December 9th marks John Malkovich's 69th birthday. Over the course of his long career, he has performed more than a hundred roles in films and TV series—and that’s not counting voice acting, music videos, and commercials. What other actor can boast of playing a dozen versions of himself in a movie named after himself? 
Malkovich's ancestors come from Croatia
John Gavin Malkovich was born and raised in Illinois. His father, Daniel Leon Malkovich, was the director of the state Department of Environmental Protection and, along with his wife Jo Ann, published the environmental magazine Outdoor Illinois. The future actor's mother was also the owner and editor of the city's weekly newspaper, The Benton News.
Malkovich's paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from the Croatian city of Ozal. His ancestors also included French, German, English, Scots, Serbs and Montenegrins. 
Perhaps Malkovich owes his ethnic origins to the fact that director Bernardo Bertolucci described his gait as “something between a Yugoslav football player and a ballerina.”
Once as a teenager, Malkovich went on a strict diet
During his school years, Malkovich actively played American football and baseball, but despite this, he was overweight - at the age of 16, the young man weighed more than a hundred kilograms. So he decided to go on a diet that consisted of a box of Jell-O (a factory-made gelatin dessert) a day. Thus, he actually managed to lose 70 pounds (almost 32 kilograms) in four months.
When asked how his parents reacted to this, Malkovich replied: “We were a strange family. Most likely they just didn’t notice.” The parents were indeed philosophical about raising five children, of whom John was the second youngest. 
If the father tried to instill discipline in them, including beating his sons, then the mother simply turned on the radio louder when the offspring got into noisy fights.
Malkovich became interested in acting back in school.
John dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player, but fell in love with a girl who was interested in theater, and together with her he joined the school troupe. There he played in several plays and the musical Carousel. John also sang in a choir that performed at various city events in his native Benton, and in high school he played in the summer theater.
After graduating from school, he entered Eastern Illinois University, where he chose biology and sociology as his main subjects. John soon transferred from there to the University of Illinois to study at the theater department, but he dropped out and continued his acting studies at the William Esper Studio in New York.
Malkovich drove a school bus 
In 1976, Malkovich, along with his future wife, actress Glenne Headly, joined the independent theater troupe Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, which had been founded two years earlier by Terry Kinney, Jeff Perry and Harry Sinise. However, like many aspiring actors, he had to earn extra money, grabbing literally any paid occupation. He worked at an office supply store, painted houses, weeded garden beds for a Mexican landscaping firm, and cut cabbage at a fast food joint.
But most of all, the actor loved to remember how he transported students from one of the Chicago private schools by bus. Malkovich himself considered himself an excellent driver - although he is still not sure that the passengers shared this opinion.
The title of the film, Being John Malkovich, was a joke. 
In 1994, Charlie Kaufman wrote the script for the surreal comedy Being John Malkovich. He didn’t know the actor at that time, but, in his opinion, Malkovich was the only one who could play in this film. Partly because his name, repeated many times in a row, sounded very funny.
When Malkovich received the script, he was first of all surprised and asked: “But why me? Why not “Being Tom Cruise”? The producers also asked Kaufman and director Spike Jonze the same question, because Malkovich was not very recognizable at that time, despite the fact that he had been acting in films for more than ten years and had been nominated for an Oscar twice. However, the authors insisted on their choice and convinced, among others, John himself, who believed that acting in a film named after him would be immodest.
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