John Cusack on his father's warning: 'To Be a Celebrity Is Death for an Artist'
John Cusack is revealing the advice from his father he says helped shape his career.
On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, John Cusack said the marching orders he got at home shaped every choice he made once the spotlight hit. Asked how he handled attention so young, he credited his upbringing — and one blunt mantra from his dad — for keeping him focused on the work, not the noise.
"I think my my father was always like he just said, 'to be a celebrity is death for an artist. He was always about like what's the script, what's the part, what's this thing saying, right? And so, like he was wasn't impressed by any of that. So, I think that rubbed off on me," he said.
That filter, Cusack explained, is why he chased material across genres rather than cling to teen-idol status. He’s now logged more than 90 films, moving from 80s romances into darker dramas, thrillers and offbeat character work.
- The Sure Thing — Rob Reiner’s 1985 road-trip romance that helped launch him
- The Grifters — the 1990 noir drama
- The Paperboy — Lee Daniels’ 2012 Southern Gothic
- High Fidelity — the 2000 music-shop classic that earned him a Golden Globe nomination
Almost in The Breakfast Club
Horowitz also pressed him on a long-circulating rumor: was he ever set for The Breakfast Club? Cusack said he was “almost” in the John Hughes movie and really liked the script, but the role slipped away late in the process.
As Horowitz noted on the show, Cusack had been in the mix for John Bender — the rebel who anchors the Saturday detention dynamic — before the part ultimately went to Judd Nelson.