The Touch of Evil

Malkovich got the darker side of his disposition from his father, who died in 1980. ''He was 82nd Airborne and had a major temper, major,'' he says, ''but I'm not one of those kooks saying I was abused.'' John likes to tell a story about the time he didn't win his first-grade Easter egg contest. He called the teacher a ''motherf---er'' (''or c---sucker, I can't remember which'') and walked out of school. ''My father beat my ass for about six hours,'' he recalls. Malkovich's temper has found various outlets over the years. In high school, it was football. He grew to 6'1'' early, beefed up to 230 pounds, and played defensive tackle. (At 16, tired of being called Fatso, he dropped 60 pounds by consuming nothing but Jell-O for two months. ''My Jell-O diet,'' he says. ''I'm afraid Victoria Principal is going to rip it off or something, and here I am, f---ed again.'')

When he took up acting at Eastern Illinois University, his anger electrified his performances. Then, as now, his characters fairly hummed with energy. ''I realized then that it was fun,'' he says. ''And see, I always had too much attention and too much imagination as a child. Always. So for me it was just a kind of logical extension of all that.'' He later transferred to Illinois State.

In 1976 he left without a degree and joined Steppenwolf co-founder Gary Sinise (his costar and director in last year's Of Mice and Men) and eight other Chicago-area actors. In Chicago he directed or starred in about 50 Steppenwolf productions. He made his New York debut in 1982 as a brutish, nose-picking nut in Sam Shepard's Cain-and-Abel play True West. The performance, he says, was ''basically patterned on my brother.''

Thus Malkovich exorcises the family demons. During the filming of Fire, he entertained Rene Russo in the makeup trailer, cracking her up with his creaky Midwestern imitation of his mother. ''One day I had to leave the trailer,'' she says, still laughing. ''I was peeing in my pants.'' Malkovich and his mother, who doesn't seem at all flattered by the imitation, stay in contact but rarely see each other; she has yet to meet her grandson. ''I know John says he's really sweet,'' she says.

Malkovich has moonlighted as an executive producer (on The Accidental Tourist in 1988) and as a fashion model (Andrew Fezza, Antonio Miro, and Comme des Garçons have all employed him for print ads and runways). But his most unlikely role was that of tabloid fodder, when his marriage to actress Glenne Headly (Dick Tracy) began to come apart in 1988. His marital problems might have gone unnoticed if not for his ill-fated affair with Liaisons costar Michelle Pfeiffer.

''He came home with Michelle,'' recalls Danny. ''I think that's the happiest I've ever seen him.'' However, he waffled between the relationships, and finally both fell apart. Malkovich moved to London to ''put himself back together,'' says Danny. He met Peyran on the set of 1990's The Sheltering Sky, where she was director Bernardo Bertolucci's assistant. They've been together since, dividing their time between Rome (though they recently sold their house there) and L.A. They're now planning to set up housekeeping in France as well. ''I laugh at a lot of stuff,'' he says. ''I laugh hardest with my children probably. Like they go around in a circle singing 'Pop Goes the Weasel.' You know, after you do it a minute, it's really fun.''

He's in favor of spanking. ''I'm not totally mod in my beliefs,'' he says. And he worries about the violence his children are exposed to in movies and TV. ''That, you see, I think can lead to this whole sort of brain-dead, numb bunch of nihilistic morons, you know?'' He says this is ''the real reason that I never did a lot of films like [Line of Fire].'' Yet he sees nothing ironic in taking them to see Menace II Society recently. ''Of course, my little boy did say the other day, when I made him get off the dining room table, 'F--- you, Dada.' Very clearly.''

Like its owner, his white stucco hacienda is full of contradictions — bright modern furniture scooted here and yon, butting up against an ornate four-poster bed in the living room (''Can't really decorate with two 2-year-olds,'' he says). Malkovich takes a passionately reactionary stance on anything that might invade his space. ''What's cool about a society where people can violate you in any way from mentally to sexually and you have no recourse?'' he says. He advocates capital punishment: ''Why give someone a second chance...when we can't give [so many] people a first chance?'' Yet he has little patience for the homeless: ''They've achieved nothing because they've attempted nothing,'' he told a reporter last year. Such sentiments make him an anomaly in liberal Hollywood, but he says, ''They'll figure it out.''

''He grew up with ruckus constantly so I imagine he does kind of treasure quietness,'' says his mother. This afternoon in his sparsely furnished guest house, the only sound to interrupt his thoughts is the rustle of leaves outside. ''One time I had this sort of psychotic episode,'' he says, smiling again, occasionally glancing out the window. He doesn't remember how old he was. ''My best friend said it happened in college....I insisted that people call me Tony, you know...and it involved pitching grapes at this window, where, in the reflection, I could see myself. But in the reflection, of course, I was left-handed and kind of stylish and all these things which I of course wasn't. And somehow thinner. And, you know, my name was Tony.''