By Sam Tabahriti
LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – The British actor Malcolm McDowell has spent more than six decades playing rebels, villains, outsiders and authority figures.
At 83, he has never seriously considered retiring, and his latest role feels unusually personal.
In “Last Train to Fortune”, available on streaming platforms from Friday, McDowell plays Cecil Peachtree, a schoolmaster who believes books can open minds and change lives.
The character’s faith in literature and education struck a chord with the actor, who traces much of his own career back to a teacher who transformed the way he saw the world.
“I wouldn’t have been an actor without this man,” McDowell said, recalling a boarding school headmaster who introduced him to Shakespeare, took pupils to watch Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud perform, and encouraged his growing interest in theatre.
“He inspired me absolutely to be an actor.”
A LIFE SHAPED BY CURIOSITY
His latest film centres on Peachtree’s efforts to share his love of books, a theme McDowell embraced eagerly.
Long before becoming known for roles in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” and dozens of films and television series that followed, he was an enthusiastic reader.
“Books are the most wonderful places to escape to,” he said, recalling stories that carried him thousands of miles from his own life.
McDowell acknowledges that reading occupies a different place in modern life. But rather than look back, he returns to a different idea.
“Being curious is the cornerstone to intelligence,” he said, arguing that curiosity underpins everything from reading and travel to art and education.
“We wouldn’t have moved on as a human race if there hadn’t been great curiosity.”
Asked what question he finds himself asking more often with age, McDowell paused: “‘What’s it all been about? What the hell is it?'”
Yet there is little sense of regret.
“I know that I’ve led the most privileged life doing something that I totally love,” he said.
For McDowell, that enthusiasm is closely tied to the message at the heart of “Last Train to Fortune”.
“If just a kid sees this movie and says, ‘You know what? I’d like to read a Charles Dickens story’, then I think it’s all worthwhile.”
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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