John Gavin Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an American actor. Known for his performances as eccentric and amoral characters, he has received various accolades, including three Emmy Awards and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, two Actor Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Laurence Olivier Award. Malkovich started his career as a charter member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 1976. He moved to New York City, acting in a Steppenwolf production of the Sam Shepard play True West (1982). He made his Broadway debut as Biff in the revival of the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman (1984), reprising the role in a television film adaptation the next year, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He directed the Harold Pinter play The Caretaker (1986), and acted in Lanford Wilson's Burn This (1987), the latter gaining him a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor nomination when it transferred to the West End in 1990. Malkovich won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his performance as a CIA officer in Wild Horse Nine (2026). Also he has received two Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nominations for playing a war veteran in Places in the Heart (1984) and an assassin in In the Line of Fire (1993). Other films include The Killing Fields (1984), Empire of the Sun (1987), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Of Mice and Men (1992), Con Air (1997), Rounders (1998), Being John Malkovich (1999), Shadow of the Vampire (2000), Ripley's Game (2002), Johnny English (2003), Burn After Reading (2008), Red (2010), and Bird Box (2018). He also had a recurring collaboration with art film directors Manoel de Oliveira and Raúl Ruiz. He has produced films such as Ghost World (2001), Juno (2007), and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012). On television, he was also Emmy-nominated for portraying Herman J. Mankiewicz in the HBO television film RKO 281 (1999) and Charles Talleyrand in the historical miniseries Napoléon (2002), and received an Actor Award nomination for his performance as Kurtz in the TNT television film Heart of Darkness (1994). He also portrayed the titular character in the HBO miniseries The New Pope (2020).