“A legendary actor has spoken about his explosive affair with Michelle Pfeiffer (Picture: Getty / REX) John Malkovich has admitted he had an affair with Michelle Pfeiffer, suggesting he had regrets about the entanglement. The 71-year-old actor appeared in the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, 67 and Glenn Close, 78. The year the”, — write: metro.co.uk
A legendary actor has spoken about his explosive affair with Michelle Pfeiffer (Picture: Getty / REX) John Malkovich has admitted he had an affair with Michelle Pfeiffer, suggesting he had regrets about the entanglement.
The 71-year-old actor appeared in the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, 67 and Glenn Close, 78.
The year the film was released, Malkovich’s marriage to the late Glenne Headly came to an end after six years following an alleged affair with Pfeiffer.
Decades on from the breakdown of his marriage, Malkovich has admitted the romance, saying his behaviour wasn’t ‘fair’.
Speaking on the Fashion Neurosis podcast, he said: ‘It’s not something I’ve ever really talked about.
‘Put it in this way, in the work I do, you make emotional bonds with people very quickly.
The affair began on set (Picture: Snap/Shutterstock) 
The film was a smash hit (Picture: Getty Images) 
Pfeiffer appeared in several films in the 80s (Picture: Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock) ‘That’s part of the work. Very rarely, those bonds extend beyond the work.
‘For me, she was someone I valued greatly as a colleague, was great fun and moving and with me, incredibly fair. And I certainly wasn’t.
‘I think I’ve learned over the course of my life that a great colleague is actually rarer than anything.
‘And when that relationship becomes more than collegial or more than a friendship – even a profound friendship – then at least in my experience, and it might be my particular psychology or stupidity or ineptness or all of the above… you lose a great colleague.’
He then compared his relationship with Pfeiffer to his decades-long partnership with Ingeborga Dapkunaite.
‘Ingeborga and I are still, 33 years now, working together and have remained great friends and colleagues because there is a line we never crossed,’ he said.
‘That’s what I’ve learned – that when a thing like that happens, it probably, might be, not retrievable.’
John Malkovich has suggested he had regrets about the liason (Picture: Shutterstock for Sundance Film F) 
The star has been married twice (Picture: Joe Maher/Getty Images for Paramount+) In the film, Malkovich played the villain and seducer, Victomte Sebastien de Valmont, who was out to ruin the reputation of Pfeiffer’s character, Madame de Tourvel.
The film’s director, Stephen Frears, spoke about the affair in a 2003 interview with The New York Times Magazine.
‘His marriage was breaking up,’ Frears recalled. ‘And, during the movie, he was having an affair with Michelle Pfeiffer. Dangerous Liaisons is about betrayal and lies and relationships unravelling.
‘It was one of those times where reality and art intersect. It was overwhelming for John. Even for a man who delights in bad behaviour, that was a difficult time.’
The couple has both moved on (Picture: Everett/Shutterstock) At the time of the affair, Pfeiffer was married to Peter Horton. The couple married in 1981 and separated in 1988, divorcing two years later.
In 1993, Pfeiffer married television writer and producer David E. Kelley, with whom she shares two children, and the couple has been together ever since.
Malkovich’s ex-wife Headly died in 2017 at the age of 62 after a pulmanary embolism. After the affair she went on to marry musician Byron McCulloch.
Malkovich began dating Nicolette Peyran in 1989 and is still in a relationship with the production designer now.
Metro has reached out to Michelle Pfeiffer’s representatives for comment.
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