In an interview with the Guardian, one of the few conservatives in Hollywood denied having any political ideology.
John Malkovich, the star of “Dangerous Liaisons” and, more recently, “Burn After Reading” and “Red,” is known in the motion picture industry for leaning to the right. William Hootkins, a British actor who worked with Malkovich on a BBC television show, even told the Sunday Telegraph the actor was “so right-wing you have to wonder if he’s kidding.”
But in an interview released today, Malkovich insisted he wasn’t ideological. “I’m not a political person actually, and I don’t have an ideology. And I don’t think other people really think about [my political views].”
“It’s interesting,” he continued, “I don’t really have any [politics]. I don’t really care. I haven’t voted since McGovern lost and don’t intend to. I see no reason to.”
Malkovich was also asked about a spat with the British journalist Robert Fisk. Nearly ten years ago during an appearance at the Cambridge Union Society, Malkovich was asked who he’d most like to “fight to the death.”
His response: Fisk and former British Member of Parliament George Galloway, though Malkovich admitted: “I’d rather just shoot them.”
Malkovich explained the remark was a joke, but responded to outrage from Fisk: “I hate somebody who is supposed to be a Middle Eastern expert who thinks Jesus was born in Jerusalem. I hate what I consider his vile anti-Semitism. This being said, I apologize to both Fisk and Galloway; they seem like good men but if they make such a heinous mistake again, I will not hesitate to murder them brutally by way of the gallows.”
He went on to criticize journalists for being so thin-skinned, and picked up where he left off ten years ago with Fisk, telling the Guardian today, “Certainly I’ve read more books about the Middle East than any journalist writing in this country [Britain], that’s absolutely a fact…What I said [about Fisk] was first of all, a joke, but was certainly no more stupid than many things I read in your newspaper [the Guardian] and in his over the years, which are often tragically stupid.”