As a founding member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble, John Malkovich was first noticed for his performance in the Sam Shepard play "Curse of the Starving Class" (1978) at the Goodman Theatre. He later shined as the corrupting older brother in Shepard's mythic "True West", directed by Gary Sinise, and helped establish Steppenwolf's national reputation with his OBIE-winning portrayal when the production relocated to New York. Two years later, Malkovich earned more praise—and a second OBIE—for directing Steppenwolf's 1984 revival of Lanford Wilson's "Balm in Gilead". Also in 1984, he debuted on Broadway as Biff in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman", co-starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy. His performance earned Malkovich a Drama Desk Award and later an Emmy after CBS adapted the play for television in 1985. Later that year, Malkovich made his Broadway directorial debut with Shaw's "Arms and the Man", replacing Kevin Kline during the run as the play’s star.
An unlikely leading man with gaunt features, thinning hair, and lanky frame, Malkovich entered film with two memorable character roles in 1984: as a jaded photojournalist in "The Killing Fields", and as the blind boarder, Mr. Will, in Robert Benton's "Places in the Heart". The latter earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Malkovich excelled as Basie, a soldier-of-fortune, in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" (1987), and displayed his comedic talent in the dual role of nerdy scientist and android in Susan Seidelman's offbeat "Making Mr. Right" (1987). His world-weary, misanthropic persona solidified when he played the decadent Vicomte de Valmont, high priest of seduction, in Stephen Frears' "Dangerous Liaisons" (1988). Always fond of offbeat material, Malkovich bought the rights to Anne Taylor's "The Accidental Tourist", becoming the executive producer on the project. Starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, the film enjoyed modest box-office success.
Malkovich then played the brilliant, self-destructive Port Moresby (a thinly-veiled Paul Bowles) in Bernardo Bertolucci's atmospheric, but torpid "The Sheltering Sky" (1990). In the "Queens Logic" (1991)—a "Big Chill" knock-off—Malkovich played a man struggling with his homosexuality. In a sub-par Woody Allen effort, "Shadows and Fog" (1992), he played a clown having an extramarital affair with a trapeze artist, played by Madonna. He then reunited with Sinise for a remake of John Steinbeck’s "Of Mice and Men" (1992), reviving from his Steppenwolf days the role of simpleton Lennie. Despite strong performances, Malkovich failed to attract a wide audience for these films—the result of weak material.
With his film career seemingly stalled, Malkovich reinvigorated himself in 1993 with a chilling performance as Mitch Leary, the cold-blooded assassin who taunts Clint Eastwood in Wolfgang Petersen's "In the Line of Fire". The unpredictability and humor Malkovich brought to the role made Leary more frightening than previous on-screen villains, and earned him another Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Meanwhile, Malkovich was featured as the insane Kurtz in Nicolas Roeg's faithful adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness" (TNT, 1994). Though a good match of director to material, the pedestrian script failed to capture the essence of Kurtz’s madness.
The intelligence and duality he typically exudes lent the necessary edge to director Manoel de Oliveira's "The Convent" (1995), a peculiar drama about a literary scholar's emotional and metaphysical adventures. Malkovich then played the sensitive Dr Henry Jekyll and his fiendish alter ego Mr. Hyde in the revisionist misfire "Mary Reilly" (1996), co-starring Julia Roberts. Gilbert Osmand, the manipulative husband of Nicole Kidman's Isabel Archer in Jane Campion's "The Portrait of a Lady" (1996), became another name added to the actor’s long list of on-screen rogues. His eccentric nature and stone visage made Malkovich ideal for the gold-digging aesthete from the Henry James novel, but good performances and handsome production values were trumped once again by dull material. Then as the genius serial killer Cyrus ‘The Virus’ Grissom, Malkovich was one of ten dangerous criminals being transferred aboard a plane to a new maximum-security prison in the action thriller "Con Air" (1997)—a rare appearance in a Hollywood blockbuster for the actor.
Throughout his career, Malkovich has preferred the stage, often decrying the piecemeal nature of filmmaking for compromising his performances. So adverse was the business to his comfort that he settled his family away from Hollywood to the south of France, where he filmed "The Man in the Iron Mask" (1998) and Luc Besson's "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" (1999)—movies made close to his new home. He next played two characters out of the annals of film history: screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz in "RKO 281", the 1999 HBO drama about the making of "Citizen Kane" (1941), and director F. W. Murnau in "Shadow of the Vampire" (2000), a fictional telling about the making of the silent classic, "Nosferatu" (1922). In 1999, he took the rare position of playing himself in "Being John Malkovich", a surreal film about an unemployed puppeteer who stumbles upon a door that leads inside Malkovich’s head, and subsequently rents the space to those seeking their fifteen minutes of fame. Malkovich was surprisingly low-key—never straying into parody—as the film became a favorite with critics and earned Academy Award nominations for director, screenplay, and supporting actress.
In 2002, Malkovich co-starred in several projects, including the ill-received mobster-comedy, "The Knockaround Guys". He made his feature directorial debut with an adaptation of Nicholas Shakespeare's novel, "The Dancer Upstairs" (2002), a story of mystery and romance set among South American revolutionaries. Malkovich then appeared in the international comedy hit "Johnny English" (2003), playing Pascal Sauvage, arch-nemesis of Roman Atkinson's accident-prone secret agent. Later that year, he played an older, wiser incarnation of career criminal Tom Ripley—a character first popularized on film by Matt Damon—in the stylish thriller "Ripley's Game" (2003). As Commandante John Walesa, Malkovich starred alongside Catherine Deneuve in “A Talking Picture” (2004), Portugal’s official entry for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.