

You see, I always liked my brother. I mean, my brother's very funny.

Presenter7:39

Even in those moments, it was funny.

John Malkovich7:41

He is quite funny.

Presenter7:42

You could have had a strange sense of humour to find what you're doing.

John Malkovich7:42

But no, not necessarily, because you can sometimes laugh at your rage and your impotence and someone else's turn of phrase, as it were, or turn of cheek, as it were.

Presenter7:59

So you laughed as well as suffered, eh?

John Malkovich8:02

Yeah, sir.

Presenter8:02

Although you have a lifetime distaste for bullies, don't you?

John Malkovich8:06

I don't like bullies very much of any kind.

Presenter8:09

I wonder why.

Presenter8:11

Tell me about record number two.

John Malkovich8:13

Record number two, uh Brook Penton, rainy night in Georgia.

John Malkovich8:19

When I was young, our family wasn't capable of having things like stereos and things like that because they would be mutilated. I mean, no way, out of the question. So I could only really listen to music either on my dad's stereo, which normally didn't work either and which we weren't allowed to because we were the reason why it didn't work, or on the radio, and so I would just sit on the sun porch and um listen to this song and I can just remember listening to it so many times, just another f fat kid in the Midwest on the sun porch who's supposed to be asleep.

Speaker 39:03

Uh

Presenter9:03

A rainy night in Georgia

Presenter9:10

A rainy night in Georgia

Presenter9:14

It seems like it's

John Malkovich9:16

Raining all over the world.

John Malkovich9:21

It's live.

John Malkovich9:23

And you just got to play the game.

Presenter9:32

Brookbenton and Rainy Night in Georgia and they are back, John Malkovich on the sun porch.

John Malkovich9:38

Yeah.

Presenter9:38

In Benton, Illinois. One fat kid, you say you were quite large, right? Yes.

John Malkovich9:42

Yeah

Presenter9:43

And suddenly you went on a crash diet.

John Malkovich9:43

Yeah.

John Malkovich9:45

Yes, I took it upon myself to invent a a diet, you know, th like I thought of myself as like the Scarsdale doctor of Benton, Illinois. I just ate jello for three months, but you don't call it jello here. Jelly, you call it jelly.

Presenter9:59

Jelly, jelly jelly, yeah. Like Blancmange jelly.

John Malkovich10:03

Yeah, the sort of very brightly wobbly thing, yeah. And I ate that for, I think, three or four months and lost about thirty five kilos or so.

Presenter10:03

Yeah, the sort of very brightly wobbly thing.

Presenter10:15

And have you been slim ever since, or is there

John Malkovich10:17

No, not Slim. I've been uh

Presenter10:20

Well, I mean you look so we don't think of you as a big guy.

John Malkovich10:22

No, I'm n no, I never was very heavy again. But, um

John Malkovich10:27

I was never a fantastic eater really anyway. I think I had my mother's metabolism. I never really saw her eat anything but a sort of crust of bread and a tomato.

Presenter10:37

But somehow you'd ballooned into this large teenager who needed to go on this crash time. But you always cared.

John Malkovich10:38

Somehow you

John Malkovich10:41

Yeah.

Presenter10:44

What you look like, didn't you?

John Malkovich10:47

Yeah, I've always been um uh absurdly vain.

John Malkovich10:51

I mean, it would be funny if it weren't so sad.

Presenter10:54

In what way Vane describe it to me, as a teenager or as a university student?

John Malkovich10:58

Oh, just I mean, there's a university student.

John Malkovich11:02

It was the low spark of high heeled boys look, which is the sort of long hair with high heels, with sort of women's high heels and that kind of thing. And I'm just someone so vain that people used to just drive down the street and throw bottles at me. I mean, literally, or cans of beer or whatever.

John Malkovich11:21

So

Presenter11:21

So why why did you want to do it then? Why you don't know. But obviously you wanted to draw attention to yourself in some way.

John Malkovich11:22

I think what

Presenter11:28

Or was it the actor in you trying to get out? I don't know.

John Malkovich11:32

No, not particularly. I mean, even as a little kid I can remember sort of worrying very much about which two shirt and short ensembles would reveal themselves to be the most, you know, fortunate.

Presenter11:48

But clues are obviously very important to you. I mean, I've seen clips of you did some modelling a few years ago in Paris, didn't you, for Conde Garcin? Again, there's this rather relaxed, easy figure walking up and down the catwalk like he's

John Malkovich11:52

Yeah.

John Malkovich11:53

Again

John Malkovich11:58

Yeah.

Presenter12:00

Yeah.

John Malkovich12:00

Dear

John Malkovich12:02

I like the work in fashion. I like it a lot. I mean, not particularly for me to be a model.

John Malkovich12:10

Because in a way I'm too vain to be narcissistic even. But um I like to look at clothes, I I l I like to look at fabric, I like to look at cuts of things.

John Malkovich12:24

I I find that sort of.

John Malkovich12:26

Therapeutic.

Presenter12:27

And you like to look right.

John Malkovich12:29

Yeah, I do.

Presenter12:31

Next piece of music, number three.

Presenter12:33

Here's a man who knew how to look right.

John Malkovich12:34

Frank even always had the right hat.

John Malkovich12:37

I mean

John Malkovich12:39

Chairman of the board.

Presenter12:41

Uh

John Malkovich12:41

Once upon a time a girl with moonlight in her eyes

John Malkovich12:53

Put her hand in mine And said she loved me so

Speaker 113:04

But that was once upon a time.

Presenter13:10

Frank Sinatra with Once Upon a Time. So it was a an incredibly unconventional background from everything you've said. Um but you've also said in your time that it was absurdly happy.

Presenter13:20

And square.

John Malkovich13:21

Oh yeah, I I had a pretty happy childhood.

Presenter13:24

Despite all that violence and all that bottle throwing.

John Malkovich13:27

Yeah.

John Malkovich13:28

Yeah.

John Malkovich13:29

I mean, I felt uh quite sure that

John Malkovich13:32

My parents love me.

Presenter13:34

I suppose at least everything was out in the open. It doesn't sound as if much was sort of

John Malkovich13:38

N not much hidden there.

John Malkovich13:40

Yeah.

Presenter13:41

So bonding that openness, huh? Is that what it is?

John Malkovich13:41

So it's bonding that openness, huh? Is that what it is?

Presenter13:44

And you've certainly used it in your acting. I think again one of your sisters has said, I think your mother has said, how much they recognise it in your parts. It's all been used somewhere, hasn't it?

John Malkovich13:44

You sent

Speaker 113:52

Lou

Speaker 113:53

Yeah.

Presenter13:54

Tell me about the setting up of this this theatre company, the Steppenwolf Theatre. This was nineteen seventy six. You'd have been about twenty two in Chicago. What was new and different about it? Because it was new and it was different, wasn't it?

John Malkovich14:06

Well, I think it was just um very visceral, much more so than was the norm, uh, or than probably in fact had been seen before.

Presenter14:18

What sort of parts did you play?

John Malkovich14:20

Oh, I did everything.

Presenter14:21

Yeah.

John Malkovich14:23

Uh

John Malkovich14:23

Um, I was the press attache. I did lights, I did sets, I did customs, I did the hair, because the women in our company are all sort of quite dikey and and butch. I acted in oh, so many things. I acted in The Glass Menagerie, in Death of a Salesman, in in True West, of course, in

Presenter14:48

It was just Sam Shepard, isn't it? You did Pinter to Eggball. Did you do any comedy?

John Malkovich14:50

Pinter, too. Agbourne, did you do any comedy? Yes, I did we did, if I may say so myself, a fantastic production of Absent Friends, of Eggbourne's play, Absent Friends. And I've done nearly all of Harold Pinter's plays. You like Pinter, very much.

Presenter15:04

You like Pinta, don't you?

John Malkovich15:06

We had a lovely production of The Caretaker years ago and a very good production of No Man's Land. I've done The Collection, I've done The Dumb Waiter twice, I've done Old Times three times.

Presenter15:17

But so many of these were crammed into that six years, weren't they? From seventy six to eighty two before you were kind of discovered off Broadway in in True West.

John Malkovich15:19

Any of these what cram

John Malkovich15:23

Yeah.

Speaker 115:24

Yeah.

John Malkovich15:25

Yeah.

Speaker 115:25

Complaints?

Presenter15:27

When you were what smashing up the typewriter with an iron iron or whatever it was.

Speaker 115:28

Smash

Speaker 115:30

Uh

Presenter15:31

And the awards and the offers came tumbling in. On we go with your story, but let's pause for some more music there. Number four.

John Malkovich15:38

Well, Tom Waite, um, I think he's an incredible poet.

John Malkovich15:44

This is one of Tom's great songs, uh which has the immortal line, We'll spit on Ronnie Arnold and flip him the bird, Slash the tires on the school bus, Now don't say a word.

John Malkovich15:57

This just reminds me so much of one of the things we used to do, there was a guy in our town called Larry Giaconi. On Saturdays, he used to drink quite a bit and he would go up on the town square and sort of lay down because he was a little dizzy. And one of the things you just did is you'd go by and throw bottles at him. I mean, it was just.

John Malkovich16:17

What one did.

John Malkovich16:19

And Kentucky Avenue reminds me very much of that.

John Malkovich16:23

Ula plays strict poker.

John Malkovich16:27

The mamas cross the street.

John Malkovich16:31

Joynafinski says she put her tongue in his mouth.

John Malkovich16:39

Dickie Faulkner's got a switchplate.

John Malkovich16:43

Some cousin agarizers that you can lift us.

Presenter16:46

And you can live

John Malkovich16:49

The Hunchback.

Presenter16:49

The Hunchman

John Malkovich16:51

There's a wind out from the south.

Presenter16:54

Tom Waits and Kentucky Avenue. Pretty rough stuff. I mean, again, we're back to your childhood. It just wasn't that rough, though, was it? It was very middle class. Didn't your mother's family own the local newspaper?

John Malkovich17:04

Of course no, we are very uh absolutely middle class.

John Malkovich17:08

My town was unlike many people think about when they think about welfare in America, they always think sort of inner city. In fact, my county, if I'm not mistaken, had the s highest welfare per capita, number two, for many, many years. Just all abandoned coal mines, nothing to do, nowhere to go.

Presenter17:08

Strange control.

Speaker 117:09

Oh.

Presenter17:29

Where to go? Yeah. Support place.

John Malkovich17:30

It's a poor place.

Presenter17:31

Yeah.

John Malkovich17:31

Uh

Presenter17:31

But when we move on to the Steppenwolf Theatre, there were a lot of quite well-heeled parents behind that, weren't there? I mean, that's how it got going. It was subsidised by the parents of

John Malkovich17:42

Not not super well heeled though. I th um I think probably one or two of their families had a little bit of money. We really I think our first budget for our first set of plays was sixty dollars, I think. The most I ever made at Steppenov Theater was forty dollars a week.

Presenter17:57

Hmm.

Presenter18:03

But after True West, the film offers started coming in. And of course, one of the first was The Killing Fields, Roland Joffe, David Coffin, all of that. Great film. And you were memorably

John Malkovich18:10

Yeah.

John Malkovich18:12

Yes or no?

Presenter18:16

The photographer, weren't you, who who tried so hard to get that get that little passport photograph made for the Cambodian?

John Malkovich18:17

One, two, five

John Malkovich18:21

Let's have a cup.

Presenter18:22

Guy could be.

John Malkovich18:22

Guy

Presenter18:24

and got out of the place. That was when we would first all have noticed you, isn't it?

John Malkovich18:27

Mm-hmm.

John Malkovich18:28

Yeah, that changed a lot of things f for me because I'm I'm someone who never at all thought about, um

John Malkovich18:36

Not only a career in the theater, but but certainly never a career in the cinema at all.

Presenter18:41

So if you hadn't been spotted at that moment, it may not have happened. You may have gone around.

John Malkovich18:44

Absolutely. I think we could have gone back to Chicago and done our little place and maybe I would have been the third guy on the left in a T V commercial at some point.

Presenter18:54

However, you weren't. The next time you were on stage, I think almost one of the next times you were opposite Dustin Hoffman and Deathwish Hoffman.

John Malkovich19:00

Yeah, so r right after that episode.

Presenter19:01

That's Biff the the sun.

Presenter19:04

People started drawing comparisons about you, didn't they, with Marlon Brando? Um Jack Nicholson's the other one, so Lethal Menace, is another name that comes up in tandem with yours.

John Malkovich19:13

Yeah.

John Malkovich19:15

The fact is, I think uh those are both two actors I have liked and am capable of liking enormously, but I don't see any similarity between what they do and what I do.

Presenter19:30

What do you think is your best film that you have made? What's as an actor?

John Malkovich19:35

I think without a doubt uh dangerous liaisons uh of Stephen Frears.

Presenter19:41

It was probably your biggest box office for more maybe in the line of fire as well with Clint Eastwood was, wasn't it?

John Malkovich19:46

No, Dangerous Liaisons was not terribly successful at the box office, I think.

Presenter19:50

In the main

Presenter19:52

Can it be said your films aren't? It's not what you do.

John Malkovich19:55

It's not that's no, I I I've done several films like Conner and The Line of Fire that that made hundreds of millions of dollars, but it's not how I I choose things.

Presenter20:05

Yeah.

Presenter20:07

But why do you why do you think that is? It can't be that we don't like Sinister Lethal Menace, you know. I mean, we like Hannibal Lecter, we

John Malkovich20:16

You know, when you do those really big films, I mean, for instance, uh, I didn't, I was offered but I didn't do Spider-Man.

John Malkovich20:24

You know, that's a whole machinery behind that and a whole sort of marketing machinery put in line.

Presenter20:31

And you don't want to play at that? I suppose it's it's about integrity as an actor, isn't it? Is it about I mean, I I'm I'm thinking, for example, of of Mice and Men, the Steinbeck you did. It could have been done in a Schmoltzee way, it wasn't. You did it straight.

Presenter20:44

And

Presenter20:45

Is that what we're saying here, that you like to do things as purely as you like?

John Malkovich20:48

I'm not purely, yes. I'm not incredibly sentimental. I like sentiment a lot and and I respect it.

John Malkovich20:59

But

John Malkovich20:59

Sentimental things I don't like very much, and it's not even a criticism of anybody else, but I just don't like it.

Presenter21:08

Next piece of music, what's this one?

John Malkovich21:10

This is the one of the songs, one of the cuts from the soundtrack of Dancer Upstairs by the great, great Spanish composer who also does all of Pedro Almadovar's films, Alberto Iglesias. Just I think one of the most gifted composers working in in the movie business today, in my opinion.

Presenter22:02

The theme from the soundtrack of the film The Dancer Upstairs composed by Alberto Iglesias, your film on which you've just made your directorial debut, John Malkovich. It was based on a book by Nicholas Shakespeare, which presumably you read and bought the film rights. You like it so much. He in fact wrote it about Peru and the Shining Path, you know, the the guerrilla organisation which terrorized the country.

Speaker 122:18

Uh

Speaker 122:18

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 122:22

I think that

Presenter22:26

Um you remove all of that. You you you give it no identity. So in that sense the film is much more about the characters, isn't it, than than the country. Is that why you did that?

John Malkovich22:35

One

John Malkovich22:36

That's part of the reason why I mean there were several reasons for that. The principal one being that's how Costa Gavros made his films. Uh al he never named the country and since this this film is in some way uh a sort of homage and the total reverse image of Costa Gavros's uh rather idealized revolutionaries and etcetera, etc.

Presenter23:00

What you have in there, and you've got into some trouble for it in this country, is you've tried to represent the kinds of things that Shining Path did, which is use animals and children to carry bombs.

Speaker 123:11

Uh

Presenter23:12

And so you've got chickens hopping around with artificial sticks of dynamite fizzing at their feet.

John Malkovich23:16

His

John Malkovich23:18

Yeah.

Presenter23:18

Our film sensors didn't like it, did they?

John Malkovich23:21

I'm not sure that one would want in terms of the film a chicken that looked happy, um, but uh I'm not a chicken psychiatrist, nor are they, I would say.

Presenter23:32

Do you do you think obviously we we British are over sensitive about these things?

John Malkovich23:36

No, I think you're slightly desensitized perhaps to the fact that um it is uh describing a movement which is still perfectly legal, which massacred twenty-eight thousand people. I don't think the chicken is a point. Of all wh when I think of all of the things that one could censor, all of the mindless acts one sees in movies, to pick on a film so lyrical strikes me as, let's just say, erroneous.

Presenter24:10

Record number six. What's that?

John Malkovich24:12

The Doctor.

John Malkovich24:15

I always quite liked a lot of rap. See, I I can understand all the complaints sort of about misogyny and this and that and this and that. I I mostly see it as funny and poetic.

Presenter24:28

Doesn't this remind you of your son?

John Malkovich24:29

Well, yeah, my son's first sentence sit in his car seat in the back of the car and he'd go Emmo

John Malkovich24:35

Kind of like a rapper. Et mo

John Malkovich24:38

And then he told me M Mo, doctor Dre.

John Malkovich24:41

Meaning play it go ahead, play it again. So the Doctor Wait

Speaker 324:45

Me and Snoop, we dippin' again. Kept my head to the streets, signed M. He's triple flat, I'm doing 50 a week. Still, I stay close to the heat. And even when I was close to the feet, I rose to my feet. My life's like a soundtrack, I roll to the beach. Rewrap like tallyweed, I smoke till I sleep. Wake up in the A.M., compose a beat. I bring the fire to your soaking in your seat. It's not a fluke, it's been tried, I'm the truth. Since turn out the light from the world-class wrecking crew.

Presenter25:14

Doctor Dray with Still and memories of your little boy. How old is he now?

Presenter25:19

Yeah.

John Malkovich25:19

Uh he's ten.

Presenter25:20

And you got a daughter.

Presenter25:22

He's twelve.

John Malkovich25:23

Yeah.

Presenter25:23

Um you've managed to be pretty private on on the whole and I don't blame you at all uh about your personal life, but we know that you've got a an ongoing relationship and and these two children. And you live for the most part in France, in Provence.

John Malkovich25:35

Yes, for the most part, yeah.

Presenter25:36

Why have you chosen to live there?

Presenter25:39

I mean it's beautiful.

John Malkovich25:40

It's it's beautiful. I like it there. It's quiet. I'd already sort of done America and Italy and

Presenter25:48

And you're into gardening?

John Malkovich25:49

England, yeah, I like gardening a lot.

Presenter25:51

And you do watercolours and you sketch and

John Malkovich25:55

Not so much watercolours, but uh more either oil, pastels, or or pencil.

Presenter26:00

So this man whom we like to believe, because there is a kind of blurring of the edges, I think people like to think you're as sinister as the assassin in in the line of fire or whatever, you know, or as as corrupt as as the vicomte, is actually a a warm and wonderful family man who loves government.

Speaker 126:08

Whatever you know.

John Malkovich26:12

Mm.

John Malkovich26:16

I could think of other words for you besides wonderful. But um yeah, I certainly love my family and my children as I think most people do. And I have a quiet life because I like it quiet.

Presenter26:26

You're a human being.

Presenter26:32

We also know, of course, that you you were married before and and and that the breakdown of that marriage, as they often are, was a pretty Bruising experience. Um and and you went into therapy. What was the single most important thing that you learned about yourself?

John Malkovich26:41

Is it

John Malkovich26:44

Must I um

John Malkovich26:47

I learned to look more carefully at other people at what they were saying, which often had little to do with what they meant.

John Malkovich26:58

And that was the critical lesson.

Presenter27:00

You've been too literal.

John Malkovich27:02

Yes, dangerously literal.

John Malkovich27:05

Oh yes.

Presenter27:06

Well now look at this next piece of music. I mean there's something in here. There's some lines in here about that kind of thing. Mm-hmm.

John Malkovich27:10

Yeah.

John Malkovich27:11

Yeah, this is uh from Bruce Springsteen's fantastic album, Ghost of Tom Jod. This is called Highway Twenty Nine and there's a a great line in it, I think, for human behaviour. He says something like uh I always told myself it was something in her, but as we drove I knew it was something in me, something that had been coming for a long, long time, something that is here with me now on Highway 29.

John Malkovich27:42

Shot through the black tree

John Malkovich27:46

I told myself it was all something in her, but as we drove I knew it was something in me.

John Malkovich27:55

Something had been coming.

John Malkovich27:59

Real long, long time.

John Malkovich28:03

Something that was here with me now. Yeah.

Presenter28:07

On highway twin

Presenter28:10

Bruce Springsteen and Highway twenty nine. So um off to the desert island with you really, John Markovich. Um what are you going to do there all day? How will you fill the emptiness you discover there?

John Malkovich28:20

Most of my time I think I just look at seashells, which I like quite a bit, and read and you would ask what luxury item I would take and

Presenter28:29

Well, I'm going to ask you that later. I'm more concerned really with how I do.

John Malkovich28:31

Oh, you want?

John Malkovich28:33

What I do.

Presenter28:34

With how yeah, I mean how do you eat? Are you gonna trap snakes, swallow lizards? What are you gonna do?

John Malkovich28:41

No, I'm probably gonna become a vegetarian pretty quickly and quite quickly.

Presenter28:46

And could you look after yourself, generally speaking? I mean, can you kind of knock up a shelter and find something to live under? Yeah.

John Malkovich28:52

Yeah, I'd be less worried about that than I think I'd be right into decorating decisions quite quite quickly. Quicker than you might think.

Presenter29:03

The

Presenter29:03

And would you then be frightened of nothing? Would you continue to be this kind of

Presenter29:08

Relaxed guy who just doesn't get phased.

John Malkovich29:11

I would imagine that being on a desert island you would have so many stages to go through, and certainly one would must involve incredible uh loneliness and panic and isolation. But I imagine

John Malkovich29:29

If that were to really happen, that's also a stage you'd go through.

Presenter29:33

And then arrive at what?

John Malkovich29:35

I think you'd arrive at saying, Well, here I am and this is my life and

John Malkovich29:39

Yeah.

Presenter29:40

And is that a life, then, that you could lead, or would you want to put an end to it?

John Malkovich29:44

It's very hard for me to imagine not seeing my children. I'd have a great incentive to just hope a ship drove by some day so I could go home.

Presenter29:54

Or knock up a raft and kind of row home, huh?

Speaker 129:56

Yeah.

John Malkovich29:57

Yeah. I don't know how good I would be at knocking a

Presenter30:00

One thinks of Tom Cruising Castaway at this point, of course.

John Malkovich30:03

Yeah, you're sure.

Presenter30:04

Sailing across the ocean.

John Malkovich30:06

Yeah.

Presenter30:06

So you'll sit on the beach with your beard growing ever longer and look back across your life, this life we've just been talking about. Any single great regret?

John Malkovich30:15

I'm sort of the opposite of Edith Peeoff, who of course famously regretted nothing. I regret most things.

Presenter30:26

Last record

John Malkovich30:28

Nina Simone, um this was taken and recorded during a night where apparently she was tired and uh she didn't yes, didn't wish to do what she'd been asked to do. And um when she feels like being a tragedian, really no one's even in her leap.

Presenter30:36

And emotional, huh?

Speaker 330:48

Uh

Speaker 130:48

Is it a thing that

Speaker 330:48

We cannot touch it.

John Malkovich30:50

See that?

Speaker 330:51

Uh

John Malkovich30:51

And then one day you look in the mirror.

Speaker 330:53

Yeah.

John Malkovich30:56

Save.

Speaker 330:56

Well

Speaker 130:58

We'll leave you with that.

Speaker 131:00

Loose when the time of

Speaker 131:06

Who knows where the tide

Presenter31:17

Mina Simone, who knows where the time goes. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records to your desert island, which one would you take, John?

John Malkovich31:26

The last.

Presenter31:27

Uni Simon.

Presenter31:28

And then we come to your book. You've got the Bible, you've got the complete works of Shakespeare already waiting for you on the island. What book would you take?

John Malkovich31:36

Probably the sound and the fury of Faulkner. I find him extremely funny and of course quite brutal and sad too, but often really witty and and very underappreciated for that, I think.

Presenter31:51

And that luxury.

Presenter31:53

What single luxury of no practical value would you like?

John Malkovich31:56

Cappuccino maker.

John Malkovich31:58

Oh, if I don't have my coffee in the morning, I find it very hard. I'm not actually functional until I do. So I would have a cappuccino maker.

Presenter32:09

John Malkovich, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear what Desert Island is.

John Malkovich32:12

Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 132:21

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio four.

John Malkovich33:09

Uh