Steppenwolf Co-founder Malkovich Taking Break From Theatre

John Malkovich made his name with Chicago's Steppenwolf theatre company. Now he has family so he says he is sticking to film

Malkovich started out in theatre as a co-founder of Steppenwolf in 1976 - his fellow troupers included Gary Sinise, Laurie Metcalf, Joan Allen and Terry Kinney - and estimates he must have spent eight solid years on stage as the company slowly became one of the most daring and celebrated of American acting companies. Coming from a small industrial town in central Illinois, where his grandfather and then his mother had edited the local newspaper, Malkovich started acting in high school only after his best friend dragged him along as someone to dilute what the friend sensed would be an entirely wussy experience. He found he liked it, and Steppenwolf was composed of friends he later made in the drama department of Illinois State University. At the time, Chicago was a hotbed of challenging theatre. David Mamet was working with the likes of William H Macy and Joe Mantegna, and small companies were springing up all over town, though the Steppenwolves kept mainly to themselves.

Steppenwolf made its name in 1984 with a revival of Sam Shepard's True West, which had done unremarkable first-run business on Broadway with Tommy Lee Jones and Peter Boyle. They took their True West to New York, expecting nothing - but they made a modern classic of the play, and careers for themselves. "I started doing movies because Robert Duvall and Susan Sarandon brought people from showbiz - Mike Nichols, Antonioni, Scorsese, David Puttnam and people like that - and that's where The Killing Fields came from."

Now Malkovich has vowed to stay away from the theatre until his children have grown up and just do film. "I've found since I had children that it's just too hard. I still like it as much as I ever did. But it means that you either uproot their lives or you just don't see them. And there's only a few years left now where they'll be around. It's three or four months at a time and you can't really go home for a day off."