John Malkovich

John Malkovich began his career as an actor, director and original member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.  There he acted in numerous plays, including True West, Of Mice and Men, The Libertine, The Glass Menagerie, Big Mother, The Dumb Waiter and many more.  As a director at Steppenwolf, he staged many plays, including Absent Friends, No Man’s Land, The Caretaker, Coyote Ugly, A Prayer for My Daughter, The House, Hysteria, Balm in Gilead, and, with the American novelist Don Delillo, he adapted and directed Libra.  He began acting in movies in 1983, the first being The Killing Fields.  He has since appeared in numerous films including Places in the Heart, Death of a Salesman, The Ogre, Dangerous Liaisons, The Object of Beauty, Empire of the Sun, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, In the Line of Fire, Le Temps Retrouve, Klimt, Film Falado, Je Rentre a la Maison, Mary Reilly, Rounders, the Great Buck Howard, Burn After Reading, Red, Red 2 and Deepwater Horizon, in addition to another 70-80 films.

He has also worked as a fashion designer, having designed 24 menswear collections, and as a producer in both theatre and film.  With his production partners Lianne Halfon and Russell Smith, their company Mr Mudd produced Ghost World, Juno, Art School Confidential, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Demolition and a number of documentaries.  He directed one feature length film, The Dancer Upstairs, as well as being in collaboration with the fashion designer, Bella Freud: Straphanging, Lady Behave and Hideous Man.  Over the last decade, he’s worked extensively with colleagues in the field of classical music, creating with them a number of hybrid pieces including three pieces with conductor Martin Haselblock and writer/director Michael Sturminger: The Infernal Comedy, the Giacomo Variations and Just Call me God.  He still tours with a piece called Report on the Blind, which he performs with Russian pianist Anastasia Terankova.  He also tours with a piece from the composer/violinist Aleksey Igudesman: The Music Critic.

He shot seven movies and three television series in the last few years, including two seasons of Billions, and three episodes of the BBC adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel The ABC Murders.  He appeared in Bird Box for Netflix and finished the series The New Pope, directed by Paolo Sorrentino.  He directed three plays in Paris over the last decade, as well as one in Spain and one in Mexico City.  In 2016, he directed a play at the Rose theatre in Kingston: The Good Canary, written by Zach Helm.  He has also worked with the writers  Christopher Hampton, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Terry Johnson, Stephen Jeffries, Sarah Phelps, Neil Cross, Sam Shepard, Robert Benton and Landford, and the directrors Manuel de Oliveira, Joe and Ethan Coen, Alex Gabassi, Raul Ruiz, Bernardo Bertolucci, Michelangelo Antonioni, Stephen Frears, Nicholas Roeg, Volker Schlondorff, Stephen Spielberg, Susanne Bier, Lilianna Cavani, Spike Jonze, Jane Campion, and Paulo Sorrentino.

Bitter Wheat was John’s first opportunity to work with David Mamet and marked his return to the West End after a very long absence. He can most recently be seen as one of the stars of Netflix’s Space Force, which recently released its second season.