John Malkovich Reflects on Iconic Rounders Role as Teddy KGB in GQ Interview
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"Pay that man his money." If you read that in a heavy Russian accent and immediately thought of the poker classic Rounders, you aren't the only one. John Malkovich's performance as the Russian mobster Teddy KGB produced this and many other memorable lines of what is widely considered the greatest poker movie of all time.
Malkovich, an acclaimed American actor who has been nominated for two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, recently spoke with GQ about his role in the 1998 film, a role that still follows him 25 years later.
“Certain people still come up to me in airports, on planes, in restaurants or whatever, and that’s the thing they want to talk about: Teddy KGB," Malkovich said. "A lot of times it’s people who went through a poker player phase or are still going through it.”
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"Go Big or Go Home"
Malkovich's comment came during a 38-minute segment uploaded March 14 breaking down his most iconic characters from movies like Con Air, Burn After Reading and Being John Malkovich. Around five minutes of that centered around his over-the-top performance bordering on caricature as Teddy KGB.
“I thought it was a pretty funny part, flashy in that way," he explained. "And the real decision about that was just how broad to go.”
Most memorable in his performance as Teddy KGB was his thick Russian accent, which Malkovich said was inspired by Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite.
"There (has) been, and continues to be, probably, a lot of discussion about my accent, which was actually taught to me by a great actress called Ingeborga Dapkunaite, who grew up in Lithuania, but her father was a Soviet diplomat, lived and worked in Moscow for years, so she taught me the accent. I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Russia, and there are a lot of words which just kind of come back all the time. Things like 'him,' they just don’t say 'him,' they for the most part can’t do it.”
“I thought it was a pretty funny part, flashy in that way."
“That was kind of a decision to, as they say, go big or home. You could … certainly do it a lot more suddenly than I did, but that’s also kind of what Matt (Damon) was doing.”
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"Great Fun to Film"
Malkovich went on to say that Rounders was “great fun to film" and even led to him landing a role on the TV drama Billions.
"It continues to have an audience. And I do remember ‘Pay that man his money,’ which I thought was quite a good line."
"Very much enjoyed Matt, good group of people and actors," said Malkovich. "I like (director) John Dahl very much. I hung out a lot with Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the writers, and they had said at one point ‘we want you to play a Russian in all of our films’ … And then just a couple years ago actually … they asked me to play a Russian oligarch in their series Billions, which they were the showrunners for, which was great fun.”
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Not only did his role as Teddy KGB land Malkovich a future gig, it also still follows him to this day.
"It continues to have an audience. And I do remember ‘Pay that man his money,’ which I thought was quite a good line. Quite stylish, actually. I don’t know that I delivered it stylishly.”
Head to YouTube to hear Malkovich talk about Teddy KGB and his other iconic characters.
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*Photo courtesy Miramax via YouTube
