John Malkovich was born on 9th December, 1953 in Christopher, Illinois. Founder in 1976 of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, he starts to be an actor at the theatre in the late 70’s and directs a few shows for his troop.

After a few movies on TV, this American actor appears on the black screen as a press photographer in The Killing Fields, by Roland Joffé in 1984. The same year, he is the Second Best Male Character Oscar nominee for Places in the Heart by Robert Benton. Three years later, he is noticed again in Empire of the Sun by Steven Spielberg as a captive companion of Christian Bale. In 1988, John Malkovich finally assures his star status with his rendering of De Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons by Stephen Frears. After playing the main character in Of Mice and Men in 1992, this actor starts playing in whodunits with Jennifer Eight and In the Line of Fire in 1993 (Second Best Male Character Oscar nominee) an assumes his original international star profile in Beyond the Clouds by Wim Wenders and Michelangelo Antonioni and in The Convent by Manoel de Oliveira. Back to the Anglo-Saxon cinema in 1996 with Mary Reilly which let him play the famous Doctor Jekyll with Julia Roberts and Stephen Frears, then in Woman Portrait by Jane Campion.

In 1997, he starts a commercial kind of cinema with Con Air but also The Man in the Iron Mask and Rounders (1998). Unwillingly a hero in the mad Being John Malkovich, Malkovich keeps travelling between Europe and the USA, between author cinema and commercial cinema.

Then he takes part in Time Regained by Raoul ruiz, in The Messenger, the Story of Joan of Arc by Luc Besson, in The Savage Souls in 2001 and in the French series Les Misérables and Napoleon, which proves his love for France. In America, he is an impressive Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau in Shadow of the Vampire.

In 2002, John Malkovich goes behind the movie-camera for The Dancer upstairs and again for Hideous Man, a short movie in which he is an actor-script-writer-director at the same time. These first experiences in directing are a turning point in his career and he decides to get involved in movies close to his heart such as The Libertine (2005) in which he is a main producer and actor.