John Malkovich Quotes

Unlike my grandfather or my brother, I’ve actually been able to make some money at a racetrack.

If you don’t interfere with me, I’ll always do something really good.

In New York in the Forties or Fifties, everybody‘s in a suit, an overcoat and a hat.

‘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.

As an actor there are no drawbacks.

I don’t think my parents know what I do.

I don’t mind what I play, really.

I’ve done quite a few big American films.

I’m an atheist.

I don’t have a saviour or a royal family.

I haven‘t physically attacked anyone in a couple of years.

I don’t wake up drenched in sweat because I haven’t been on stage in years.

I always wanted to be fashionable.

Theater is so ephemeral, and I love that.

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.

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.

I think with actors, if you just don’t set about trying to crush their confidence immediately, you’re usually OK.

My life before children I don’t really remember. I’ve heard references to it, but I really don’t remember.

I don’t understand how somebody wouldn’t have a sense of humor about themselves.

I don’t really go through a process, it goes through me.

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.

There’s a reason screens are only this thick.

I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid.

I don’t lose my temper very often now, and if I do, it’s well deserved.

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.

I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.

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.’

I like to direct movies, but I don’t like to goof around for eight years talking about it.

We’re all animals.

I admire sensible, kind people. They’re not often famous.

I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character.

I don’t want to be boring. But that’s not always easy.

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.

I’m not a control maniac.

The projects I look for to produce or direct would not be ones in which I would want to act.

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.

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.

I believe in humans.

You know, I’m really not interested in someone telling me that something’s good or bad.

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.

Things are so much global and Americanised.

I am inspired by the appearance of a bohemian of the new millennium.

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.

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?

Well, I like to have fun at work.

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.

I was never a fanatical movie person.

I know fashion can be intensely goofy, but it is something I’ve always taken pretty seriously.

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.

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?’

Fashion is chaotic, and it can be an aggravation, too, but it is at its best when it allows you to express yourself.

Every country has their problems.

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.

I’m not a very skeptical person.

Utopia means elsewhere.

I’m more boring and more conservative.

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.

I always liked clothes; since I was very, very young, I was interested. I studied costume as part of my theatre education.

People always say life is short. I’ve never been convinced of that – mine seems to have a tendency to go on and on.

I don’t care what other people think. I don’t think it matters.