(Reuters)--Actor John Malkovich, known for playing unhinged villains in a 30-year film career, took on the role of real life hero this past week, rushing to the rescue of an Ohio man who was lying bleeding on a Toronto street.
Jim Walpole, 77, and his wife Marilyn had just left a downtown pub on Thursday when Walpole fell, cutting his neck on a piece of scaffolding near the central King Edward Hotel.
Malkovich, in Toronto for a three-day theater run as Casanova in The Giacomo Variations, went to his side almost immediately, putting pressure on Walpole's neck, according to Chris Mathias, a doorman at the luxury hotel who was alerted to the incident by Walpole's wife.
"By the time I got there John Malkovich was already using a scarf and holding it on the wound of the gentleman, because he was bleeding a lot," Mathias said.
Walpole, who was lucid throughout the ordeal, didn't recognize the Oscar-nominated actor, whose had roles in Dangerous Liaisons, Con Air and the self-spoofing Being John Malkovich.
Mathias said paramedics arrived after about ten minutes.
Walpole was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment, and he has since returned to his home in Defiance, Ohio, Canadian media reported.
"The ambulance drove away, [Malkovich] looked at me and said 'that was intense'," Mathias said. "And he sort of just faded into the night."
(Reporting by Cameron French, editing by Jackie Frank)
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