JOHN PAUL CUSACK, POLITICAL ACTIVISM IN CINEMA

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has been watching some films interpreted by one of her favourite actors, John Cusack, who is also a political activist, who was born on a day like today in 1966.

John Paul Cusack (June 28, 1966) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter, and political activist.

He began acting in films during the 1980s and has since starred in more than 85 films, including Sixteen Candles (1984), Tapeheads (1988), Say Anything... (1989), Bullets over Broadway (1994), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Being John Malkovich (1999), High Fidelity (2000), Runaway Jury (2003), Igor (2008), 2012 (2009), Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), The Frozen Ground (2013) and Maps to the Stars (2014). He is the son of filmmaker Dick Cusack, and his older sisters are actresses Joan and Ann Cusack.

Cusack was born in 1966 in Evanston, Illinois. He was born into an Irish Catholic family, the son of writer-actor-producer and documentary filmmaker Richard J. Cusack (1925–2003), originally from New York City, and Ann Paula Nancy Cusack, originally from Massachusetts, a former mathematics teacher and political activist. John's siblings Ann and Joan are also actors. Cusack has two other siblings, Bill and Susie.

The family moved from Manhattan, New York, to Illinois and were friends of activist Philip Berrigan. Cusack graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1984, where he met Jeremy Piven, and spent a year at New York University before dropping out, saying that he had too much fire in his belly.

More information: Twitter-John Cusack

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.

Between 2005 and 2009, Cusack wrote blogs for The Huffington Post, which included an interview with Naomi Klein. He voiced his opposition to the war in Iraq and the Bush administration, calling the government's world-view depressing, corrupt, unlawful, and tragically absurd. He also appeared in a June 2008 MoveOn.org advertisement, where he made the claim that George W. Bush and John McCain have the same governing priorities.

Cusack criticized the Obama administration for its drone policy in the Middle East and its support of the National Defense Authorization Act, and became one of the initial supporters of the Freedom of the Press Foundation in 2012.

In June 2015, he stated in an interview with The Daily Beast that when you talk about drones, the American Empire, the NSA, civil liberties, attacks on journalism and whistleblowers, (Obama) is as bad or worse than Bush. However, he later scolded the publication for misquoting him in order to make an interesting headline.

In 2015, Cusack, Daniel Ellsberg and Arundhati Roy met Edward Snowden, a fugitive from the US because of his leaks of classified information, at a Moscow hotel room. This meeting was converted into a book co-authored with Roy titled Things That Can and Cannot Be Said. The book is mainly a transcript of the conversation between Snowden, Roy, and Cusack, with photos and illustrations as well as a list of references.

More information: Instagram-John Cusack

When applied to politics and taken to its extreme,
kitsch is the mask of death.
Fascism was all aesthetics
 There was no core principle to it.
There was no truth to it.

John Cusack