Conversations with Malcolm McDowell (2017)

Career Q&A with Malcolm McDowell, starring on Amazon's Mozart in the Jungle, on May 10, 2017.  Moderated by Jenelle Riley, Variety.

Malcolm McDowell has created a gallery of iconic characters since catapulting to the screen as Mick Travis, the rebellious upperclassman in Lindsay Anderson’s prize-winning sensation, If... 

His place in movie history was subsequently secured when Stanley Kubrick found the actor he was searching for to play the gleefully amoral Alex in A Clockwork Orange; when McDowell himself conceived the idea for Mick Travis’ further adventures in Anderson’s Candide-like masterpiece, O Lucky Man!; and when he wooed Mary Steenburgen and defeated Jack the Ripper as the romantically inquisitive H.G. Wells in Time After Time. 

For his motion picture work, the American Cinematheque honored him with a retrospective in June 2001, highlighted by showings of his electrifying performances in two major works. The first is Paul McGuigan’s Gangster No. 1, in which McDowell and Paul Bettany portray the consumed, driven title character and which affords McDowell the chance to create a character both on screen and through nuanced voice-over. The second is Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov’s acclaimed and rarely seen Assassin of the Tsar, which Vincent Canby called “a remarkable mystical and psychological exploration of the murder of the Romanov family.” 

McDowell’s distinctive motion picture characterizations include: Richard Lester’s Royal Flash, Paul Schrader’s Cat People, Rachel Talalay’s Tank Girl, Joseph Losey’s Figures in a Landscape, Bryan Forbes’ The Raging Moon and the Chaplinesque studio boss in Blake Edwards’ Sunset. His film credits are further highlighted by his compellingly sinister Caligula; the brilliant literary editor Maxwell Perkins in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek; his cameo in Robert Altman’s The Player; and his final incarnation of Mick Travis in Britannia Hospital, the third film in Anderson’s trilogy marking the disintegration of British culture. 

McDowell’s film work also includes Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, In Good Company, I Spy, Robert Altman’s The Company, Robert Downey Sr.’s Hugo Pool with Sean Penn, Robert Downey Jr. and Cathy Moriarty; Just Visiting, Mr. Magoo, Hugh Hudson’s My Life So Far, BlueThunder, Neil Marshall’s Doomsday in 2007, Rob Zombie’s Halloween I & II, and the voice of villain Dr. Calico in Disney’s 2008 boxoffice hit, Bolt. In late 2011, McDowell was seen in the Academy Award-winning silent film sensation, The Artist. In addition to recurring appearances on Heroes, CSI: Miami, and The Mentalist, McDowell starred in TNT’s Franklin & Bash as Stanton Infeld. The series lasted for four seasons.