Tribute's Bonnie Laufer talks to Malcolm McDowell about working on The Company 2/04

B.L. You must get so many scripts. Why this one?

MM. Well, you don't get that many scripts once you get to a certain age. I'm getting the same scripts as Albert Finney who is at least ten years older than me. There's one reason and one reason only and it is Robert Altman. He's the reason I'm doing this film and because to all actors he is really a legend. He's an exquisite director, besides being a great man. He's someone I've admired forever and he's been a friend of mine since the early '70s. We hung out in London together. So all the way through we'd meet. Sometimes it would be ten years that had gone by and suddenly I'd go to a play in New York and there he would be in the audience. If I could go to the opening of one of his movies I would go to support him and his wife Katherine who I adore too. So when he said, "I've got a little picture, I've got a little dance, can you dance," I went…"hell no!" He goes, "Well, you don't have to." So, it's just been a terrific experience working with him.

B.L. Where you aware of what managing a company of dancers was like?

MM. Well, the thing is that I've worked with a company of actors and it's a very similar set up. They're always looking for money. That's basically what they do. The artist who directs spends very little time creating with the dancers because it's fundraising now. It's all meeting the company and getting a choreographer and all that. I was very comfortable with that. What I got from Mr. A was his love of dancers, his respect for them, his love for them, his tough love actually. He does it in a very different way from me. I wasn't going to mimic him. That's not what Mr. Altman wanted. He wanted an original. He didn't want to be bound by "this is the real Mr. A."

B.L. What impressed you the most Neve?

MM. Neve is quite extraordinary because she's very beautiful of course. Physically beautiful and you think rather delicate. But no, wrong. Neve is a tenacious terrier. A fighter and a tough little thing. Like an old prairie woman or something. I'm going to get in there and do a dance, and I'm going to get Robert Altman. And she did. How they got Robert Altman involved with it, I don't know but they did. And you know? It's the perfect subject for him because he knows nothing about dance, but because he's so visual and he just loves it so much. To be around it, to see the dedication that the dancers have and the work they put into it. It makes actors look like lazy slobs. We come in with our coffee and sit around. And if you want an actor to really bitch, you know - just give 'em a job.