The star of In the Line of Fire, John Malkovich, has been offered the chance to portray outstanding Russian scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrey Sakharov.
The versatile American actor has reportedly received the script of the Russian biopic from the film’s director, Yury Kara, whom he met during a press-conference at the Odessa International Film Festival in Ukraine, at which Malkovich was a “guest of honor”.
“This year marks the 90th anniversary of birth of Andrey Sakharov, and I wanted to give my account of this man,” Kara was quoted as saying, describing Sakharov as “the Don Quixote of the 20th century.”
One of the first human rights activists in the Soviet Union, Sakharov made his name as one of the fathers of the H-bomb. He was, however, strongly against nuclear proliferation and the atmospheric testing of the hydrogen bomb that he invented.
Sakharov believed that peace, progress and human rights go hand in hand. “It is impossible to achieve one of these goals if the other two are ignored,” the Academic emphasized in his famous Nobel Peace lecture.
A legendary dissident, Sakharov was stripped of his honors, arrested and expelled to the small town of Gorky after he called for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan back in 1979. He stayed in exile with his wife, fellow human rights activist Yelena Bonner, until 1986, when Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the couple to return to Moscow. He died there, in the Russian capital only three years later, aged 68. Sakharov’s widow died in America earlier this year, at the age of 88.