A teacher of mine revealed this story to me recently.
John Malkovich was doing a play across the street from a theater that happened to be where a teacher of mine was preforming. He had given free tickets to all the members of the play that my teacher was involved in. My teacher had watched the play from the second row with great admiration as John Malkovich performed. John was heavily into the character and tears and snot ran from his face as he performed.
Thoroughly impressed he bought tickets for the show's next performance and invited a woman that he would hopefully impress. Disappointment replaced the first nights impression as John Malkovich simply seemed to repeat the lines as they were written in the script, not showing any of the emotion that had wowed him previously. It wasn't until many years latter that he discovered the reason for the strange difference in the performances. An interview with John Malkovich revealed that he doesn't really have a system for acting (such as method acting) and he simply gets it sometimes and and sometimes doesn't.