John Cusack’s most Controversial Moments

For Generation X, John Cusack will be remembered forever as the sweet and unlucky Lloyd Dobler of Don’t Say Anything , standing outside with that boombox, exploiting Peter Gabriel, winning over the girl. However, his reputation changed, and as of this writing, he is anything but sweet. In fact, from this writing, he seems to get much closer to his complicated Hi-fi character Rob Gordon, a passionate but flawed artist, who seems to be unable to avoid saying what he thinks, even to the detriment of his personal and professional life.

With Twitter and some very scathing print interviews as his preferred battleground, Cusack has become quite thorny as the years have passed and has sparked quite a bit of debate. Ready to see where everything went wrong for this darling of the cinema of the 80s and 90s? Here are John Cusack’s most controversial moments.

When have memes got anyone into trouble? Right. In 2019 John Cusack shared a meme on Twitter, which he quickly deleted after getting hot, because when does it go wrong? The tweet, which was captured on screen and widely shared, included an image of a Star of David with text: “To find out who rules over you, just find out who is not allowed to criticize.” To the image, Cusack added his own comment: “Follow the RT money.”

Critics took the meme to insinuate that the Jewish people tyrannically rule the world through money, which is a notion that has a long and hateful history. As the Independent explained: “While the image claims the quote was from the French satirist Voltaire, it was actually delivered by white nationalist Kevin Alfred Strom.” Yikes . Cusack tried to get out of it in other tweets already removed, republished by the Daily Beast and – surprise! That was also counterproductive.

“A bot got me, I thought I was endorsing a retweet for Palestinian justice, from a previous post, I think it came from a different source, I shouldn’t have retweeted it,” he wrote. That could have been the end, but Cusack couldn’t stop. “Do you think Israel is not commuting atrocities against the Palestinians? What planet are you on? »He continued. Oh boy He was beaten by everyone by journalists like Yashar Ali and Yair Rosenberg including Ted Cruz .

John Cusack proudly wears his political affiliations on his sleeve. He became a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 2012 in response to the WikiLeaks blockade (in which people were unable to donate to WikiLeaks via MasterCard, Visa or PayPal. ). Take over the US government. USA (And the big banks) this way might scare some, but not Cusack. He remained with the organization in 2014 when controversial figure Edward Snowden joined the board, and again stayed in 2016 when Snowden became the group’s president. Snowden was the whistleblower who fled the United States after exposing the NSA’s secrets, a move the government considered a massive violation of national security. As of this writing, Snowden resides in exile in Russia.

Many actors avoid potentially controversial (or possibly career-killing) associations like these, but Cusack clearly doesn’t. He made his thoughts on Snowden crystal clear when he published his essay, “The Snowden Principle.” In it, he wrote of Snowden’s actions: “From the point of view of the State, he has committed a crime. From his point of view and that of many others, he has sacrificed himself for the greater good because he knows that people have a right to know what the government is doing on their behalf. And legal or not, he saw what the government was doing as a crime against the people and our rights. ”

Before joining Twitter or joining forces with Edward Snowden, John Cusack received the famous Hollywood label of “difficult.” Paul Leyden, the writer of the 2012 Cusack film The Factory, leveled the charge against Cusack by detailing the actor’s alleged misbehavior on set.

In a zinger-filled interview with The Daily Leyden Telegraph , not unlike Cusack himself, he took no hit. Your initial salvo? “John Cusack was one of my favorite actors until I met him.” Ouch . He then accused Cusack of unprofessional behavior, saying he would often come to the set “hours late,” adding, “It cost us a lot of money and he was getting his highest salary in this movie … [He] I wouldn’t apologize for keeping everyone up. waiting in the snow . . a true prima donna «. Leyden summed up his experience working with Cusack this way: “They all thought he was a very nice guy (before filming) and all I can say is that it was a really nice day when he finished.”

Cusack, for his part, never commented on Leyden’s allegations. The film itself was undoubtedly a flop, going straight to the video and only grossing around $ 30,000 against a reported budget of $ 25 million. One has to wonder if the film’s critical failure brought some of Leyden’s animosity toward his star. As we write these lines, we may never know for sure. But we’re guessing those two won’t work together again!

John Cusack is a lifelong bachelor. And his alleged dating story is a who’s who of Hollywood actresses (though in a Howard Stern in 2012, he denied ever dating many of the women he was rumored to be with, and neither confirmed nor denied many others.)

When asked by the press why he had not married, in his usual style, Cusack has been quite forthright. He interviewed Elle in 2009 and had a lot to say about dating and relationships, including a statement that many of her exes might have taken the lead: “Actors date actresses as a form of self-flagellation.” Yikes . In the same interview, when asked why he had never been married, he said: “Society does not tell me what to do.”

A few years later, in the aforementioned Stern appearance, he seemed to have softened a bit and said, “I am against divorce. I don’t want to get divorced. The closest he was to marrying was actress Neve Campbell, whom he was with over and over again (and supposedly stormy) for years. But as of this writing, Cusack is still not married.