Jack-of-all-trades Malkovich sings opera in Toronto, takes first TV series role

TORONTO – Crack character actor John Malkovich has made a career on adeptly handling a broad variety of roles, but his work off-screen is perhaps even more diverse.

The 59-year-old two-time Oscar nominee is a film producer (including Jason Reitman’s upcoming “Labor Day”), a director, an esteemed stage actor, a co-founder of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company and now an opera singer, one who happens to be performing his Mozart-channelling musical theatre mashup “The Giacomo Variations” this week in Toronto.

It’s a multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional career many actors would kill to have. And Malkovich, with typically deflating self-deprecation, claims he just sort of fell into it.

“I was unbelievably lucky,” the actor purred in his inimitable cadence during an interview this week in Toronto. “I got to do an enormous number of things that most people could dream of getting the chance to do. And honestly, I wouldn’t at all discount the possibility that they could have done it better, but I got the opportunity.

“I never thought I would direct a play, or three plays in Paris, or even start a little theatre with some other cretins in Chicago, or do a play in Mexico City or work in Hollywood or do any of the things I’ve done.

“For me,” he continued, “I would just say I’m lucky, I guess, and kind of leave it at that. Because certainly I knew people much more talented and a thousand times more ambitious. I don’t know a lot of people more driven than me, but I’m pretty much without ambition.”

It’s difficult to see his point on this day, as he speaks through obvious fatigue having just completed a series of “Giacomo” performances in Montreal a day prior.

With four performances in three days planned at Toronto’s Elgin Theatre through Sunday, Malkovich portrays legendary lover Giacomo Casanova in the production, a fusion of theatre and opera written and directed by Michael Sturminger with a musical concept by Martin Haselbock. It’s been staged roughly three dozen times all over the world since debuting in Vienna in January 2011. Over the same period, Malkovich has continued performing his other stage collaboration with Sturminger and Haselbock, “The Infernal Comedy.”

It’s a different rhythm from the daily performances required by a Broadway production, but the more sporadic performances suit Malkovich.

“I did that a huge part of my life — not just eight shows a week, sometimes up to 14 shows a week when we started our theatre in Chicago,” he said. “It’s an incredible grind … and I got pretty sick of it as I got older.”

Still, touring “Giacomo” has its drawbacks, too.

“The travel is pretty irritating to a great extent. We do hours of press everywhere we go, which I’ve had more than a lifetime of. But we like doing it. We love the collaboration.”

As accomplished as Malkovich’s career onscreen has been, he’s consistently devoted energy to the stage. In part, it appeals because of its ephemeral nature, he says.

“That’s my favourite thing — you had to be there,” he said. “People always love film because it’s a record of their work. I don’t know if I ever did any work that deserves a record.”

Malkovich — who earned his Academy Award nods for 1993’s “In the Line of Fire” and 1985’s “Places in the Heart” — doesn’t smile as he says this. But generally speaking, the actor (also known for “Being John Malkovich” and “Dangerous Liaisons”) doesn’t seem entirely enamoured with the world of film at the moment.

He co-owns a production company, Mr. Mudd, that put out the well-received indies “Juno,” “Ghost World” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” While in Montreal, he met with celebrated Quebecois filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée about an upcoming project and returned raving about the director.

But he still sounds slightly disillusioned with the industry as a whole.

“It’s tough to produce independent films,” he says. “Even if you do ‘Juno’ and you make a few hundred million dollars, they tell you it’s not a profit. You don’t get development deals anymore. It’s cost my partners a fortune. It’s cost me a fortune. Yeah, we like doing it. But at a certain point, you’re like: wouldn’t we be better off in retail?”

Malkovich has, in fact, just accepted his first-ever recurring role on a television series. He’ll play the pirate Blackbeard in NBC’s series “Crossbones,” a 1715-set action-adventure created by “Luther” mastermind Neil Cross.

Even though it’s Malkovich’s first foray into scripted TV, he says he doesn’t have a snobbish attitude toward the small screen.

“I started watching a lot of these long series. I mean, some of which I watch to laugh, some of which are goofy and some of which are very good, and most of which are a combination of all those things. I kind of like that form,” he said, shifting into a critique of film.

“When you have to kind of smashbox everything in to one hour, 37 (minutes), or an hour 41, or, if you’re Danish, I guess it can be an hour 54 — what’s so interesting about that form that has so captivated people for so long? I’m not one of those people particularly captivated by that form.

“With these long-form television things, you can go into a kind of detail and a kind of depth, a profundity, that you just can’t do in two hours. You can have minor characters that aren’t just there to give us exposition. ‘That’s her cousin!’ ‘That’s his dog!’ ‘He’s a doctor!’ This is (ridiculous) to me. It’s why it’s hard for me to watch a lot of movies. Someone allegedly wrote this — but did anybody read it? Seriously?”

Television, he says, allows the opportunity for fuller character studies.

“In that form, I think you can just go into more depth,” he said. “OK, a lot of them are very trashy. But I kind of like that.”