Andrew Billen | Sunday Herald 3/17/02
Like most actors, Malcolm McDowell concluded long ago that
performing was the show-off's way of searching for love. In his case, the
pursuit has been nothing if not perverse. In Lindsay Anderson's 1968 movie if....
(now reissued by the British Film Institute), he played Mick Travis, leader of a
group of public-school rebels who machine-gun their headmaster. Three years
later he was A Clockwork Orange's bowler-hatted thug Alex, whose balletic
'ultra-violence' so shocked Britain that the film was withdrawn -- by its own
director.
A hundred movies on, in which he has almost always played the
villain, he has reached a further conclusion: 'The meaner, more horrible I am,
the more people seem to like it.'
Being a mean, horrible little boy who repeatedly ran away
from home from the age of three was, in a sense, McDowell's first salvation. His
parents, pub landlords in Lincolnshire and then in Liverpool, tried to reform
him by sending him to Cannock House, a public school in Kent. It was here he
honed his dramatic skills -- although the only personal echo if.... provided was
the scene where Travis is beaten for having sex with a waitress. At 16 McDowell
got eight whacks of the head's slipper for escaping one night just to hold hands
with a girl.
McDowell met his first wife while filming if.... - but the
person he fell for most deeply was its director. 'Lindsay Anderson was a mixture
of father, mentor, brother,' he remembers. 'We had the most awful rows. Oh
Christ, yes, I mean thundering, screaming rows. But we always made up.'
About Stanley Kubrick, director of A Clockwork Orange,
McDowell speaks less warmly. 'Stanley was a very great man, a great intellect,
brilliantly clever, and made wonderful films, but Lindsay was a poet.'
There were rumors that Kubrick's treatment of McDowell verged
on sadism. During A Clockwork Orange's brainwashing scenes his eyes were pinned
open for lengthy periods. And for an interrogation scene he was spat on again
and again until the phlegm perched on his nose, just so. But he doesn't bear a
grudge. 'I don't think he was a sadist. I just think he was so driven that he
really never considered the human element. If you got injured along the
way...'Oh dear, very sorry, but would you mind doing just one more shot?''
Kubrick withdrew A Clockwork Orange after his family was
threatened amid growing public hysteria. A judge suggested that a youth who beat
a tramp to death had been inspired by Alex. 'I remember driving around London
and seeing half a dozen kids in white with the codpieces and the bowlers and the
eyelashes,' says McDowell. 'I went, 'Wow, people are taking it seriously.' I was
horrified.'
The early 1970s was a period of paranoia about the power of
the screen, but McDowell thinks it was 'way over-stated', adding: 'Television
does way more damage because it's a gradual pounding night after night.'
He's made his contribution to that: television trash from
Biker Mice From Mars to his latest, Stephen King's Firestarter: Rekindled. 'I've
worked,' he says, in a 'so-sue-me' sort of way. 'I'm only offered evil men, so
I've no choice. I love making them sympathetic.'
If ...'s sequels -- O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia
Hospital (1982) -- flopped, and McDowell left Britain for Hollywood in 1979. He
was accompanied by his first wife, Margot Bennett Dullea, If ...'s publicist,
but shortly afterwards he began an affair with the American actress Mary
Steenburgen. She became the second Mrs. McDowell and the mother of his children,
Lily and Charlie, now in their late teens.
'I'm not really proud of my behavior and I don't like hurting
any other human being, but really, when your life is on the line, there are
certain decisions you have to make, however painful,' he says. 'But I think two
actors together is extremely difficult. They're both basically babies.'
He is now married to Kelly Kuhr, a painter he met at a
gallery opening. 'I just thought she was the most adorable person. She was
gorgeous. Blonde. I think I was ready for a change from a brunette to a blonde.
I don't know...that's crass. I didn't realize she was 22, half my age. But we've
been together 13 years.'
So no regrets about his divorces? 'You know what? Yes, at the
time it's painful, but I don't regret any of the affairs I've had, or the
marriages. I suppose I'm lucky. I had enough money to be able to get divorced. I
don't want to live in sheer hell. If you're unhappy, move on .'
While married to Steenburgen, McDowell abandoned his
considerable alcohol and drug intake. His father, Charles, had been an alcoholic
and died at 70. 'By the time I was 40, I was done with it: all drugs, all
substances, illegal and otherwise .' Was his father's addiction a factor? 'God,
no, it was so much fun. But it was beginning to rule my life. When my son was
born I went, 'This is it.' And he's 18 now.'
At 58, McDowell is Andy Warhol meets Klaus Kinski,
unrecognizable from the fresh-faced, tousle-haired schoolboy of If ... -- and
shorter than you expect. In Gangster No. 1, his most recent film of any note, he
had to be shot from below to add the illusion of height, but his 5ft 9ins are
packed with muscle.
I leave him on his mobile, commanding his people to ensure
him an aisle seat on the flight back to LA. There are, it seems, material
compensations for making 100 unpleasant films.
Archived w/o permission for ease of research 2005-08 by Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net