VENICE, Sept 13 — US actor John Malkovich won his first major film festival award Saturday at Venice for his star turn as a cynical CIA agent with a troubled conscience in Wild Horse Nine.

The 72-year-old character actor has been stirring Oscar buzz since the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival with his poignant and wildly funny performance in the dark comedy by Martin McDonagh.

Having racked up more than 100 film roles in his long career, from Dangerous Liaisons to Being John Malkovich, the theatre-trained Malkovich has never before been honoured by one of the major film festivals.

“I am humbled to be chosen for this award which has been given to so many wonderful actors over the past 83 iterations of the Venice Film Festival,” said the actor in a videotaped message.

He thanked audiences for their “rousing reception” of the movie, while apologising for his absence due to a shooting commitment in Montreal.

In McDonagh’s dark comedy, Malkovich plays an ailing CIA agent questioning his past actions during a visit to Easter Island ahead of Chile’s US-backed military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.

Malkovich’s character displays a new devil-may-care attitude as he wrestles with his mortality, frustrating his CIA partner, played by Sam Rockwell, as he casually reveals sensitive intelligence secrets to strangers.

The Hollywood Reporter praised his performance, saying he had built “infinite layers into a plum role that is his best in years, ranking with his finest work.”

The Los Angeles Times called Malkovich’s character “morally compromised yet strangely lovable, a loose cannon who casually divulges state secrets and muses about whether dinosaurs have souls”.

Malkovich, a veteran of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, won critical acclaim on Broadway in 1984 for his portrayal of the broken and disillusioned son, Biff, in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman.

He became known to international film audiences as the arch seducer in Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons opposite Glenn Close.

Malkovich has been nominated twice for an Academy Award—for Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire—but has never won the coveted statuette.

Before the premiere of Wild Horse Nine at Venice, Malkovich told reporters he had no plans to retire.

“I’m pretty much doing and have been doing what I loved my whole life, and I plan to carry on doing that.” — AFP