John Malkovich is heavily tipped for an Oscar nomination for his performance in Martin McDonagh’s CIA black comedy “Wild Horse Nine,” marking his first real shot at an Academy Award in three decades. The 72-year-old actor had previously been nominated for best supporting actor for the films ‘Kalpteki Yerler’ (1984) and ‘In the Line of Fire’ (1993), but did not win.
Speaking at the London Film Festival Screen Talk on Sunday, Malkovich said he looked at the awards conversation “probably differently than I did at the time, because the film industry exists.”
“It was, in my opinion, undeserved, but it still retained a very, very high position in the culture. And when I say ‘undeserved,’ I mean there wasn’t that much ‘Chinatown,’ ‘Godfathers,’ or ‘Godfathers II,'” Malkovich said. “So that’s the only way to get people to go to theaters now. And it takes months and months and months.”
Malkovich, who thinks he was last nominated for an Oscar 30 years ago, said the campaign was not this intense. “When I was nominated for an Academy Award, someone said, ‘You’ve been nominated for an Academy Award,'” he said.
But Malkovich has never been a big fan of award shows and has attended the Oscars only once, when he was nominated for “Places in the Heart.” He told the crowd in London that he was deeply moved by the experience.
“I had a manager named Phyllis Carlyle, and we were driving up to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and she was kind of… bossy. She said, ‘Now, honey, there’s going to be a lot of people when we get there,'” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Okay, but we can go in the side door, right?’ I said. And she said to my face: ‘Honey! ‘There are Oscars, no side doors!’ So that’s my innate personality in the face of this kind of attack.”
Malkovich acknowledged that Hollywood as a whole has changed a lot since he last went on the awards hunt, and streaming has become more common in movie theaters. Often, he said, campaigning for a movie is the only way to get the public to see it in theaters.
“Both the 1984 Oscar movies, ‘The Killing Fields’ and ‘Places in the Heart,’ had already been released, they had already made their money, they were already successful. The same goes for ‘In the Line of Fire,'” he said. “It really was a different world. It seems like the only way to persuade people to go to the theater now.”
However, he is not very bothered by this. “I’m 72 years old, things change,” he said. “I really don’t like to think that things are not the same again. They just change and you either change with them or you die. I prefer to change with them. I’m going to die anyway.”
“Wild Horse Nine,” starring opposite Sam Rockwell as a master CIA agent, had its UK premiere at the London Film Festival on Friday. Set shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, the duo are sent to Easter Island, where they are forced to confront both their dark past and their current conspiracies.
“Wild Horse Nine” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, receiving rave reviews and Malkovich winning best actor. Malkovich modestly shrugged off the praise at a press conference in Venice, saying: “It’s incredibly kind. I’ve had a long career and wonderful collaborations with writers, directors and actors. I don’t feel in competition with any of them. To me, that’s a very nice thing. But the great thing is that the movie is getting attention. And it has a lot of great actors and it’s beautifully written and directed. That’s what matters to me.”