Top 100 Malkovich Quotes
#1. Even though I wanted to be John Malkovich or Sean Penn when I was a kid, mostly I was a music nerd.
Justin Kirk
#2. I wouldn't say Malkovich is totally insane, but he's not living in the real world. He's living in his world, which is a fine world to live in apparently.
Martha Plimpton
#3. On Being John Malkovich and the cinema of the absurd, I do enjoy it. I wish there were more like it. The very fact that there can't be more like it is one of the reasons it's admirable.
Carter Burwell
#4. It's the best part of the whole movie. John Malkovich with a pink pig is - you can't get better than that. Then John Malkovich alone and then you add a pink pig.
Mary-Louise Parker
#5. I loved working on Of Mice and Men. It was a wonderful group of people. John Malkovich is to me one of the best actors around right now-and a lot of fun to work with.
Sherilyn Fenn
#6. I'm a huge fan of John Malkovich and Josh Brolin, and Michael Shannon has got to be one of my favorite actors.
John Gallagher Jr.
#7. John Malkovich is such an interesting person and such a fun actor to work with.
Liam Hemsworth
#8. It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.
Roger Ebert
#9. My first acting class was taught by a little known playwright, David Mamet, who then cast me in my first play, opposite John Malkovich.
John Mahoney
#10. One of the great things that you should never do that I learned from John Malkovich is to never judge your characters.
Jeremy Piven
#11. You know, I'm really not interested in someone telling me that something's good or bad.
John Malkovich
#12. I grew up in the Midwest, quite far from any ocean or any beach, a million miles. I think for kids who grew up where I did, the idea of California, surfing and beach life was so exotic and glamorous.
John Malkovich
#13. Art is not disposable. If you want it, you have to hold it and smell it and touch it and read the credits and enjoy it and put it on your wall.
John Malkovich
#14. I can see how, given a certain degree of sensitivities, proclivities and rage, I could have ended up differently.
John Malkovich
#15. My father could be very distancing. My clearest memory is of him squatting, watering plants for hours and hours at a time, completely silent. He was very self-contained; my mother was more outgoing and chatty and social. I'm certainly more like her.
John Malkovich
#16. I don't really go through a process, it goes through me.
John Malkovich
#18. When you think of how history is revealed, we know certain things to be facts at certain periods of time, which turn out not to be so factual as time marches on.
John Malkovich
#19. I think with actors, if you just don't set about trying to crush their confidence immediately, you're usually OK.
John Malkovich
#20. It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.
John Malkovich
#21. Scary monsters are like Hula Hoops. They come in and out of fashion.
John Malkovich
#22. I've always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate.
John Malkovich
#23. One doesn't know if one had a happy childhood or not. I don't really know what it means.
John Malkovich
#24. And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'
John Malkovich
#25. I love Chicago, but in a lot of ways it's a disappointment. You can work there for years and years, and because you're in Chicago, you don't get the recognition. It has some of the best theater in the country, but when they shoot a movie there, they bring in all their actors.
John Malkovich
#26. Most filmmakers' entire body of knowledge is of other movies. When they describe things, they describe them in relation to other movies. That's why we have so many cyclical movies that look like other movies. But I'm not cynical. I even go to some of those movies.
John Malkovich
#27. I am inspired by the appearance of a bohemian of the new millennium.
John Malkovich
#28. It's a little bit hard to have personal things subject to public scrutiny, and it's a pressure that other people aren't under, but then they're under a lot of pressures that we're not under.
John Malkovich
#30. I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren't available to men before or after, just a very brief period.
John Malkovich
#31. Actors generally get to do things you probably shouldn't do in real life - well, at least as much as one might like to or be tempted to. Though I suppose a lot of actors just go ahead and do it, don't they?
John Malkovich
#32. You have to do things people see or you don't get to do anything.
John Malkovich
#34. I know fashion can be intensely goofy, but it is something I've always taken pretty seriously.
John Malkovich
#35. You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.
John Malkovich
#36. Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it.
John Malkovich
#38. I mean, anything that money can be made off will never be a problem to make, no matter what it is.
John Malkovich
#39. I only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.
John Malkovich
#40. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that - the ghosts you chase you never catch.
John Malkovich
#42. Imagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part.
John Malkovich
#43. I'm a little bit phobic about stains on my clothes, so I never travel without a little packet of organic stain remover.
John Malkovich
#45. I don't want to be boring. But that's not always easy.
John Malkovich
#46. It's not a gift of mine, but one given to me, to be able to criticise myself and not be crushed, by myself or by others.
John Malkovich
#47. I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There's great truth in that.
John Malkovich
#48. I think 1973 was the nadir of fashion. When you watch the coverage from that era, you're struck by the astonishing ugliness of the clothes.
John Malkovich
#49. Quite often - a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too.
John Malkovich
#50. I prefer to conduct my life based on how I treat people.
John Malkovich
#51. Nothing you do particularly matters. But I'm not sure that's a great excuse for doing it poorly.
John Malkovich
#52. My father was an exceptionally strong influence on me.
John Malkovich
#53. Sigmund Freud said we act out our own dreams, but if you are only an actor you are not acting out your own dream. You are simply participating in someone else's dream.
John Malkovich
#54. A dog that has rabies probably will do things it wouldn't do if it didn't have rabies. But that doesn't change the fact that it has rabies.
John Malkovich
#56. Most of the women that I like have a haunted quality - they're sort of like women who live in a haunted house by themselves.
John Malkovich
#57. I lost seventy pounds eating nothing but Jello for 4 months. But of course there is great variety in the colors! I think, if I remember correctly, it's 230 calories for a whole bowl. Maybe 270? In the 5th month, I added fruit.
John Malkovich
#58. Along with the good qualities, if someone isn't vulnerable I can't be around them to a certain extent. And I don't mean vulnerable to me or vulnerable to me in a sexual way. I just mean vulnerable, period.
John Malkovich
#60. If I had spent as much time in the weight room as I did designing football uniforms, I probably would have had a free college education.
John Malkovich
#61. 'Secretariat' was such a magnificent animal, unbelievably beautiful and powerful. It's always nice to see something that close to perfection, a reason to celebrate.
John Malkovich
#63. Some people die before their time so that others can live. It's a cornerstone of civilization.
John Malkovich
#66. I've permitted myself to learn and to fail with some regularity. And that is probably the one thing I was given, and that I'm still grateful for.
John Malkovich
#68. I don't like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.
John Malkovich
#70. I have probably four or five male friends who have a real strong masculine side but some degree of a feminine side, too. They're pretty rare, whereas I think women with a masculine side are much less rare.
John Malkovich
#72. There are many, many benefits to being known for whatever it is you do. To deny that would be sort of asinine and vulgar.
John Malkovich
#73. The most evocative thing to me is probably when a writer and a group of performers can collectively put together something compelling that asks the really simple question: 'How do we live?'
John Malkovich
#75. I never wanted to be with someone who just hung around the house.
John Malkovich
#76. I think when I went to psychoanalysis, I actually believed that people said what they meant. This was my whole problem.
John Malkovich
#77. Where women are concerned, the rule is never to go out with anyone better dressed than you.
John Malkovich
#79. I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.
John Malkovich
#80. I have at times spoken with my peers and the head of the actors' union about why we're not paid when we appear in, say, a 'TMZ' production, but there seems to be no real interest in combatting it.
John Malkovich
#81. You can be a mason and build 50 buildings, but it doesn't mean you can design one.
John Malkovich
#82. I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character.
John Malkovich
#84. The projects I look for to produce or direct would not be ones in which I would want to act.
John Malkovich
#85. Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.
John Malkovich
#87. I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.
John Malkovich
#88. I don't really have a comprehension of being a public figure.
John Malkovich
#89. I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it's obviously a form of stupidity.
John Malkovich
#90. The theater is so disappointing, really, that it's hard to go again and again. It's just too heartbreaking. I'd rather watch football or play a game or read.
John Malkovich
#92. With acting it's your neck up there in the end. And if you think the director can't help you it's one thing. But if you feel they're reining you in when they need to be giving you some rope, or vice versa, then I just don't tolerate that.
John Malkovich
#94. People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you'll never see the headlines say, 'Six billion people got along rather well today.' You'll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.
John Malkovich
#95. In New York in the Forties or Fifties, everybody's in a suit, an overcoat and a hat.
John Malkovich
#96. I haven't physically attacked anyone in a couple of years.
John Malkovich
#97. I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.
John Malkovich
#98. I'd hate to see any film I'm involved in fail, especially artistically but also business-wise.
John Malkovich
#100. I don't understand how somebody wouldn't have a sense of humor about themselves.
John Malkovich
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