Film star John Malkovich has suffered many a tragedy that heartbreaking happened in succession.
The movie actor, who has had roles in blockbusters like Birdbox, Of Mice and Men, and Con-air opened up in 2020 about the difficult decade. He explained the fraudulent activity that led to him losing a large amount of money, as well as losing all of his siblings within years of each other. The 69-year-old seemed quite optimistic about life years later, despite the tragedies. He said he tries “not to worry about things I can’t control.”
John Malkovich‘s tragedy-filled decade began with a bad investment
In December 2008, the Hollywood actor’s business manager put his life savings into an investment with a man named Bernie Madoff. However, Madoff was later convicted of fraudulence that led thousands of people to lose a total of more than 60 billion dollars.
John told The Guardian: “Everything I’d ever made was gone.”
On finding out that his life savings had been stolen, he explained: “I saw a picture of Bernie Madoff in handcuffs and said to my wife: ‘I’m going to go to the corner to get a packet of cigarettes. I think we have a little problem with Madoff … [Afterwards] You know, that was a couple of days of shock, I suppose.”
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Madoff was sentenced in 2009 to 150 years in prison for his crimes.
Talking about how his life changed after the incident, in which he lost “a lot,” the celebrity said that he “stopped” paying for many things as well as giving out freely to his loved ones.
“Oh, I don’t know. A lot. But I don’t think it mattered that much. We just made changes to the way we lived and the money we spent.
“I had to do more work that paid for several years, and work all the time. And I stopped paying for everything. I just stopped paying for friends and family for a time. And we used to spend a lot of money producing movies that lost quite a lot of money. That stopped.”
He chose to look on the bright side of things despite his huge loss. John said: “After a couple or three days, you go: ‘You’re lucky to be alive, you’re lucky to have a job.’ Almost no one has money in the banks. I read somewhere that a huge percentage of Americans wouldn’t have $400 to put between their hands in an emergency.”
Losing all of his siblings
Three of four of John’s siblings all died within years of each other. Apart from the actor, they all followed their parents into journalism (his dad was an environmental journalist, and his mom was an editor of a local paper).
He said losing them was upsetting but was matter-of-fact about it and asked: “What can you do?”
“What can you do about it? Amanda, then Mother, then Danny, then Rebecca – and that was all over five years from 2009. I try not to worry about things I can’t control. Unless, say, you had a terrible mother, I don’t think anybody enjoys their family or siblings dying. I liked all mine. But what can you do? It’s the final act in life.”
“And that is how I look at life; I was very lucky,” he added. “I’ve been luckier than anybody I know. Luckier than all of the children in my family, all of whom were more interesting or more talented or smarter than me. So when things have happened that have been sad and difficult, I don’t feel the need to complain about them.”
Loss of a friend
Losing family and the large sum of money wasn’t John Malkovich’s only brushing with grief and tragedy as earlier this year, his close friend, A Room With a View star Julian Sands died after going missing while hiking in the Mount Baldy area of southern California.
John said that he would “miss him every day.”
“We stayed incredibly close since then,” he said on starring in 1983 film The Killing Fields alongside Julian. “I’ll miss him every day of my life, but such is life. You lose a lot along the road until you’re lost. And that’s the way life ends, I’m afraid. I’m very sad about it, but obviously of course mostly for his children.”
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