What Happened to John Cusack?

It’s a complicated story with a few theories

I developed a man-crush on John Cusack in my early 20s ever since my brother Michael L Butler and I watched him play Gib in The Sure Thing.

My crush grew watching him in Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer. Cusack was quirky, funny, and relatable. He was the guy who struggles to get the girl and had a way of delivering his lines and not just saying them.

He killed it with these lines:

“It’s not easy getting rides. Do you know what I mean? I mean most people are really afraid to pick up hitchhikers. I mean you never know who you might pick up. I mean I could be some crazed slime ball. I mean, a real deranged, violent psycho. Do you know what I mean? I mean a guy who would rip out your heart and eat it just for pleasure.”

— Walter Gibson, The Sure Thing

“Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

— Rob, High Fidelity

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about this quite a bit, sir, and I would have to say considering what’s waiting out there for me… I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or process or buy anything sold or processed or process anything sold, bought or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed for a career. My father is in the army. He wants me to join, but I can’t work for that corporation so what I’ve been lately is kickboxing.”

— Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything

My John Cusack crush

I’ve seen most of the 81 films Cusack has been in from Class and Sixteen Candles as a teenager to black comedies The Grifters and Gross Pointe Blank and critically-acclaimed hits Being John Malcovich and High Fidelity to the Rom-coms America’s Sweethearts and Must Love Dogs.

Movie critic Roger Ebert said in a three-star review of the film Hot Tub Machine in 2010: “As a general rule, he isn’t found in bad films.”

He seemed ever-present in movies. Then he disappeared. Poof!

He was gone.

What happened to him?

Cusack has still acted in movies since 2010, but of the 25 movies he’s been to, then went straight to DVD, according to Wikipedia. The only big movies he has been are Love & Mercy (2015) and Map of The Stars (2015), and it’s mindboggling how he now mostly works only in low-budget thrillers.

I was determined to find out what happened to John Cusack. Did he lose his acting mojo and become like one of the disturbed characters he’s played in movies? Or get tired of acting or disillusioned with Hollywood after being in 81 movies? Did he age out of the demographic to be a leading man? Or has his strong public political views against politicians harmed his movie career?

I googled his name late one night and came across Juanjo Villalba’s 2021 article in the Guardian, “The downfall of John Cusack: What happened to the best-loved actor of the early 21st century?” So I’m sure many other Cusack fans are wondering how he vanished from movie screens. I scrolled hungrily through the story to learn the mystery of John Cusack’s vanishing.

Two main theories

Villalba proposes two theories for Cusack’s disappearance from movies: 1) He is being blacklisted for his political views, or 2) He isn’t interested in making movies. It seems the latter isn’t the case because Cusack is still acting in films, though the quote below shows his contempt for the movie industry.

“Hollywood is a whorehouse and people go mad.”

— John Cusack, The Guardian 2014

This is not the best theming say if you want to be an actor, writer, or producer in Hollywood. Cusack has been all three. He was a co-writer for High Fidelity and Gross Pointe Blank. The quote suggests that he might be disillusioned in working for major movie studios. In a 2012 Guardian story, “Why Hollywood Won’t Cast John Cusack Anymore,” a quote by Cusack suggests a frustration with the “Super Hero” movies that have been the focus on movie studious:

“Sometimes I think I’m in control, but more and more I realize that it’s just a complete farce. It’s true, it used to be that if you did a big, big movie then you could leverage it and make some smaller, cooler ones, and I got away with that for a few years. But now, they just want you to put on tights — if you don’t put on the tights, they just want to get rid of you. And I’m not putting on the tights …”

— John Cusack, The Guardian

His political views

Cusack tweets daily on Twitter or retweets political views from others on the political left. On Twitter Cusack describes himself as an “apocalyptic disturber of shit and an elephant trainer.” It is clear scrolling through his social media posts Cusack is not only an actor but also an activist at heart. His Twitter and Instagram feed reads like a curated version of political/corporation abuses.

Cusack is one of the founders of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that finances and supports freedom of the press across the world. I didn’t know this. He co-founded the organization after learning Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal stopped taking payments from the whistleblower site WikiLeaks, according to Villaba, nearly silencing a vital kidney of the press.

He participated in protests after the death of George Floyd, vents his views against former President Donald Trump and what actor do you know traveled to Russia with a writer to interview Edward Snowden, the former intelligence consultant who leaked classified data from the National Security Agency and was forced to flee the United States?

John Cusack.

Cusack reminds me of Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. Kaepernick was blackballed by all 28 teams after taking a knee to protest during the national anthem. I always felt like Kaepernick was grieving over the deaths of black Americans by police as much as protesting racial injustices.

The same may be true for Cusack. His views may be a heart grieving over the state of our country, and while his tweets may have put his acting career at risk, he is following his heart to voice his opinion.

An interesting third view

Villalba offered his theory for Cusack’s sharp decline in popularity. He argues Cusack was an archetype of the “metrosexual” in the 1900s and 2000s, a guy without leading man good looks, but he was an actor who could still win a pretty woman or an audience over with his charm, intelligence, humor, and personality.

In his article, “30 Years after Say Anything John Cusack comes to Tampa ready to reflect on Lloyd,” Jay Cridlin subscribes to Villaba’s view, saying Cusack’s success came from being cast as an alternative to the typical male heartthrob. He was cast instead as an old Hollywood archetype: Women want him, men want to be like him.

This explains my man-crush on Cusack, and in this theory, Cusack appealed to many people who identified with him as an outlier. He was a guy who acted, spoke, or dressed differently — the guy who I wanted to be just like in my 20s.

2016 was a pivotal year

It appears 2016 was a key year in Cusack’s life. He sold his Malibu hove, moved back to his home state, Illinois, and bought a loft in a 52-story building in downtown Chicago where he likes taking pictures of sunsets with a backdrop of the city and sharing his images on Instagram. His move to Chicago makes me wonder if he doesn’t want to be in mainstream movies.

So I went to Cusack’s Instagram account and learned he likes sunsets. I looked at his posts. They are mysterious. There are many surreal photos. Collages with pictures of politicians and words covering their faces. Most of his posts have no words; at best there are three words, making his posts cryptic. There are posts on articles, digital art, and cartoon with messages in the pictures.

But he also posts pictures of 1980 memories of fellow Chicago natives such as John Belushi, Chicago snapshots, portraits of women, and lots of sunsets. In this regard, Cusack is still an everyman looking back on memories of the past as is common once you reach the mid fifties.

An acting comeback?

Villalba says it appeared Cusack was going to make an acting comeback, playing an Elon Musk type biotechnology magnet in the US remake of the British series Utopia on Amazon streaming, but the show was canceled after critics had applauded Cusack’s performance.

Final thought

Has Cusack lost his interest or mojo for acting? Is he he victim of ageism? Disillusioned with Hollywood? Or paying a steep price for voicing his strong political views? It is probably a combination of all four , but I find it hard to believe an actor as gifted as Cusack is would lose their interest in the craft of acting or suddenly suck at acting after being so good in 81 films.

I think Cusack is paying the price for his political views, and Hollywood executives don’t want an actor/writer/producer who might offend a large share of an audience with the opposite political direction as Cusack.

If this is the case, I admire Cusack for putting his political beliefs over his acting career. Asked about this topic by Villalba, Cusack responded:

“I would love to think about other things,” the actor said in 2020 when speaking to The Guardian. “Poetry. Love. Anything else. But that’s just not the times we’re in. […] Maybe being outspoken hurts your career… I’m just aware it helps me sleep better at night, knowing that I wasn’t being passive during this time.”

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