British actor Malcolm McDowell found his perfect house in the hills of
Tuscany - and spent the next several years rebuilding it.
The only thing bothering Malcolm McDowell is the intense Italian sun. It
pierces the screen of wisteria that hangs from the high beams overhead, causing
him to squint as he sips his lemonade in the half shade of his garden. But it
makes him smile as well, like a boy who has pulled off something truly
delicious.
In fact, he has. The British actor, who has been working almost nonstop in
film and theater since he burst on the scene over two decades ago as the
pathological antihero, Alex, in A
Clockwork Orange, has finally found the time
to enjoy his sanctuary, a 350-year-old farmhouse in the heart of Tuscany. Today
he and his artist wife, Kelley, are relaxing on their stone patio with the
languor befitting a hot Italian afternoon. In every direction lies a landscape
of pale golden fields, silver-green olive trees shadowed by black cypresses, and
distant vineyards heavy with fruit at summer's end. Behind McDowell, the
blue-black color of the shutters on the pale stone walls of the house have begun
to fade. Soon they will look as if they've been here forever.
"I carried this house around in my head for years," says McDowell,
who discovered the place some dozen years ago. "I came upon this ruin and
just fell in love. I was sort of exiled at the time. I was working everywhere
but in England, it seemed, and every weekend we'd shoot off to Tuscany or Umbria.
I wanted a place I could just lock up and walk away from," recalls the
actor, who, at 51, is enjoying a career resurgence in this season's film Star
Trek: Generations.
The three-story stone farmhouse near Cortona hardly required locking up when
McDowell bought it. The original terra-cotta roof had collapsed, the windows
were gaping holes, and the ancient beams were rotting in place. But the shell
that remained stood on a hilltop surrounded by olive groves and fields of
sunflowers. Plus, McDowell says, "it was just the right size and most
brilliant shape. I had it for ages before doing anything with it. But I played
with it constantly in my mind. I know exactly what I like, and what I wanted was
to keep it very simple."
First, though, he had to keep it from failing down. Italian farmhouses are
built directly on the damp ground, so those charming walls were in imminent
danger of collapse. This being the third house he has restored, he knew to make
his first priority finding the right contractor. "He's the real star of
this thing," says McDowell of Virgilio Ciccharelli. Kelley calls the
project "a big directing job, of which Malcolm got to be the
director."
The real trick was renovating with enough authentic detail to conceal the
modern clockworks: the proper kitchen, the four white-tile bathrooms, the
laundry room, even the 120-foot-deep well (which insured that they, unlike their
neighbors, would never run out of water). At the same time, McDowell insisted,
"everything had to be old. To show Virgilio what I had in mind, I'd drag
him to see this beautiful old inn. That was how I wanted my walls to look, and
my crumbling arches; this was the kind of old pavement I wanted for the
floors."
Every few months McDowell would show up to check on the progress. (He and
Ciccharelli communicated in sign language, though a translator was hired for a
few critical transactions.) Each time he returned, there was a new treasure
waiting to be admired: pale gray stone linters from one derelict farmhouse,
I7th-century chestnut beams from another; honey-colored wood doors and graceful
black iron handles. (Not long ago, McDowell says, another client of
Ciccharelli's asked if he could find him some old doors. The actor shakes his
head solemnly and frowns. Not possible, the builder explained. There are no
more.)
The only time the men disagreed, says McDowell, was over the actor's decision
to leave the downstairs open, creating one large space out of the several small
areas that once housed the farm animals. "He was shocked, but I told him I
wanted to be able to keep my wife company while she was cooking." At the
time, he was married to actress Mary Steenburgen (with whom he has two
children-Lilly, 14, and Charlie, 11). But by the time the Tuscan kitchen was
ready, the couple had divorced and he was living alone in his Santa Monica
apartment, above an art gallery where he often stopped in for openings.
"One night I'm down there drinking my Perrier, looking around," he
recalls, "and I see these great green eyes. There was Kelley." It was
her first trip to California, and she had not planned on staying. But it was not
long before the 22- year-old Minnesotan and Malcolm were married-and scouring
London's Portobello Road for the simple pine antiques that now fill their
Italian residence.
Malcolm owns several homes, and he and Kelley, 27, spend most of their time
in California, near the kids. Still, he says, "we're gypsies. We go where
the work is." So when they come to Italy, they are loath to do much besides
bask in the deep quietude. They make a daily shopping trip to Cortona, but they
seldom venture farther. "It's a case of, This is your house and you don't
do much touring," Kelley says. Last summer they spent an uninterrupted
month in the farmhouse, most of it shared with Malcolm's children. The kids
swim, play bocce, watch movies on the VCR, and bake pizza in the outdoor
wood-burning oven; Kelley paints and Malcolm tends his flower and herb gardens.
He worries that next year the kids will choose boisterous American summer camp
over the simple pleasures of Tuscany. But as the scent of rosemary and lavender
mixes with the leftover ash in the fireplace, he voices his one true regret:
that they can't get here more often.
© In Style 1/95
Archived 2001-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net