John Malkovich is an unconventional leading man of stage and screen, perhaps best known for lending his name and persona to the film Being John Malkovich (2000, starring Malkovich and John Cusack). Malkovich began acting in college in Illinois and was one of the founders of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He won an Obie award in 1983 for an off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's play True West, then starred with Dustin Hoffman in 1984's Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman. He began appearing in the movies in 1984, and got an Oscar nomination right away, for a supporting role opposite Sally Field in Places in the Heart. Malkovich has since proved himself a reliable character actor or leading man in a variety of dramas, costumers and offbeat, subtle comedies. He received another Oscar nomination for his performance as a creepy assassin in the Clint Eastwood thriller In the Line of Fire (1993), and his best-known movies include Empire of the Sun (1987, with young Christian Bale), Con Air (1997, with Nicolas Cage), and the 1998 version of Alexandre Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask (starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeremy Irons).