Top 55 John Malkovich Quotes

Even if you do succeed most people wouldn’t notice anyway.

I still have a temper, I suppose.

Theater is so ephemeral, and I love that.

I go around the world, working with all kinds of people who I love.

I always wanted to be fashionable.

I don’t want a trillion-dollar empire to run.

I was never a fanatical movie person.

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.

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.

You have to play your characters, not like them.

My father was a very contradictory man.

When you do a really good play, the audience and the performers are looking into the same looking glass, the same microscope. And the specimen they are looking at is human life and that’s why I do it, that’s why I like it.

Where women are concerned, the rule is never to go out with anyone better dressed than you.

I always liked clothes; since I was very, very young, I was interested. I studied costume as part of my theatre education.

There’s a reason screens are only this thick.

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.

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.

You know, I’m really not interested in someone telling me that something’s good or bad.

I only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.

I’m very much a typical midwesterner, and I don’t think the condition is curable.

I don’t like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.

I like very much to do movies.

I like design, I like details, to me it is just another form of self-expression.

I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it’s obviously a form of stupidity.

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.

I’m more likely to lose my temper on a film set than almost anywhere. Often the level of idiocy is so exalted that it’s impossible to comprehend.

You can’t take a play someone has directed and do whatever you want with it.

If you’re too smart it can limit you because you spend so much time thinking that you don’t do anything.

Utopia means elsewhere.

Every country has their problems.

Most films, it doesn’t matter if you see them or not.

I’ve done quite a few big American films.

I don’t want to be boring. But that’s not always easy.

I don’t understand how somebody wouldn’t have a sense of humor about themselves.

I don’t mind tracksuits. At the track.

I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character.

I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.

I brought my first fall/winter line to New York, and it was confiscated by U.S. Customs. They asked, ‘What is the value of this?’ I said, ‘I’m not so good with existential questions.’

Failure’s a natural part of life.

I never really did a western western.

I probably have more female friends than any man I’ve ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they’re generally mentally tougher, and they’re better listeners, and they’re more capable of surviving things.

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.

‘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.

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.

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.

I’m supposed to be a pretty good theater actor.

I wouldn’t describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that – the ghosts you chase you never catch.

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.

In New York in the Forties or Fifties, everybody’s in a suit, an overcoat and a hat.

We have a tendency to think everyone’s idiotic and everyone’s only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There’s great truth in that, I suppose, but then it’s also not true.

Nothing you do particularly matters. But I’m not sure that’s a great excuse for doing it poorly.

I’ll never be the biggest kind of star; I’ll be like Bob Duvall, respected as an actor but a lot of people can’t identify the face. I don’t have the personality of a big star, or the looks of a Mel Gibson or a Paul Newman, or the style of a George C. Scott.

I don’t have a saviour or a royal family.

Anybody doing something brings something to it.

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.