What’s up with John Malkovich these days? What was his first movie role?
—Jason Wilson, Wichita, Kan.
Malkovich, 55, worked as an extra in Robert Altman’s film A Wedding in 1978. But 1984’s Places in the Heart gave him his first true role, as a blind boarder helping out a widow (Sally Field) on her Depression-era farm. Recently, he served as executive producer on Which Way Home, a documentary about children migrating from Mexico and other Latin American countries to the U.S. via freight train. It airs Aug. 24 on HBO. "Rarely is the plight of immigrants, especially child immigrants, seen by Americans," Malkovich says. "Which Way Home is an honest and heartbreaking documentation of the risks thousands of people take every day to follow an elusive dream."