John Cusack
John Cusack
John Paul Cusackis an American actor, producer and screenwriter. He appeared in several teen films in the mid-1980s, most notably Better Off Dead, before he starred in Cameron Crowe's romantic comedy-drama Say Anything... in 1989. He later starred in High Fidelity, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe. Cusack is also known for his performances in the films Grosse Pointe Blank, Being John Malkovich, 1408, 2012, Hot Tub Time Machineand The Raven...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth28 June 1966
CountryUnited States of America
I'm definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.
If you're a movie star, there's a cycle you go through: adoration, adulation, you're used, and then you're discarded. And it happens again and again, always in that sequence.
It seems to me that one thing people do over and over again is try to figure out how to get married, stay married, fall in love, how to rekindle all this stuff. It seems to me to be a pretty eternal theme so I don't know if you can get typecast from making movies about men relating to women. It seems to be what is going on on the planet a lot.
I guess maybe I'm idealistic.
Every role you do is kind of a side of yourself. That's why they give you the part.
I don't tend to think in terms of a moral authority - be a good boy, do good things - more in terms of what feels right.
I was never a joiner. I tried - I had people I admired and liked and wanted to hang with, but I ended up starting a theatre company and that took me back to Chicago... I guess I wasn't a scenester in the end. Something must have worked out right, as I'm still here - but I'm only a binge socialite.
Probably Lloyd in 'Say Anything' is the closest to me - or to who I was at the time. It was just a great love story about people in the '80s, and we all tried to make it feel as real as possible. It was such a wonderful time. We didn't leave anything in the gym; we put it all out there.
The British keep employing me, and that makes me like them. It also makes me think they're very intelligent.
Most movies, once the action starts there's no more characters. You say a couple of dumb lines and then there's just explosions until the end.
Roy, the guy I play in 'The Grifters,' is a guy who had a very bleak life. His mother had him at 13, and then when she was 17 or 18 and he was 4 or 5, they were trapped in a small Texas town somewhere, and she was ready to do anything to get out.
I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who's to say anybody's even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I've done, people still recite lines to me, even 20 years later.
You just try to get the best jobs that you can get. Sometimes I produce my own movies, so that's your own sort of vision. That helps things. I don't know what it is. Probably just circumstance. I've definitely been aware of the fact that I want to do different things.
Usually I do everything reverse. I practice something in movies and then I try it in real life.