John Cusack has spoken candidly about why he has distanced himself from Hollywood, even after building a career that included a Golden Globe nomination and a string of hits that helped define 1980s and 1990s indie cinema.
Now 60, the actor says he has become increasingly drawn to creative projects that give him more control, leading him toward a new venture that reflects his interests outside the traditional studio system.
Speaking to Variety at San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, Cusack discussed his long-standing admiration for graphic novels and introduced an independently produced project of his own called Momo.
Rather than working within the usual film industry structure, he said he wanted to make something free from executive input and outside interference.
For Cusack, the appeal was simple: complete creative freedom.
That desire pushed him further into writing after he stepped back from acting work, saying he no longer wanted to compromise when it came to storytelling.
Momo is due out on Sept. 29 and follows two fugitives in 1972 as they try to obtain an ancient artefact for television star Jackie Gleason.
The project is being released through Mad Cave Studios as Cusack’s first graphic novel, and the publisher says it was created with illustrator Ignacio Noé. The book’s release adds another chapter to Cusack’s long-running interest in offbeat, character-driven material, something that has long distinguished his work in films such as Say Anything, Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity.
Cusack revealed: “I always thought [graphic novels] were the closest things to film, really. You’re picking out shots, they’re so cinematic.”
He added: “When you ask somebody to put $20 million or $30 million into a bank account [for a film], they want to have an opinion and they’re afraid and all that stuff.”
The book was created alongside illustrator Ignacio Noé, whose work Cusack praised highly.
“This was just like, I wrote it, and I said, ‘I like the story,’ and then I got this beautiful, wonderful artist, Ignacio Noé, to do the illustrations and so nobody edited anything I wrote or that he drew,” Cusack said. “So it’s really a piece of work that was just done by two people. It was just me and Ignacio’s story, and that doesn’t happen today.”
“There’s no bull, and there’s no committee. There’s no computer up in Seattle that’s poll testing it,” he added.
Cusack is not the only one in his family who has chosen to step away from the spotlight in favor of a different kind of life.
His sister Joan Cusack, known for roles in School of Rock and Addams’s Family, also spent years away from the Hollywood spotlight.
At the Toy Story 5 premiere in Los Angeles earlier this year, Joan explained to E! News that she intentionally pulled back from that world so she could focus on her home life in Chicago and raising her children.
“I’ve got to say, I did at a certain point say wait a second, I really want to make a priority of being in Chicago where I live and raising my kids,” she told the outlet. “This is what I’ve been doing for 10 years.”
Joan, who voices Jessie in the Toy Story franchise, also said her absence from red carpets largely comes down to the kind of work she has been doing in recent years.
She said: “Being on the carpet is just kind of one part of Hollywood. They don’t always have carpets for TV shows and all kinds of other things, so I just haven’t been in a movie this big in a long time.”