John Malkovich interview: 'I’m generally less hot-tempered and confrontational than I was when I was younger'

Malkovich became Hollywood’s go-to guy in the Nineties for sadistic killers - now he is starring in a romcom, as the ex-husband of a retired film star, played by Glenn Close, who disrupts the wedding festivities to her fourth husband

John Malkovich stars in 'The Wilde Wedding' and is currently shooting 'Bird Box' with Sandra Bullock (Getty)

There’s a line in John Malkovich’s recent film, The Wilde Wedding – written and directed by Damian Harris and about to be released on DVD – where a young girl raises her eyes to the heavens and utters the word “actors” disdainfully. An effervescent luvvie comedy, it’s a portrait of a dysfunctional family filled with creative types, including Glenn Close’s retired movie star Eve Wilde and her first husband, Malkovich’s famous stage actor, the wonderfully named Laurence Darling.

The premise has it that the extended family – including Malkovich’s ex – are gathering to celebrate the nuptials of her impending fourth marriage, to Patrick Stewart’s novelist. Does Malkovich appreciate the gentle mockery of his profession? “I think there is some degree of feeling that for most actors, we’re kinda fun sometimes,” he tells me, in those instantly recognisable mannered tones of his. “Sometimes. But not all the time!”

Malkovich worked with Harris on 2008’s sombre Gardens of the Night, but he’s known him since the mid-Eighties, just as he won his first Oscar nomination for Robert Benton’s rural drama Places In The Heart. The director is, of course, the son of legendary Richard Harris (“a great actor” says Malkovich), and older brother to thesps Jared (The Crown) and Jamie (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D). “He’s been around that world his whole life and it has its charms, of course,” says Malkovich. “It can also be a huge w***!”

Malkovich as Laurence Darling in ‘The Wilde Wedding’

This coming from an actor who – after a childhood in Illinois, where his parents worked in publishing – began his career in 1976 with Chicago’s soon-to-be-revered Steppenwolf Theatre is quite amusing. But Malkovich has never been above self-mockery, as anyone who saw the mind-bendingly brilliant Spike Jonze-directed movie Being John Malkovich will know (with the actor playing a mildly pompous version of himself, soon to be occupied by others who discover a portal into his head).

If Malkovich became Hollywood’s go-to guy in the Nineties for sadistic killers – notably Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom in Con Air and Clint Eastwood’s telephone tormentor in In The Line of Fire, which won him a second Oscar nod – it’s curious to see him back on the screen in a romcom. Despite being the ex, he’s got a romantic arc in the film that he hasn’t been afforded by studio movies in a long time, maybe ever. Not bad for an actor who turns 65 this coming December.

He was Oscar-nominated for his role as Mr Will in ‘Place of the Heart’ (1984)

Is it nice to play the romantic lead? “I never really break things down that way,” he shrugs. “I’m always a little hesitant about breaking it down into this type of person or that type of person. I just think of what the character is and how they view the world.” He then pauses, before chuckling. “It’s nice to be at the wedding rather than to kill everybody at the wedding! Better to just be an invitee!” Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

In real life, he’s been together with long-term partner Nicoletta Peyran, with whom he has two children, since the late Eighties. He tells me she’s a good cook and then when I ask where his domestic skills lie, without missing a beat, he replies. “Ironing. Very good. And I mean, world-class. Things like that. Flower arrangements and sewing I’m OK, but not especially gifted.” It’s that sort of deadpan, deadly serious delivery that’s got him this far.

Glenn Close, Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer in ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ (1988) (Rex)

As Malkovich reminds me, even if he’s not quite as visible on screen as he once was, “I do all kinds of things,” he says. Last year he was on stage playing a dictator in Just Call Me God, which premiered at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. He also recently recorded the narration to Egmont, reciting Goethe’s words in English alongside the strains of Beethoven (with translation by Christopher Hampton, who penned the screenplay for Malkovich’s signature 1988 role in Dangerous Liaisons, opposite Glenn Close).

He still directs for the stage too, though he only ever went behind the camera once, for 2002’s well-received The Dancer Upstairs, a Latin American-set crime tale starring Javier Bardem. He groans when I ask if he wants to do it again. “It’s such a nightmare to get a film up and get it going. I don’t have the patience really. Not for the directing work; I like that, that’s very enjoyable and it’s a delight. I’m not saying it’s easy or I do it well or don’t do it well. That’s something I like very much. [It’s] just too much aggro.”

As Mitch Leary in ‘In the Line of Fire’ (1993) (Columbia Pictures)

Indeed, these days Malkovich’s movie work is bringing in his unhinged presence: a cameo in Zoolander 2, BP manager Donald Vidrine in Peter Berg’s real-life disaster movie Deepwater Horizon and even an enigmatic stranger on a rickshaw in the Eminem video “Phenomenal” (where he slurps some noodles and tells the rapper “You’re finished”). He’s just reunited with Berg for Mile 22, a forthcoming espionage tale in which he shares billing with his Deepwater co-star Mark Wahlberg.

Playing Bishop, the director of operations, “it’s a spy versus spy story”, he explains. “The Russians, the ever-present Russians, in the new American narrative – a delight to find that narrative again.” He calls Berg “wild” and tells me that Deepwater Horizon was “highly underrated”, which arguably it was. “You have to be on your toes with Pete, because anything can happen. We did sixty seven scenes in my first three days. Normally, you might do four or five scenes.”

While Malkovich also produces movies for his company Mr. Mudd (Juno, Ghost World and Demolition among them), he’s all too aware of the pressures on modern moviemaking, another reason why he’s moved back towards live performance. “Now that everything in movies is really accelerated, there is less and less time to shoot. It used to be four months, then it was three months, then it was 10 weeks, then it was nine weeks, then it was eight, then it was six, now it feels like three minutes.”

What’s changed for Malkovich over the years? He pauses for an almost interminable period. “I’m generally less hot-tempered and confrontational than I was when I was younger.”

So what fires him up now? Currently shooting Bird Box with Sandra Bullock, he’s clearly not thinking about retirement. “I don’t know that I like anything as much as watching really good actors work,” he says. “But I still for the most part generally like acting.”

‘The Wilde Wedding’ is available on DVD and digital download from 5 March