Malcolm McDowell
Interview By: Zak Santucci
Actor Malcolm McDowell often plays such terrible, evil people but pulls off a charismatic manner about them, one can only look in awe and wonder how he does it. When interviewing him, we were going about twice as long as we were supposed to be (at 40 minutes instead of 20) he was interrupted by a phone call. McDowell immediately answered, yelled at the person for calling on live radio (even though we weren't), and preceded to laugh and graciously say, 'Don't worry, we'll be down in 10 minutes.' Maybe that's why so much charisma is passed through most of his work.
The character of Andrej Romanovic Evilenko in the movie Evilenko is no different. In fact, he is a pedophile and one of the most famous serial killers in The Societ Union's history. However, in this, the charisma was written into the character. McDowell remarks, 'Nobody saw him take a kid off the street. They followed him.' And in reference to his unique 'abilities': 'He knew a weakness instantly, he looked around and he could spot the one victim he knew would be the weakest.'
This was part of the character of Evilenko, but McDowell refused to play a real person. He played the character as written and that is how he works. 'I'm not playing research, I'm playing the character as written. It doesn't interest me, I'm an instinctive actor, not a method actor.' However, he was given tapes of the man to study, and at the end of how the endless, boring tapes (as he described them) McDowell brings up, 'At the very end, there was a shot of him in a cage in the trial room. He just looked at the camera, and he gave this smile that was so demented and yet, incredible, that I realized right there that that was how I would play him, physically.'
As Malcolm McDowell spoke of his acting style, he seemed refreshingly stubborn, as noted in the 'method actor' quip above. Constantly, with a very noble presence, McDowell spoke of how he did things, and that was how he did them. He follows the script closely and does things by instinct. At one point he said, 'If the homework is done, and you open yourself up you have to be very relaxed. There can be no tension at all. If you're playing a serial killer who is so tense, you can't play him like that' I use an analogy of golf, if there's any tension in the hands or arms, you can't swing the club.' There were many utterances of how things can and can't be done in his own world of acting.
As spoken about before, playing this character physically was very important to him. When asked how difficult it was to shed such a terrible character from one's psyche at the end of the shooting day, he replied, 'I was able to get rid of it fairly quickly, because, it's a question of really changing one's technique of working. Instead of working from the inside out, this time, using a physical movement and facial expression and speech pattern so it's really put on the outside going on. Then you can just take that, throw it in the corner and go out to dinner. Psychologically you'd be depressed all the time if you had to live in the skin of this character. And actually in a weird way, it's wonderful to change techniques, and once you do it all the time, well why not' Why be bound by what you've always done. I had to figure out a way to do this, I had to figure it out somehow. I work instinctively and that's paramount. Always trust the instinct.' To 'inhabit a person' as he said it, there were many things Malcolm felt he had to do: 'He's highly mentally disturbed' and I suppose, how do you play psychopaths' There's no way to play a psychopath because psychopaths always believe they are right. They're almost indignant about it; a righteousness. Everything that happens to them is someone else's fault' I latched onto that and his absolute obsession with Communism.' Since he had to do this without make-up, the physicality was very important to him.
Later, McDowell mentioned a little more specifically how to play a character like that. As the director of the movie, David Grieco, brought up that from Alex in A Clockwork Orange to his character in Gangster No. 1 'He's not judgmental in the characters he plays.' To which McDowell chimed in, 'If you play the part like that, you destroy it. You can't judge who you play.' If people say they could never play such an evil character, he said he's responded, 'Why bother being an actor, then' 'They're the best parts.'
Both Grieco and McDowell seemed fascinated with this project and the man it was based on. They spoke in great detail and almost reverent, disgusted respect of his methods. Not just in his ability to lure children as before, but in the facts in general. McDowell mentioned, 'This man's sperm and his blood type were different. And that's one in a million. So they took this man and tested his blood against the sperm of the killer and it was different. So this was before DNA, so you can't blame them. He did killings thousands of miles apart, because he worked for the railroad.' Then Grieco added, 'He's been arrested twice. They put him in a collective cell with 16 people and at the end they were begging the magistrate to free him. They were saying, 'It can't be him.''
There are many scenes where we realize that the character is the evil person that would kill 60 children. One involved the rape of a 10 year-old girl. McDowell commented about this 'hideous' scene, 'It's extremely difficult to play a pedophile in that situation. They found a magnificent child actress'The adults were the ones who had a problem with it, she understood completely!' It wasn't all pedophiles and disgust on the set however. McDowell told us this anecdote about filming a certain scene: 'Physicality is very important with this character. When you see him walk with a plastic bag you have to know. We used to joke, we did a shot at a railway station with a thousand people, saying 'How stupid are these police' Anyone would have to know I'm the serial killer just by looking at me!''
All in all, McDowell, as Grieco stated is a master of his craft, and it's apparent in the movie Evilenko. We added, 'Only a master can kill Captain Kirk.' (A Star Trek: Generations reference to all you non-Trekkies' he played the villain). He laughed when it was brought up and joked, 'Wasn't it long overdue''
ZakSantucci@TheCinemaSource.com
