John Malkovich cancels Israel trip over fabricated solidarity quote

John Malkovich has cancelled a planned trip to Israel next year to appear on stage after a PR firm hired by the show attributed quotes to the actor that the company had written.

Malkovich, who is a leading Oscar contender for his role in Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, was due to appear in The Music Critic, a theatrical-musical satire composed by the Jewish violinist Aleksey Igudesman, in Tel Aviv’s Charles Bronfman Auditorium on 13 April.

A press release circulated on 5 September quoted Malkovich as saying he was “thrilled to return to Israel” and looked “forward to meeting the warm Israeli audience once again, to whom I feel a strong closeness and solidarity”.

The actor, 72, was alerted to the quotes after reading them in the Hollywood Reporter, who picked them up from the Jerusalem Post. In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter on 8 September, Malkovich said that a “PR company hired by the Israeli promoter drafted a quote for the article that was attributed to me, though I never made the statements that were quoted, nor was I consulted before they were printed.”

He added: “I did not utter these phrases, and they most certainly are not approved by me, nor do they reflect my feelings. The fact that they were printed as direct quotes from me is unacceptable and untenable. For this reason, I have decided I cannot participate in the Tel Aviv performance.”

The PR firm admitted the error, releasing a statement apologising for “incorrectly” attributing the quotes to Malkovich. “Mr Malkovich did not make, provide, authorise or approve this statement, nor was it approved by his representatives,” said the firm. “We sincerely apologise to Mr Malkovich and his representatives for the incorrect attribution and regret that this occurred.”

In his lengthy statement to the Hollywood Reporter, Malkovich went on to distance himself from any implied endorsement of any country’s political actions.

“Throughout my long career, I’ve been lucky to perform across a quite wide swath of the world – in countries with governments whose values or culture I do not share and in front of audiences of many differing faiths and ideologies,” he wrote. “Travelling to places whose view of the world may not align with mine has given me a chance to observe and to listen and learn and to share my idea of what makes good storytelling and what makes beautiful music and how they can complement each other and illuminate the human condition.

“My appearance in any country, even my own, does not constitute approval of said country’s policies, nor actions, nor its elected or unelected leaders. My appearances would also not condone nor mean that I am in supposed ‘solidarity’ with any particular political cause, nor with the killing of innocents, nor with any acts of terrorism, nor any other kind of barbarity.”

Malkovich last visited Israel in 2013 when he appeared on stage in The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer; five years previously he was guest of honour at the Jerusalem film festival.

In 2011, he told an interviewer he was not a “political person”, lacked “an ideology”, and hadn’t voted since 1972. In 2002, speaking at the Cambridge Union, Malkovich said the two people he’d most like to kill were journalist Robert Fisk and politician George Galloway.

The actor did not elaborate on his comments, but some speculated they concerned the then-MP’s call the previous month for people in Scotland to boycott goods from Israel.

The actor’s statement to the Hollywood Reporter closed with a caution, saying: “I look forward to continuing to exercise my artistic freedom, come what may. However, only playwrights, novelists and screenwriters can put words in my mouth, and even then, only in the service of storytelling, and no one else should think they can do that without my consent and without the resultant consequences.”

In Wild Horse Nine, Malkovich plays a terminally ill CIA agent who travels to Easter Island with colleague Sam Rockwell in the mid 1970s. The film, which premiered at Venice earlier this month, is widely expected to land the actor his third Academy Award nomination.