John Paul Cusack (born June
28, 1966) is an American
film actor and screenwriter. He won the 1990 Most
Promising Actor
CFCA Award for
Say Anything..., the 1998
Favorite Supporting Actor
Blockbuster Entertainment
Award for
Con Air, and the 2000
Commitment to Chicago Award.
Early life
Cusack was
born in Evanston,
Illinois
, to an Irish American
Catholic family. His father,
Dick Cusack (1925—2003), and siblings
Ann,
Joan,
Bill, and
Susie have also been actors; his father was
also a
documentary filmmaker, owned
a film production company, and was a friend of activist
Philip Berrigan. Cusack's mother, Nancy, is
a former
mathematics teacher and
political activist.
Cusack spent a year at New York
University
before dropping out, saying that he had "too much
fire in his belly".
Career
Cusack gained fame in the mid-1980s after appearing in teen movies
such as
Better Off
Dead,
The Sure
Thing,
One Crazy
Summer, and
Sixteen
Candles. Cusack made a cameo in the 1988 music video for
"Trip At The Brain" by
Suicidal
Tendencies. His biggest success in that genre is arguably his
starring role as Lloyd Dobler in
Cameron
Crowe's
Say
Anything. His roles broadened in the late 1980s and early
1990s with more serious-minded fare such as the political satire
True Colors and the
film noir thriller
The Grifters.
Cusack became a proven
box office success
with his roles in the
dark comedy
Grosse Pointe Blank and
the
Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster
Con Air. In the years hence, his
range of films has diversified, appearing in roles such as an
obsessive puppeteer in
Being
John Malkovich, a lovelorn record store owner in
High Fidelity, and a
Jewish art dealer mentoring a young
Adolf Hitler in
Max. He starred in the
horror film 1408, based on
Stephen King's
short story of the same name. He next
appeared as a widowed father in the
Iraq
War-themed drama
Grace is
Gone and as
assassin Brand Hauser
in the dark political satire,
War,
Inc., along with
Hilary Duff
and
Marisa Tomei.
His sister Joan Cusack and close friend
Jeremy Piven have appeared in many of his
films. The siblings appeared as two geeks in
Sixteen Candles: John as one of Farmer
Ted's posse, and Joan as the geek with the neck brace. They also
appeared together in
High
Fidelity,
Grosse Pointe
Blank,
Cradle Will
Rock,
Martian Child,
Say Anything, and
War, Inc.. Piven and Cusack
played opposite one another in
One
Crazy Summer,
Serendipity, and
Grosse Pointe Blank. Cusack also
had a brief cameo, seen from behind but speaking a line of
dialogue, in
Broadcast News,
in which Joan also appeared. Piven also had roles in
Say
Anything,
The Grifters,
Runaway Jury and
Grosse Pointe Blank.
Cusack was next seen in
Roland
Emmerich's disaster film,
2012, which was released in theaters
November 13, 2009; he played Jackson Curtis, a book writer and limo
driver.
Personal and political life
Since May 2005, Cusack has been an occasional contributing
blogger at
The Huffington Post, including an
interview with
Naomi Klein. He has
written extensively on his opposition to the
war in Iraq and his disdain for the
Bush administration, calling
its worldview "depressing, corrupt, unlawful, and tragically
absurd". He also appeared in a June 2008
MoveOn.org ad, where he made the claim that
George W. Bush and
John
McCain have the same governing priorities.
Cusack has an allegiance to both the
Chicago Cubs and the
Chicago White Sox, for which, he says,
he's "in trouble there for that."
He has led the crowd in a performance of
"Take Me Out to the Ball
Game" at Wrigley
Field
.
In 2008, police arrested a woman suspected of
stalking Cusack. On October 10, 2008, the woman
pleaded
no contest and received five
years probation and mandatory psychiatric counseling, and was
ordered to avoid Cusack, his home and business for the next 10
years.
Filmography
References
- John Cusack - Awards
- John Cusack interview
- John Cusack Interview-Max Movie
- "Being John Cusack." guardian.co.uk. 1 July
2000.
- John Cusack Biography (1966-).
FilmReference.com.
- "Actor John Cusack on Hitler, politics and his
movie 'Max'." Beliefnet.com.
- "Actor John Cusack." NPR.org.
- One Crazy Summer (1986) - Full cast and
crew
- John Cusack - Politics on The Huffington
Post.
- "John Cusack Stars In MoveOn's New McCain Ad."
Associated Press. 11 June 2008.
- Inside the Actors Studio,
December 3, 2007
- "Woman arrested on suspicion of stalking
Cusack." CNN. 1
April 2008.
- "Accused John Cusack stalker accepts plea
deal." Associated Press. October 10,
2008.
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