The actor John Malkovich is seeking to recover $2.3m (£1.5m) from the account he had with the securities firm of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, imprisoned last year for engineering a huge fraud.

Lawyers for the Hollywood star have filed a claim in court after being told by the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of the financier that he would get back only the $670,000 that he invested in the account.

Malkovich is arguing that he should get the value of his investments as they were recorded in his final statement from Madoff, in November 2008, before the scandal erupted. But the trustee, Irving Picard, has told the actor that he was not entitled to the full amount because no securities were actually purchased for his account, and that the approved claim reflects the amount that he deposited with Madoff's firm.

The 56-year-old star of films including Burn After Reading and Dangerous Liaisons, is among thousands of investors who lost billions of dollars in the so-called Ponzi scheme run by Madoff for decades, which fell apart when he admitted in December 2008 that he had run out of money and that the company had been "one big lie". Other celebrity victims included actor Kevin Bacon, CNN interviewer Larry King and the charitable foundation of director Steven Spielberg.

He was charged with defrauding his investors of $65bn and in June last year sent to prison for 150 years after pleading guilty.

Thousands of investors have complained about Picard's method of calculating what they are owed based on their deposits, rather than the final statements. Picard argues that basing payments on the final statements would allow Madoff to decide who gets what and include profits from trades that never happened.

In the papers filed with a New York bankruptcy court, Malkovich's lawyers argue; "The trustee's determination assumes that Bernard Madoff never earned funds and therefore all gains reported to customers were fictitious. This assumption is contrary to fact. There is significant evidence that, at some time, BMIS [Bernad Madoff Investment Securities] was at least in part a legitimate business and therefore all or a portion of the gains were not fictitious."