Under the skin

Marianne Gray talks to John Malkovich about his latest film, his vanity and his first love, the stage

When I met John Malkovich to talk about Disgrace, the film of J.M. Coetzee’s novel, he hadn’t seen the film yet and was positively tremulous, if a word like ‘tremulous’ can be associated with the forceful Malkovich.

‘I am looking forward to hearing how it does because the film-makers say J.M. Coetzee likes the film,’ he tells me. ‘It is very faithful to the book but the screenplay has expanded from the novel. These are always worrying things.

‘But far more worrying is my South African accent. When we started shooting I was to have an English public school accent but then the director [Steve Jacobs, husband of the scriptwriter Anna Maria Monticelli, who adapted the book] changed it to a South African one, which meant four or five hours a day with a voice coach.