Lifetime Achievement Honoree Malcolm McDowell
On November 3 at 7 PM, a screening of O Lucky Man! will be followed by a Q&A with Mr. McDowell led by actor/writer Peter Fox. A reception follows in the OAC Gallery.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL
Actor and Writer
arrives at “The Artist” Special Screening during AFI FEST 2011 presented by Audi on November 8, 2011 in Hollywood, California.
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor, known for his boisterous and often times villainous roles. In a career spanning over 50 years, McDowell has played varied film roles across different genres as a character actor.
Born in Leeds, England, to working-class parents, Malcolm hated his parents’ ways. His father packed Malcolm off to boarding school at age 11, to give him a good start in life. While at school, he decided he wanted to become an actor. He attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA) to study acting. Meanwhile, he worked at his parents’ pub until the pub went bankrupt. He then held a variety of jobs, from coffee salesman to messenger.
He made his first big-screen appearance in Poor Cow (1967), although his two-minute scene was ultimately cut from the completed film. Soon after, he caught the attention of director Lindsay Anderson who cast him in the role of a rebellious student in his film If…. (1968). The film catapulted Malcolm to stardom in Britain but failed elsewhere. He felt so enthusiastic about the film’s success that he wanted to do another right away. He wrote what became the semi-autobiographical O Lucky Man! (1973). Then he starred as Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick‘s controversial A Clockwork Orange (1971), a role that gave him world fame, and legendary status (although typecasting him in villainous roles).
In early 1976, he spent nearly a year working on what later emerged as one of the most infamous films of all time, the semi-pornographic Caligula (1979), financed by Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione. Around that time, the British film industry collapsed, forcing him to move to America to continue working. His first American film was Time After Time (1979). He then did Britannia Hospital (1982), the last part of Lindsay Anderson’s working-class trilogy that started with If…. (1968).
In the mid-1980s, the years of alcohol and drug abuse took its toll on him. His black hairs turned gray, making him look older than his real age, so nobody wanted to cast him in younger roles. When the big roles dried up, he did many B-rated movies. The 1990s were kinder to him. In 1994, he was cast as Dr. Tolian Soran, the man who killed Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek: Generations (1994). Now back on track, he played villains again, including Benny Barratt in the classic BBC miniseries Our Friends in the North (1996).
McDowell has had a string of roles on numerous television series such as Entourage (2006–2007; 2009–2011), Heroes (2007–2008), Franklin & Bash (2011–2014) and Mozart in the Jungle (2014–2018). He narrated the documentary The Compleat Beatles (1982), and in recent years has become a prolific voice actor in films, television series and video games such as Metalocalypse (2007–2012), Bolt (2008), Fallout 3 (2008), God of War III (2010), Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015) and The Elder Scrolls Online (2015). He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012.
Today, with more than 100 films under his belt, he is one of the busiest actors in America. He appeared in seven films in 2018, currently has eight projects in pre-production and three more announced. He resides with his family in Ojai.
Listen to Malcolm McDowell‘s interview with radio hostess Elizabeth Stewart.