McDowell's new lease of Life
By BBC News Online's Rebecca Thomas 5/12/00

    As the star of A Clockwork Orange and if...., Malcolm McDowell is best known for subversive screen behavior. So it will come as no small surprise to see him donning brogues and lording it on a Scottish Highland estate for his latest cinema outing, My Life So Far.
    Once I was waiting for the script I was really dreading it, thinking 'What on earth have I done?' - It's so different from what I am used to.
    In reality, McDowell - now aged 56 and sporting a shock of silver hair - looks every inch the respectable rich industrialist he plays in the film.
   But, he admits, the departure from his usual anarchic roles comes as much as a shock to him as it will undoubtedly to his fans.
   "I accepted the part when the director Hugh Hudson, who is a friend, asked me to take it on. But once I had and was waiting for the script I was really dreading it, thinking 'What on earth have I done?' - it's so different from what I am used to. But the script turned out to be charming - as I believe the film has."
    Set in the 1920s, My Life So Far is told through the eyes of 10-year-old Fraser Pettigrew and recounts a tumultuous year in the normally idyllic life of his family on their ancestral Scottish estate.
    Fraser's life with his madcap inventor father, played by Colin Firth, doting mother, numerous siblings and indomitable grandmother is like a fairy tale.
    But everything changes when McDowell's character, wealthy Uncle Morris, upsets the applecart by bringing his alluring French fiancée Heloise to the estate.
    Without giving too much away, McDowell says it was the mischievous side to Uncle Morris's part that won him over.
    “Uncle Morris is a very successful industrialist who because he is the oldest son, he has a younger sister played by Mary Elizabeth who is married to Colin Firth. They live in the house with the mother, my mother, played by -- is also of course ME’s mother.   Being the oldest sun, of course the house would pass to me in the will. Uncle Morris is waiting for his inheritance and in the meantime his sister is living in the house with her husband Colin and the children. He is doing all these projects which Uncle Morris thinks is really absolutely useless, some sort of madcap half-baked inventor. A chimney on the lawn. The moss business…Spandum Moss, stupid things like that that all go wrong. The moss business, what kind of nonsense is that? He is not really making the place pay for itself and Uncle Morris thinks he should plant commercial woodlands to help the estate pay for itself. You kind of think at the beginning of the film that Uncle Morris is the baddie, as the film goes on you realize he’s not. That is the interesting twist in the film. It is Uncle Morris bringing in to the film an outsider, his fiancée who is French and is young an attractive. I don’t want to tell it all, I don’t want to give it all away so I’ll leave it there and let the audience judge for themselves.  I’ll tell you this that when you watch that film, if you don’t rush out and book a holiday in Scotland, you are a better man than I.”
    Followers of McDowell's career - which also includes a memorable performance as the infamous Roman emperor Caligula - will doubtless be relieved he has not losst his lust for danger.  After all, many are still drunk with excitement over the recent re-release of A Clockwork Orange, probably McDowell's most notorious credit to date.
    He was an upcoming actor when, in 1973, its late director Stanley Kubrick had it withdrawn. Now, the actor says he can share the elation over its return.
    “I was thrilled that A Clockwork Orange was re-released because a whole generation would at last get to see it and judge for themselves. It was so overpowering in terms of the look, it was so out there. It has been imitated many, many times since you can’t think it’s old. When that came out there was nothing like it. There was no punk. It started the whole punk movement. It started generations of things. There are whole industries because of this film. There is even a rock band called Heaven 17. Even Bowie dressed up as me on stage with the codpiece, the eyelash and bowler – the whole thing. Madonna’s doing it. She did it in Truth or Dare wearing the bowler.  They’ve all done it. They copied the music, the Beethoven. In a way it is such an innovative film, such a dynamic piece of cinema. As an actor in the middle of the storm working on the scenes it was always a black comedy. I was shocked when people were going on about the violence. It is so funny, so black. But now they are seeing that, so it’s a good thing.”
    McDowell, who was born in Leeds, now lives in California with his wife and children. In his domestic bliss, he declares himself a "mellowing" man.
    But a leopard does not change his spots so easily and later this summer McDowell will burst onto cinema screens in Gangster No. 1 - described as his most horrific part yet.<
    "That’s going to destroy all your good feelings you have about me in this film (My Life So Far). It’ll be all over, you’ll never want to interview me again. I mean it’s one of the most horrific parts you can play. I loved it. I loved playing it. It’s so far from what I am, so freeing for an actor to do that. I loved it.”
    Set in London in 1968 and the present day, the movie charts the rise and fall of a sadistic East End gangland leader - played by McDowell.
    The film's violence is, once again, likely to cause shockwaves but, says McDowell, the futility of the aggression is intended to have a positive meaning.
    "It is very violent and very profane but the profanity begins to sound like Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy. The foul language washes over you, becomes a style in itself and at the end it's really the most anti-violent film you could ever see."
    McDowell insists that off-screen he is a just a run-of-the-mill chap. So what exactly it is about these deranged parts he enjoys?
    "It's so freeing to be able to behave like that - but I do have a very warped sense of humor as well."

© 2000 The BBC
Archived 2001-08 by Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net

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