Editor’s note: This interview was originally published at the 2026 Telluride Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures’ “Wild Horse Nine” opened in select theaters on November 6.
While the early press screenings of “Wild Horse Nine” in Los Angeles and New York had set the ball in motion, the first movement of strong public opinion was the Venice Film Festival, where acclaimed author Martin McDonagh, John Malkovich, and Sam Rockwell received standing ovation. Then they were sent to the Colorado Rockies to show the film in Telluride.
Immediately, Malkovich jumped up the Best Actor ranking for his third Oscar nomination. His first two were for Supporting Actor, in 1985 for “Places in the Heart,” and 1993 for “In the Line of Fire.” Now the film is showing at the Toronto International Film Festival before its release on November 6th.
I caught up with Malkovich in the back of a big black SUV parked in front of the Herzog Theater before the first of his two Telluride Grants.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Anna Thomson: How did you first meet Martin McDonagh?
John Malkovich: I have been offered a couple of Martin’s items over the years. One, “Seven Psychopaths,” one, [the play] “A Behanding in Spokane,” but I couldn’t do it. I was busy. I love the scripts, but I couldn’t do it, so this came up. I thought the thing was very good. Beautiful piece of writing, just perfect screenshot, and I couldn’t believe I got it. I couldn’t believe he asked me to do it.
It’s a juicy lead.
Yes. So I said, “Yes!” without any doubt. I have two small grandchildren. I don’t like being away for two, three months, whatever. But it’s part of the job, so you have to do it. We met in London because I never met Martin. We figured out five to six days in London with Sam, who I love. I had worked with him before on “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” it wasn’t a long gig, but I knew Sam a little socially. And I had worked with Buscemi twice before because he was in our movie “Ghost World,” and we worked together in “Con Air.” Sam and I hit it off, functionally, very well, very quickly.
You may not agree, but I think Sam stepped back a bit and supported you in an amazing way. It really moves me that he did this to you. Do you feel that’s what he did?
Yes and no. I think he played a part. And the part [of Lee] a bit of a backlash in that sense. Chris is the oldest. He is the wild card. He has killed anything, 168 people, but apparently none while they were eating. And he is a legend in the CIA. Sam is a very generous actor, as generous as you could ever get, you couldn’t ask for a better partner in every way.
You have been doing this for a long time. Your first Oscar nomination was in 1985. That’s over 40 years ago. Both of your nominations have been for Supporting Actor. Are you a character actor??
I’ve held key positions. But people don’t understand what a role is, the general public or anyone but actors. First of all, you can be a great actor in anything, but if the movie is not good, it is completely meaningless. You might as well not have bothered. You probably didn’t do it either. It is a waste of time. For a good place to be really good, people need not only how to do that, but how the character does, and understand if they don’t like it, and they need to love the character’s arc. The best performances I gave would have been on stage first, but secondly, those in the cinema would not necessarily have been in good movies, ugh. And on a certain level, that has very little to do with the performance of X, Y, Z. That’s just one small part of a movie.
In this case, you will find a surprising amount of verbiage. So you had to make the rhythm of it, the sense of it, the feeling of it. Sometimes it’s hilariously funny, sometimes it’s sad, and you run that gamut.
Yeah, but that’s good writing. This stuff, I believe, causes a big wave, and you ride that wave where it goes, through comedy, through drama, through tragedy, even though that’s the nature of a particular text, and that’s what actors do. The collision between the public and the material is caused by the recognition of life.
Our CIA agent Chris is playing around with Chile in 1973 while Pinochet waits in the wings.
November 22, 1963 is a trauma, as are September 11, 2001, and 1973 in Chile. For those of us who were alive at that time, it is unfathomable. It doesn’t matter your politics now or now, or whether you had any. Doesn’t matter. I directed Don DeLillo’s great novel “Libra,” adapted it for the stage with Don, and Don mentioned it in the book as the seven seconds that broke the back of the American era in Chile and it was not the only place on earth: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador.
We were bad.
And various actors have been bad with us, and maybe not worse, but the birthday party was ruined. What remains, and it caused generations of pain, of nihilism, of loss of innocence, of loss of faith in a political system. People everywhere will understand that, and Martin does that beautifully. It is well structured in the writing and adapted in the filmmaking. So the wave is there.
It’s fun to watch your character because it’s uninhibited, it’s released, it doesn’t give a fuck anymore. He’s just going to say what he wants to say, and he’s going to tell the truth.
And people appreciate that because in this culture, it’s very strange. You say this word or that word, and the crowd against social media goes by itself. I don’t have social media. I don’t want it to be assigned to me so little. I don’t care what they say. They can say whatever they want, and so can people who offend you. They can say whatever they want, and voilaWho cares? And this idea that you can’t say that because it’s offensive to this or that, and covers everything and every topic and every topic and everything blah blah blah seems really dumb. It’s a dumb world.
Well, that’s one of the great things about being a certain age, right? You don’t care anymore. No, and probably not.
I will stay off [social media] because I don’t see the value. I am doing things. If people like them, beautiful. If they hate them, lovely. I am doing a [stage and short film] a piece called “The Music Critic,” which is the worst reviews of the world’s most beautiful pieces of classical music. They were all trashed. They all hated it. So what? Get used to it. Grow a thick skin, get on with your life, do what you think is good.
That is good advice for everyone.