"Being on stage with classical music is like being hit by a moving house. You have to go with the flow of the music and not fight it," says John Malkovich, who is visiting Sweden with the hybrid performance "Report on the Blind."
The 72-year-old multi-disciplinary artist gives a soft, almost cautious impression during the interview at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. A testament to Malkovich's acting ability.
He is perhaps best known for dark characters such as Cyrus "the Virus" Grissom, a criminal genius who stages a plane hijacking in "Con Air" (1997), Vicomte de Valmont, a manipulative aristocrat in "Dangerous Liaisons" (1988) and Mitch Leary, a psychopathic former CIA assassin who stalks the President of the United States in the film "In the Line of Fire" (1993) - a role that earned Malkovich an Oscar nomination.
Pathological liar
The performance “Report on the Blind” also explores human darkness. Here, Malkovich recites parts of Argentine author Ernesto Sábato’s novel “Of Heroes and Tombs” – about a young man’s destructive love for an enigmatic woman, whose paranoid father Fernando becomes obsessed with a secret conspiracy of blind people who he believes rule the world.
"Fernando Vidal Olmos is a fantastic character. He's a bit of a sociopath and a pathological liar. He's incestuous, deeply dishonest and lies a lot to others, but not as much as he lies to himself," says John Malkovich.
Deeply human
"Report on the Blind" began as a film idea 30 years ago, but the script was abandoned and brought back to life many years later when Malkovich, while collaborating with a Russian pianist, realized that Sábato's text was a perfect fit for the music of Russian composer Alfred Schnittke.
"Something about the music reminded me so much of the part of Sábato's book called 'Report of the Blind.' It has a lot of revelations, almost in a biblical sense, and most of them are false," Malkovich says.
He was drawn to the paradox of Father Fernando, who is “both 100 percent right and 100 percent wrong all the time.”
"I'm generally 100 percent wrong about everything I know. And that's okay. What can I do? I'm just who I am. So I think most people fit into that category, which is why I find it funny and deeply human," Malkovich says.
Name: John Malkovich
Born: December 9, 1953 (age 72)
Place of birth: Christopher, Illinois, USA
Family: Partner Nicoletta Peyran, two children. Previously married to Glenne Headly.
Profession: Actor, director, producer and fashion designer
Selected works:
Film: "The Killing Fields" (1984), "Dangerous Liaisons" (1988), "In the Line of Fire" (1993), "Con Air" (1997), "Being John Malkovich" (1999), "Of Mice and Men" (1992), "Ripley's Game" (1999), "Burn After Reading" (2008), "Changeling" (2008), "Red" (2010), "Bird Box" (2018).
Theater: "Death of a Salesman" (Broadway, 1984) and the musical theatre productions "The Giacomo Variations".
Currently performing Ernesto Sábato's "Report on the Blind" (with music by Alfred Schnittke), at the Royal Opera in Stockholm on 23/6 and Stora Teatern in Gothenburg on 25/6.
