John Gavin Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor, producer and director.

• 1 Biography
  • 1.1 Early life
  • 1.2 Personal life
  • 1.3 Political views
• 2 Filmography
  • 2.1 Movies
• 3 As director
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Malkovich was born in Benton, Illinois, of Croatian descent on his father's side and of Scottish and German ancestry on his mother's.[1][2][3] He grew up in Benton, Illinois in a large house on South Main St. His father, Daniel Malkovich, was a state conservation director and publisher of Illinois Magazine, a conservation magazine. His mother, Joe Anne, owned the Benton Evening News (a local newspaper in Benton), as well as the Outdoor Illinois.[4][5] Because of his father's work, the Malkovich family is widely acknowledged as one of the founding families of the environmental movement in Illinois. By high school, he had transformed himself physically and was an athlete. He transferred to Illinois State University from a university where he only spent one semester with an interest in ecology, but he soon changed his major to theatre.

Malkovich was married to actress Glenne Headly from 1982 to 1988. They divorced and Malkovich briefly dated Michelle Pfeiffer, co-star in Dangerous Liaisons. He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Nicoletta Peyran, and their two children. He is fluent in French.

Of the many people he has worked with, Malkovich is often associated with Gary Sinise, a fellow Steppenwolf alum. Also, Joan Allen was a fellow drama student at Eastern Illinois University whom Malkovich brought into Steppenwolf. He met actor John Mahoney in a Chicago acting class years later, and advised him to join Steppenwolf.

On April 4, 2005, while speaking at Illinois State University, Malkovich was awarded a diploma in theatre. When attending the university as a student in the 1970s, he failed to take his last remaining graduation requirement, the U.S. Constitution test. This requirement was waived in order to award him the diploma.

Malkovich has worked with Jeremy Irons in two movies; The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and Eragon (2007), though they didn't have scenes together in the second movie.

Politically, Malkovich has described himself as a libertarian. He is a supporter of the death penalty.[6] When the Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed in 1994, Malkovich organized a champagne party for himself and his friends. Actor William Hootkins, who worked with Malkovich in BBC television's Rocket to the Moon, stated "In fact he's so right-wing you have to wonder if he's kidding."[7]

In the United Kingdom in 2002 at the Cambridge Union Society, when asked whom he would most like to "fight to the death," he replied that he would "rather just shoot" journalist Robert Fisk and British MP George Galloway.[8] Fisk reacted with outrage.[9] Galloway brings it up frequently on his radio show with great amusement. [10][11][12] When interviewed by The Observer, Malkovich elaborated on his comments: "I hate somebody who is supposed to be a Middle Eastern expert who thinks Jesus was born in Jerusalem. I hate what I consider his vile anti-semitism. This being said, I apologize to both Fisk and Galloway; they seem like good men... but if they make such a heinous mistake again, I will not hesitate to murder them brutally by way of the gallows". Malkovich then added: "I'm a [Christopher] Hitchens fan myself. But no one has thinner skins than journalists, in my experience, and I come from a family of them... They can dish it out but they can't take it. But the reason I don't like the topic, why I don't really say anything about a whiner like Fisk, is it gives them more oxygen."[13]

• The Dancer Upstairs (2002)

• John Malkovich at the Internet Movie Database
• John Malkovich at the Notable Names Database
• John Malkovich at TV.com
• Fisk:Why does John Malkovich want to kill me?
• Profile: John Malkovich
• Life and taxes
• Finch and Partners (John's Management in the UK)
• John's official clothing design web site
• Photographs of John Malkovich

Charles Stuart Kaufman (born November 1, 1958) is an American playwright, film producer, theater and film director, and Academy Award and BAFTA award winning screenwriter. In 2003 Kaufman was listed at #100 on Premiere's annual "Power 100" list.[1] He was also identified by Time Magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.[2]

• 1 Personal life
• 2 Career
  • 2.1 Early Work
  • 2.2 Television
  • 2.3 Film
  • 2.4 Theater
• 3 Themes
• 4 Influences
• 5 Quotes
• 6 Credits
  • 6.1 Films
  • 6.2 Television
  • 6.3 Plays
• 7 External links
  • 7.1 Interviews
• 8 References

Kaufman is known to be protective of his private life.[3] He rarely speaks about himself, and has only made one televised interview appearance, (an episode of Charlie Rose in 2004).[4]

He was born to a Jewish family in New York City, but they moved away shortly after. Kaufman is a graduate of William H. Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut. He then briefly attended Boston University before transferring to NYU Film School,[5] where one of his classmates was filmmaker Chris Columbus.[6]

Kaufman lived and worked for a time during the late 1980s in Minneapolis, MN, answering phone calls about missing newspapers at the Star Tribune before moving to Los Angeles, CA. [7]

He currently lives in Pasadena, California with his wife and two children.[8]

Between 1983 and 1984 Kaufman, along with college friend Paul Proch, wrote comedic articles and spoofs, including spoofs of Kurt Vonnegut and the X-Men, for National Lampoon magazine on spec.[9]

After moving to Los Angeles, Kaufman got his start in television by writing two episodes for Chris Elliott's Get a Life during the 1990-92 season.[10] During the 1993-94 season, Kaufman worked on Fox's sketch comedy show The Edge. Of note, he later worked as a writer for Ned and Stacey and The Dana Carvey Show.[11]

He first came to mainstream notice as the writer of Being John Malkovich, earning an Oscar nomination for his effort and winning a BAFTA. He also wrote Human Nature, which was directed by Michel Gondry and then worked with Spike Jonze again as the screenwriter for Adaptation., which earned him another Oscar nomination and his second BAFTA. Adaptation featured a "Charlie Kaufman" character that is a heavily fictionalized version of the screenwriter, including an "identical twin brother," a sell-out screen-writer reflective of Kaufman's anxieties about Hollywood.

He also penned the screenplay for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a biopic based on the "unauthorized autobiography" of Chuck Barris, the creator of such popular gameshows as the Dating Game and host of the Gong Show. The film focuses on Barris's claim to have simultaneously been a CIA hitman. It was George Clooney's directorial debut. Kaufman angrily criticized George Clooney for making dramatic alterations to the Confessions of a Dangerous Mind script without consulting him. Kaufman said in an interview with William Arnold: "The usual thing for a writer is to deliver a script and then disappear. That's not for me. I want to be involved from beginning to end. And these directors [Gondry, Jonze] know that, and respect it."[12]

His most recent film is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, his second with director Michel Gondry, for which he received his first Oscar for best original screenplay and third BAFTA. Kaufman also received the prestigious PEN American Center 2005 prize for screenplay for the film [13]. David Edelstein described the film in Slate as "The Awful Truth turned inside-out by Philip K. Dick, with nods to Samuel Beckett, Chris Marker, John Guareâ€"the greatest dramatists of our modern fractured consciousness. But the weave is pure Kaufman."

Kaufman will make his directorial debut with his next project, Synecdoche, New York. Academy-award winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Michelle Williams are both attached to the film, which tells "the story of an anguished playwright who is forced to deal with several women in his life."[14]

Kaufman wrote and directed the audio play Hope Leaves the Theater, a segment of the sound-only production Theater of the New Ear.[15] This play starred Meryl Streep, Hope Davis and Peter Dinklage. In the world of the play, it was the last thing Charlie Kaufman (the character) wrote before he committed suicide. The title actually refers to Hope Davis' character "leaving the theater."

Theater of the New Ear, including Hope Leaves the Theater, debuted in April 2005 at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY.[16]

Kaufman's works are often cited as being surrealist,[17] and focus on an introverted, somewhat shy, male protagonist and a more dominant female figure. This is true of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Joel/Clementine), Adaptation. (Charlie/Susan), and Being John Malkovich (Craig/Maxine).[citation needed]

Though he sometimes includes "facts" about his life into his work, notably Adaptation and Hope Leaves the Theater, they are often fiction based in large part.

Apes are also prevalent in Kaufman's work. In Being John Malkovich Lotte has a pet chimp named Elijah. In Human Nature, Puff was raised as an ape. The original deus ex machina in Adaptation called for a swamp ape.[18]

Among Charlie Kaufman's favourite writers and influences are Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Stanisław Lem, Philip K. Dick, Flannery O'Connor, Stephen Dixon, Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith.[19] The phrase "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" is drawn from Alexander Pope's poem Eloisa to Abelard.[20] There are also references in Kaufman's work to another literary figure, Italo Svevo. One of his characters is named after the Italian Modernist writer (Mary Svevo in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and Svevo's novel La Coscienza di Zeno (Confessions of Zeno, or Conscience of Zeno, 1923) also seems to be important in connection with Kaufman's writing. [citation needed]

"Consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer."

- Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) in Being John Malkovich

"You are what you love, not what loves you."

- Donald Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) in Adaptation.

"I liked Woody Allen when I was younger. The early Woody Allen is a complete mess, which I liked as a kid, but he was also a person that I could aspire to be, you know, short Jewish guys up there on the screen. I wanted to write comedies when I was younger, and yeah I liked his style. But I had a different idea of things then." (...)

"I don't really have anything against stories, but I just want to feel something happening. I read something that Emily Dickinson said that I'm going to paraphrase: you know something's poetry if a shiver goes up your spine."

- In an Interview with Michael Koresky and Matthew Plouffe, Reverse Shot Online, Spring 2005

• Being John Malkovich (1999; writer)
• Human Nature (2001; writer)
• Adaptation. (2002; writer)
• Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002; writer)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004; writer)
• Synecdoche, New York (2008; writer, director)

• Get a Life (1991-92)
• The Dana Carvey Show (1993)
• The Trouble With Larry (1993)
• The Edge (93-94)
• Ned and Stacy (96-97)

• Hope Leaves the Theater (2005; playwright, director)

• Being Charlie Kaufman - A thorough fan site
• Charlie Kaufman at the Internet Movie Database
• New York Times biography

• Charlie Kaufman, the Man behind "Malkovich", by Anthony Kaufman, indieWire.com, October 27, 1999
• Charlie Kaufman Au Naturel, On Human Nature, by Rod Armstrong, Reel.com, April 11, 2002
• Profile: Wanted: Charlie Kaufman, Outlaw Scribe, by David Fear, Moviemaker
• Interview with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman, by Ray Pride, Movie City News, March 17, 2004
• Interview with Michael Gondry and Charlie Kaufman, by Brendan MacDevette, Independent Film Quarterly
• Why Charlie Kaufman doesn't watch movies anymore, by Michael Koresky and Matthew Plouffe, Reverse Shot Online, Spring 2005
• "The 'Quirky' New Wave" Alternate Takes
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Interview Future Movies