Malcolm McDowell

Malcolm McDowell (born 13 June 1943) is an English actor with a career spanning over forty years.

McDowell is principally known for his roles in the controversial films If…., Caligula and A Clockwork Orange, as well as O Lucky Man!. His versatility as an actor has led to his presence in many films and television series of different genres, including Tank Girl, Star Trek Generations, the TV serial Our Friends in the North, Entourage, Heroes, Metalocalypse, animated film Bolt and the 2007 remake of Halloween and the 2009 sequel Halloween II.

Trivia

His first wife, Margot Bennett, was Keir Dullea’s ex wife. Keir was the main character in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001″, while McDowell was the main character in Kubrick’s next film, “A Clockwork Orange”.

Father of actress Lilly McDowell, born in 1981.

Uncle of Alexander Siddig (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (1993)).

Father of producer/director Charlie McDowell, born in 1983.

Along with Sir John Gielgud, he is one of only two actors to play both King Arthur and Merlin. He played King Arthur in Arthur the King (1985) (TV) and Merlin in Kids of the Round Table (1997).

13 of his films shown at retrospective tribute at NYC’s Walter Reade Theatre in May 2002, where he introduces the least known of these, The Connection.

Has said that his favorite actor of all time is James Cagney.

Received death threats from overzealous Star Trek fans after his character killed Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations (1994).

He and Wife, Kelley McDowell, had a son, Beckett Taylor McDowell (born January 29, 2004).

Claims Gangster No. 1 (2000) to be his best work since A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Was the first well-known actor to appear non-animated and in the flesh for “South Park” (1997) because he is one of Trey Parker’s favorite actors and he was specifically requested.

Has appeared in three different films involving time travel: Time After Time (1979), Star Trek: Generations (1994) and Just Visiting (2001).

His performance as Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange (1971) was ranked 100 on the list of the “100 Greatest Film Performances of All Time”.

His performance as Alex De Large in A Clockwork Orange (1971) is ranked #68 on Premiere Magazine’s “100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time”.

Lives in Santa Barbara, CA.

Owns another home in Britain and a summer retreat in Tuscany.

Good friends with Christine Noonan and David Sherwin.

Was captain of the rugby and cricket teams at his high school.

As he wanted to get into the SAG, he took his mother’s maiden name McDowell because there was another British actor called Malcolm Taylor.

Born to Charles Taylor, a pub owner, and his wife Edna McDowell, a hotelier, he grew up with an older (Gloria) and a younger sister.

He and Wife, Kelley McDowell, had a son, Finnian Anderson McDowell (born December 23, 2006).

His job as a coffee salesman provided inspiration for O Lucky Man! (1973).

In an interview he said that a magazine named him “King Of Punk” after his appearance in “A clockwork orange”. This is probably because of the punk references that appears in the movie, such as the droogies costume style.

Has been a friend of Aubrey Morris ever since they worked together in A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Announced that wife, Kelley, is expecting their third child, a boy, in January 2009. [September 8, 2008].

Third son, Seamus Hudson McDowell, was born on January 7, 2009.

When he went to meet with Stanley Kubrick for the first time, he had little knowledge of film and confused him with Stanley Kramer. In preparation, McDowell’s friend and mentor, Lindsay Anderson, showed him all of Kubrick’s films from Paths of Glory (1957) to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Cat People is a 1942 horror film produced by Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur. The writing is credited to DeWitt Bodeen, but Tourneur, composer Roy Webb, Lewton and his secretary all contributed to the script. The cinematographer was Tourneur’s sometime collaborator Nicholas Musuraca. The film stars Simone Simon, Kent Smith and Tom Conway.

Cat People was followed by a sequel, The Curse of the Cat People, in 1944. A remake directed by Paul Schrader and starring Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, and John Heard was released in 1982.

In 1993, Cat People was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Trivia:

• Original trade reviews appeared Friday the 13 November 1942.
• The film was in theaters for so long that critics who had originally bashed the film were able to see it again and many rewrote their reviews with a more positive spin.
• When “The Cat Woman” (played, uncredited, by Elizabeth Russell) speaks to Irina in Serbian and calls her “my sister”, Russell’s dialog is dubbed by Simone Simon,
• Several actors in studio records and casting call lists did not appear in the movie. These were (with their character names) George Ford (Whistling cop), Leda Nicova (Patient), and Bud Geary (Mounted policeman).
• Supervisor Lou L. Ostrow was so dissatisfied with the style of the movie he wanted to replace director Jacques Tourneur after four days of filming. Producer Val Lewton got studio head Charles Koerner to reinstate Tourneur, and when Ostrow insisted on the panther appearing in the drafting room sequence, Lewton had Tourneur use low lighting putting the panther in the shadows.
• The film was such a hit at the box office, the releases of the next two Lewton films (I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Leopard Man (1943)) were delayed.
• R.K.O. gave Val Lewton only $150,000 to make the film, resulting in “creative” producing. This forced many of the scenes requiring special effects to be done in shadows which many believe increased the suspense of the film. When studio execs insisted that more footage of the panther be included in the movie, Lewton was able to maintain the budget and the suspense of the film by limiting how many scenes the panther could be visibly seen and told the cinematographer to “keep the panther in the shadows.” Thus the panther was only visible in the office and zoo cage.
• Because of the incredibly tight budget, sets from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) were re-used.

Actor David Warner

Warner was born July 29, 1941 in Manchester England.  In 1963, he made his film debut in Tom Jones, and in 1965 starred as Henry VI in the BBC television version of the RSC’s The Wars of the Roses cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays. Another early television role came when he starred alongside Bob Dylan in the 1963 play The Madhouse on Castle Street. A major step in his career was the leading role in Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966) opposite Vanessa Redgrave, which established his reputation for playing slightly off-the-wall characters. He also appeared as Konstantin Treplev in Sidney Lumet’s 1968 adaptation of Anton Chekov’s The Sea Gull and starred alongside Jason Robards and Stella Stevens as Reverend Joshua Duncan Sloane in Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue, perhaps one of Warner’s (and Peckinpah’s) least known or appreciated films.

The Omen (1976)

In horror movies he appeared in one of the stories of From Beyond the Grave, opposite Gregory Peck in The Omen (1976) as the ill-fated photojournalist Keith Jennings, and the 1979 thriller Nightwing. He also starred in cult classic Waxwork (1988), and featured alongside a young Viggo Mortensen in 1990 film Tripwire.

Evil Genius in Time Bandits (1981)

Since then, he has often played villains, in films such as The Thirty-Nine Steps (1978), Time After Time (1979), Time Bandits (1981), Tron (1982), and television series such as Batman: The Animated Series playing Ra’s al Ghul, the anti-mutant scientist Herbert Landon in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, as well as rogue agent Alpha in the animated Men in Black series and the Archmage in Disney’s Gargoyles and finally The Lobe in Freakazoid.

Time After Time with Malcolm McDowell

He was also cast against type as Henry Niles in Straw Dogs (1971) and as Bob Cratchit in the 1984 telefilm of A Christmas Carol. In addition, he played German SS General Reinhard Heydrich both in the movie Hitler’s SS: Portrait in Evil, and the television mini-series Holocaust.

with Gregory Peck in the Omen (1976)

In 1981, Warner received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Special for Masada.

He has appeared in movies such as Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Avatar, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991), Titanic (the third time he has appeared in a film about RMS Titanic), Scream 2, and more recently in independent television’s adaptation of the Hornblower series (which starred Ioan Gruffudd, Warner’s co-star on Titanic). He appeared in three episodes of the second series of Twin Peaks (1991). He also continues to play classical roles.

In “Chain of Command”, a 6th-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, he was a Cardassian interrogator. He based his portrayal on the evil “re-educator” from 1984. His less-spectacular roles included a double-role in the campy low-budget fantasy Quest of the Delta Knights (1993) which was eventually spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000. He also played Admiral Tolwyn in the movie version of Wing Commander.

On the “nice guy” side, he played the charismatic Aldous Gajic in Grail, a first-season episode of Babylon 5 and Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Senator Sandar in Planet of the Apes (2001)

He also portrayed the sympathetic character of Capt. Kiesel in Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. In an episode of Lois & Clark he played Superman’s deceased Kryptonian father Jor-El, who appeared to his son through holographic recordings. He has also played ambiguous “nice guys” like vampire bat exterminator Philip Payne in 1979′s Nightwing; and Dr. Richard Madden in 1994′s Necronomicon: Book of the Dead, who had to kill to sustain his life, but was a generally nice person. He was the supporting role in Seven Servants by Daryush Shokof where he was to assist his long time best friend “Archie” in peaceful death with “unity” of man-kind in vision as he bodily “connected” to Archie played by the legendary Anthony Quinn in 1996.

Tron

He also appeared as mad scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter in the film The Man with Two Brains in 1983 alongside Steve Martin and Kathleen Turner. – source Wikipedia

Trivia:

Has vertigo. Was doubled in Time Bandits (1981) in the scene where the Evil Genius walks up the steps after caging the bandits, because he could not handle the drop below him.

Has been in 3 movies about the Titanic: S.O.S. Titanic (1979) (TV); Time Bandits (1981) and Titanic (1997).

Has played at least three different species in the Star Trek universe: a human in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989); a Klingon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and a Cardassian in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987).

Is one of only 32 actors or actresses to have starred in both the original Star Trek (up to and including Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)) and then in one of the spin offs.

Played an ape in Planet of the Apes (2001), a character obsessed with gorillas in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) and did a gorilla impression in The Man with Two Brains (1983).

Has appeared in three different films involving time travel: Time After Time (1979); Time Bandits (1981) and Planet of the Apes (2001).

In Time After Time (1979), he played John Leslie Stevenson (Jack the Ripper). In “The Outer Limits” (1995) episode “Ripper”, he played Inspector Langford who was investigating Dr. Jack York (Cary Elwes) who was suspected of being Jack the Ripper.

Chosen by Tony Richardson for his role in Tom Jones (1963) after the director enjoyed his performance in the play “Afore the night” (1962)

Although he played Reinhard Heydrich, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, in both “Holocaust” (1978) and Hitler’s S.S.: Portrait in Evil (1985) (TV), he is Jewish in real life.

By appearing in Batman: The Animated Series (“Batman” (1992)), he became the first actor to play the villain Ra’s-Al-Ghul. To date, he has been succeeded only by Ken Watanabe and Liam Neeson.

He has two roles in common with both David Collings and Richard E. Grant. All three have played Bob Cratchit – Warner in A Christmas Carol (1984) (TV), Collings in Scrooge (1970) and Grant in A Christmas Carol (1999) (TV) – and the Doctor from “Doctor Who” (1963) – Warner in the Big Finish audio dramas “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Masters of War”, Collings in the Big Finish audio drama “Full Fathom Five” and Grant in Comic Relief: Doctor Who – The Curse of Fatal Death (1999) (TV) and “Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka” (2003).