MAVERICK MALKOVICH: BOUND FOR HIGH PLACES

The first impression John Malkovich made as a film actor--playing a sightless young man being conducted into Sally Field’s parlor in “Places in the Heart”--was so indelible that it has ever since been a slight surprise and a great relief to find that he is not in fact blind.

It was his second film. He had also shot “The Killing Fields” in Cambodia, playing a tough-minded photojournalist, but “Places” was released first and became his debut.

Even before he had said a word, his presence had a strong and unsettling impact. The young man seemed to be seething with rage, or, as came clear in time, to be masking his anxiety and despair with anger. He was menacing and ambiguous, and his performance, as a progressive revelation of character, rightly won an Academy Award nomination.

His work in “The Killing Fields” and as one of Dustin Hoffman’s sons on stage and in the television film of “Death of a Salesman” has confirmed that Malkovich is one of the most intense and talented actors of his young generation (he is just past 30).

He is lately visible in his first starring role, as New York Times journalist Nicholas Gage in “Eleni,” the true story of Gage’s search for the wartime murderer of his mother in their native Greece.

The characterization is true to the Gage revealed in the book--a man inwardly obsessed with a mission, but contained and purposeful and, despite the occasional moments of drama, more often the sleuth than the impassioned avenger.

Although many critics have praised his performance exactly for its unrelenting, driven energy, Malkovich is dissatisfied in retrospect, finding it too passionless--accurate but not, in the end, best suited to the needs of the drama. In his candor, not abundant in his profession, not less than in his ability, Malkovich is a refreshing and remarkable figure.

He came late to acting, having started at Eastern Illinois State University in environmental studies. But having had a taste of acting in a class, he liked it and transferred to Illinois State at Normal, which had a larger drama department.

From the campus he invaded Chicago’s vigorous and experimental little-theater scene. “It seemed like there were hundreds of theaters there,” Malkovich said during a visit to Los Angeles for the “Eleni” premiere. “Your mailbox would be stuffed with fliers every day.” In 1976 he and some friends founded Steppenwolf Theater, which began life in a basement.

“We were the young punks. Now at 30 and 31, we’re the elder statesmen.”

His reputation as both an actor and a director preceded him to New York. Hoffman had heard about Steppenwolf’s own production of “Death of a Salesman” and asked Malkovich to come to New York to audition for him. Malkovich did, and then went off to do “The Killing Fields,” but Hoffman had been so impressed by the audition that he delayed his production until Malkovich was free.

The Steppenwolf production of Sam Shepard’s “True West” moved from Chicago to Off Broadway and Malkovich won an Obie and the Clarence Derwent Award for best young American actor. He directed a production of “Balm in Gilead” while he was doing “Salesman” with Hoffman, and in January in New York he will direct a Steppenwolf production of Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” which the company had done in Chicago a few years ago.

Two or three years ago, Malkovich says, “I got to be 28 or 29 and I just thought, ‘Oh, really, this is enough. I’ve had seven years of $3,200-a-year grosses, or less, for 14-hour days and 7-day weeks.’ It seemed like stupidity on my part. It seemed to me that if you had talent, you ought to be able to make a living at it.”

So began his film career, and he and his wife, Glenne Headly, who plays his wife in “Eleni,” settled in New York.

Some of Malkovich’s feelings about acting are striking if not heretical. “I don’t find a difference between stage and film acting,” he says, for example. “I grew up in tiny theaters, and I suppose that’s a factor. When I did ‘Death’ in New York, I felt lost and trembling for months. I couldn’t even talk loud enough to be heard.

“But when people see a play, they don’t respond to the size of the performance, they respond to an aura or an energy around the performer--and, no, I’m not a mystic.

“I try not to do anything bigger than the character would do in life. Part of what an audience must sense is that the stage is a forum where real events take place. If they begin to notice performance in a way that makes them say ‘He’s a really good actor’ instead of ‘How sad for that character,’ you’ve defeated yourself. You have to have energy, yes, but you just have to talk louder, and find the way to make that superimposed volume feel real.

“You have to believe in your heart that you are who you say you are: Then the size of the performance doesn’t matter.”

Filming “Death of a Salesman” with Hoffman and director Volker Schlondorff was the only time so far, Malkovich says--candid again--that he felt “absolutely and totally ideal about a film. I felt completely protected by the script, the rehearsal time (a year, really, of stage performances) and the director. I knew I could do exactly what I was hired to do, which was act.”

I’ve always thought the camera had X-ray properties, able to discover the inner properties of performers (or television-show panelists). Malkovich disagrees strongly. “I think the camera lies all the time,” he says.

“The camera gives humor to people who are soulless and depth to people who are vacant as a glass jar. It’s not always true, of course. You can be acting with someone and see right through them, yet on screen it looks real. On the other hand, it doesn’t always pick up on what’s happening in a room where you’re acting.”

After “Eleni,” Malkovich earlier this year directed Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” with Kevin Kline and Raul Julia. When Kline had to leave for another commitment, Malkovich took over the numbingly long part for the last three weeks of the run. (He was still bearded from the part when he was in Los Angeles for the “Eleni” premiere.)

“I heard the part so often from directing it that I already knew it. With most plays, if you can figure out why the characters are saying what they’re saying, you have no trouble memorizing them. I can play any part I’ve ever played, right now--not well, maybe, but it does get implanted in your long-term memory.”

Malkovich is a perfectionist actor. “It’s easier to be you in the theater than in film; you have so much more control. Until now I didn’t know enough about film, or have the power, so that I could control very much. But it’s getting better.”