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Malcolm McDowell

Malcolm McDowell has built a career around an unusually agile screen presence: charming one moment, threatening the next, and often most effective when those qualities become difficult to separate. Born Malcolm John Taylor in Horsforth on 13 June 1943, he adopted his mother's maiden name professionally after training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and working as an extra with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His film debut as rebellious schoolboy Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's if.... (1968) immediately placed that restless energy at the centre of British countercultural cinema. McDowell later reunited with Anderson for O Lucky Man! (1973), which he also helped write, and Britannia Hospital (1982). Between those collaborations came the performance that would define much of his screen image: Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971). The role earned him Golden Globe, National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Circle nominations, while establishing his gift for playing characters whose wit and charisma make their cruelty even more disturbing. McDowell's career has never been confined to one kind of work. He played H. G. Wells in Time After Time (1979), appeared as Dr. Tolian Soran in Star Trek Generations (1994), and worked with Robert Altman on The Player and The Company. Television, animation and video games have given his distinctive voice another outlet, with roles including Metallo in Superman: The Animated Series, President John Henry Eden in Fallout 3 and Molag Bal in The Elder Scrolls Online. For Please Rewind viewers, McDowell appears as Dr. Samuel Loomis in Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009). The films draw on the authority and unease he can bring simply by entering a scene. It is a quality that has served him across decades of film, television, stage and voice work: McDowell does not need to soften a difficult character to make that character compelling.