page_title: John Cusack
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: John Cusack / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: A photo of American actor John Cusack.
context_page_description: John Paul Cusack is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and activist. He began acting in films during the 1980s and has since starred in more than 85 films, including Better Off Dead, Say Anything..., Bullets over Broadway, Grosse Pointe Blank, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, 1408, Igor, 2012, The Raven and Love & Mercy. The son of filmmaker Dick Cusack, his sisters are actresses Joan and Ann Cusack.
  A versatile actor, during his career he has participated in over seventy films, knowing how to vary his acting style from horror to thriller, to romantic comedies, to family dramas.
  He has participated in numerous successful films, both with audiences and critics and also in numerous Hollywood productions.
context_section_description: Cusack began acting in films in the early 1980s. He made his breakout role in Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing (1985). He also starred in Cameron Crowe's directorial debut film, Say Anything... (1989). Cusack played a con artist in Stephen Frears' 1990 neo-noir film The Grifters. After establishing New Crime Productions, Cusack co-wrote the screenplay for and starred in George Armitage's crime film Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), in which he played an assassin who goes to his 10-year high school reunion to win back his high school sweetheart.
  In Spike Jonze's fantasy film Being John Malkovich (1999), Cusack played a puppeteer who finds a portal leading into the mind of the eponymous actor, John Malkovich. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Director (Jonze), Best Original Screenplay (Charlie Kaufman) and Best Supporting Actress (Catherine Keener). Cusack was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in High Fidelity (2000), based on Nick Hornby's novel. In Roland Emmerich's disaster film 2012 (2009), he played a struggling novelist who attempts to survive the apocalypse and save mankind. Cusack played Edgar Allan Poe in James McTeigue's biopic film The Raven (2012) and starred in David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars (2014).
  Later, he starred in video on demand films, including The Factory, The Numbers Station, The Frozen Ground, Drive Hard (2014), The Prince (2014), Reclaim (2014), Cell (2016), Arsenal (2017), Blood Money (2017) and Singularity (2017).
  In 2014, Cusack criticized Hollywood saying the mega-corporations have stepped in with 50-producer movies, franchises being king, and stars being used as leverage. He called Hollywood, "a whorehouse and people go mad."
caption: Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
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