John Malkovich Still Finds Fresh Ways to Be John Malkovich

“I like to send my wife texts about disastrous things that could happen if she doesn’t listen,” John Malkovich says with a half‑smile during a Zoom call from a Boston hotel. He pauses, runs a hand over his bald crown, then adds, “This morning’s was a man being attacked by an octopus. He couldn’t get the octopus off his face.” It’s the kind of dry, absurd humor that has always felt like a fingerprint on his personality.

At 72, Malkovich has already logged more than a hundred screen credits, a celebrated stage résumé and a personal history marked by loss – his father and three siblings all died in their fifties. “Death is always present at my age,” he admits, “but I don’t waste too much time thinking about it.” He shrugs, as if the octopus‑themed warning were just another quirky anecdote.

That blend of existential dread and off‑beat levity seeps straight into his newest film, “Wild Horse Nine,” slated to open on November 6. The role is perhaps the most substantial he’s tackled in over three decades, and early buzz suggests it could finally earn him an Oscar nod – the first since his 1993 nomination for “In the Line of Fire.”

Directed and written by Martin McDonagh, the man behind “In Bruges” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the movie plants its story in 1973 Chile, just before the military coup that toppled President Salvador Allende. Malkovich portrays Chris, a veteran CIA operative dying of cancer, who embarks on a final, seemingly absurd road trip with his old partner Lee, played by Sam Rockwell, from Santiago to Easter Island.

When asked what he sees of himself in Chris, Malkovich chuckles, “I don’t smoke, I don’t kill people – as much as I’d like to – and I’m not addicted to heroin.” Yet he concedes there’s an emotional overlap: “Near the end of life you naturally start tallying up regrets, the things you did and the things you didn’t.” The character’s melancholy is balanced by an odd charm – a former operative who muses about whether dinosaurs have souls while spilling classified secrets over cheap wine.

For decades, Malkovich has been the go‑to guy for intelligence types – the neurotic CIA analyst in the Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading,” the paranoid agent in the “Red” series – but Chris is different. He is both morally compromised and oddly lovable, a man whose body is failing and whose memory flickers like a dying projector. “My voice has changed,” Malkovich notes. “It’s more labored now, less clean – that’s just age speaking.”

McDonagh, speaking from London, says the actor brings more than a practiced delivery. “John never plays just the surface,” he says. “In the quiet moments, when he’s staring out a window or wrestling with his past, you can see the depth in his eyes. That’s what makes Chris feel real.” The director admits he was nervous before their first Zoom meeting, fearing the actor’s reputation for intense, angry parts would dominate. Instead, Malkovich proved to be kind, thoughtful, and unexpectedly relaxed.

Despite his reticence about watching himself on screen – “it’s a kind of black hole,” he calls it – Malkovich admits he enjoyed the process of “Wild Horse Nine.” “I’m always happy to watch others, and luckily I’m the only one on screen in any given scene,” he jokes. Yet his gratitude is genuine; the role lets him explore a part of himself that only a handful of years could have permitted.

As the film prepares for its Venice premiere and a U.S. release later this year, Malkofie’s fans are left with a tantalizing thought: perhaps the octopus will indeed surface again, but this time it might be on the silver screen, a reminder that even the most seasoned actors keep finding new, weird ways to be themselves.