John Malkovich is outraged by a domain squatter in Squarespace's pre-game Super Bowl ad.
John Malkovich was disturbed to find upon a recent visit to johnmalkovich.com that someone was already being John Malkovich.
The actor, who moonlights as a fashion designer, had wanted to use that address to promote his new eponymous clothing line.
But it turned out someone had beaten him to the punch and the domain was home to a knock-off fashion brand illegally using his name and likeness.
Despite the ongoing legal headache that ensued, Malkovich volunteered to spoof the ordeal in a new pre-game Super Bowl ad for the website-building company Squarespace.
"What the fuck is going on?" he yells at his computer screen in the commercial, riffing on the volatile villain characters he's best known for playing. "How the fuck can you be John Malkovich?"
Malkovich was much calmer in person as he recounted the story to Mashable in a recent interview, speaking slowly and deliberately with a slight air of detachment.
In a bizarrely meta twist, Malkovich actually had to seek legal blessing from the rights holders of Charlie Kaufman's Being John Malkovich for the ad itself, which makes implicit reference to the famously weird film.
"If you think about it, it's kind of crazy, kind of outrageous," Malkovich said. "I have no problem [with the film, in which he appeared], but I also understand what it means to have one's name under the control of other people and, in some cases, being used for purposes that I might not be so supportive of."
His namesake domain now fully restored to its rightful owner, Malkovich has been Squarespace's pitch man for months. In fact, he actually approached the company about the gig on his own volition after doing some work for Squarespace's partnership with the David Lynch Foundation last fall.
His most recent previous campaign focused on his trouble breaking into the fashion world as someone typecast as an actor, a struggle that Malkovich said was a bit exaggerated for the purposes of the commercial.
In reality, Malkovich got his start in Hollywood as a costume designer, and he's held on to that sartorial preoccupation ever since, periodically rolling out fashion collections of his own throughout his career.
While plenty of celebrities like to put their names on clothing brands for an extra buck, Malkovich chafes at the suggestion that he might be in it for the name recognition.
"Oh no, no I don't...." the actor trails off at the suggestion that his fashion line might be about capitalizing on his personal brand. "Everything is designed by me. I do every drawing, I go to the fabric fair... No, no it wouldn't interest me to put my name on something like that. It would only interest me to do it."