Malcolm McDowell is a popular English actor with the voice and manner of Ben
Kingsley, but with more sex appeal. He lives in California with his painter wife
Kelley of three years, plays tennis to keep fit, and like Captain Picard enjoys a
cup of Earl Grey tea.
A veteran stage and screen actor whose credits include Clockwork
Orange,
if...., O Lucky Man, Time after Time and Moon 44, McDowell beams aboard the
Starship Enterprise as Soran, a scientist whose obsession with an astrological
phenomenon known as the Nexus brings him up against two legendary Starfleet
captains in Star Trek.
"Soran was very different to the roles I usually play", explains
McDowell. "He's a wonderful 'heavy' really, because he has this great
intellect and yet he's like a heroin junkie. He's obsessed with getting his next
hit, and he'll do anything to get it - which includes destroying a star or a
planet with 230 million people on it. It's not that he wants to be powerful or
evil or anything like that, he's more a complex character. That's why I've tried
to give him a little vulnerability too. Soran is not really evil. He's just
totally preoccupied with the Nexus. Wouldn't you like to be in a place like the
Nexus? To be in a place where things are predetermined and you can have anything
you want? I'd take it for sure."
If it were possible to turn the clock back as in Star Trek, would McDowell
change anything in his life?
"Oh, probably! But God knows, I don't have many regrets. Even the bad
things that have happened to me have probably happened to everyone from time to
time. You turn it into a learning experience but I think that on the whole I've
been pretty lucky."
McDowell finds that people still associate him with Clockwork
Orange, but
"less and less." He continues, "It's a very big film in my life,
but it's not as big as it used to be. Star Trek made more money in one weekend
than Clockwork Orange has taken in its whole lifetime. That's something to think
about! Mind you, tickets were only $3 then, and it's a different audience
now."
According to McDowell, the Star Trek audience is quite different from any
other audience. "I like those crazies out there," He says.
"They're my kind of people. I've never been bugged by fans, and the people
that like my work are usually a little off-beat anyway. I like that."
Although he began his career as a Shakespearean actor, he considers the move
to big-budget sci-fi to be "No big deal... Shakespeare is only another form
of language, and the Shakespeare costumes are the same as Star Trek: The tights,
the boots the same thing. The film's all pretty Shakespearean, of course, but
you have to have good dialogue."
The character of Soran has been widely criticized for not being evil enough.
McDowell, however, disagrees. "They're talking crap! Some people have said
that they didn't enjoy the film, but it's a bit too late for that, and really I
don't care. If they didn't like it, they should go and talk to the writers. I
didn't want to make Soran an over-the-top chewing-the-scenery sort of villain,
because it's so condescending to the audience. It becomes like a cartoon, and it
deserves to be better than that."
McDowell also disagrees with the suggestion that Star Trek lacks the wit and
humor the earlier films had. "The earlier films had a different cast. Bill
(Shatner) has that more tongue-in-cheek kind of humor and I think that most of
the early cast were into that. With this film there wasn't too much humor except
for Data, the android. It's just different."
Born in Liverpool, McDowell has lived in California since 1979. "I came
to the States because I married an American woman (Mary
Steenburgen) and had
children here," he says. "When you have children, they go to school in
America and you can't really leave. So that was initially the reason, although I
like it very much here and I could never live in England again. I'm so used to
it here now, and things have changed so much in England. It's not that I don't
like it there, it's just that California is my home. But I'm still English. I'm
very English ! I know where my roots are, and they're very much in England. In
the north of England particularly. What I miss most about the English is their
great sense of humor. They have a wonderful sense of irony. There's no irony in
California at all. What is there to be ironic about? You're living in paradise.
I made the mistake of doing an ironic Polish play at the Mark Taper Theatre in
LA and it was a total disaster! It was mainly because of the irony that Polish
humor has. It just went sailing over their heads. They have no idea!"
McDowell has had a great deal of involvement with independent film. It's a
subject which is very close to his heart. "We are coming out of a time of
mediocrity," He enthuses, "There are a lot of interesting young film
directors and there are some very interesting films being done outside the
studio system. I think there were 30 films entered at Sundance this year. I
think I'm more or less the king of the independent movie. I've done so many of
them, but I changed my agent a year ago and he was very determined to get me
into more mainstream studio pictures. I did three last year, including Milk
Money and Tank Girl. As the agents say you have to have a hit every once in a
while to keep yourself going. And so that's probably why they wanted me to do
that.
Star Trek is a huge hit. It went back up to number one the other day, but I
can't play that numbers game. I think the film is a pretty good adventure and
really that's about it. It's not an intellectual piece at all. It's a fun movie.
I know that the young audiences loved it because they love the adventure. My
kids loved it and they knew nothing about Trek or Trekkers. You don't have to
know the series to appreciate the film. When they asked me to do the role, I
thought, Oh God! I suppose I had better watch some of this stuff! I'd never
really been a Trekkie. I really don't like the slow science fiction stuff.
Nevertheless, I was flattered to be asked to play the villain. It seemed like a
fun role, and I think it is a fun role. But I wanted to try to make him real, or
at least make people believe it. David (Carson, the director) wanted me right
from the start. I was very grateful to do it. I enjoyed doing it."
Comments about McDowell's spiky haircut in Star Trek have ranged from him
looking like 'Sting's brother' or a 'Billy Idol look alike'.
"I didn't really have a different haircut," he insists.
"They just
spiked it up with a bit of gel. It was Kelly, my wife, who made me have my hair
cut like that, because I looked rather dowdy with my Beatles haircut that I'd
had for years. She brought me up to speed."
McDowell was impressed by Patrick Stewart's work in the film and his
commitment to Star Trek.
"Patrick is this very urbane tea drinker with his Earl Grey as a kind of
running theme. He's as cool as a cucumber as the Commander, but a more interior
kind of character. He'll still be around when I'm onto other things. He's rather
stuck with Picard. It's not a problem as he obviously likes it. But it wouldn't
be my cup of tea. I don't have the patience to be in a seven year series like
that. It's beyond me. I just couldn't think of doing it for that length of time.
It would drive me nuts playing the same part. I would go crazy. I can only do a
play for six months and that's it. I will only do six months max. That's really
why I haven't done that many plays. It's not because I haven't been asked to do
them or whatever, it's really that I would only do them for six months. In
commercial theatre you need at least nine months a year. So I'd rather work off
Broadway."
Given the current preoccupation with British villains, does an English accent
give a sense of authority in American films? "Not at all", says McDowell. "I
think it's got more to do with the quality of the actors than the fact that
we're English. I think that because we've been doing it for a long time, we're
well trained and we came with a certain bearing, a certain strength, if you
like. We call it weight, and I think that's very important for these roles. I
guess it's from our theatre training. If you've had a theatrical training,
movies are pretty easy, really. But not all theatre actors translate. There's
got to be some kind of chemistry with the camera. As Soran I have this wonderful
line 'Time is the fire in which we burn'. They gave me this watch, so I had it
inscribed in the watch. It's not the screenwriter's line, actually. They had to
buy it. It's in a book of quotations, and don't ask me who wrote it because I
can't remember. But they had to pay for it. So I'm grateful that the writer of
that line received payment. He probably got more than I did !"
While McDowell can still pass for an Englishman abroad, it's a different
story when he returns to his native land. "I try to keep the American
accent out," He says, "In England, though, they think I'm
American!"
© 1995 source unknown
This format 2001-08 Alex D Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net