A recent article in Entertainment Weekly (my guilty pleasure movie/celebrity weekly subscription) had a photo shoot of some of the best 'villains' of all time. It was a fluff article, and a lot of them are cartoon (Mr Burns of Simpsons) or dead :( (I'm pretty sure the Wicked Witch of the West is), so it was slim pickings for the photo shoot. Of the four featured, the CREEPIEST was Malcolm McDowell, for his role in "A Clockwork Orange". This is one of my favorite movies (though its so hard to watch), and I was pondering Malcolm McDowell. If I hadn't watched a movie with him last week, I might not have been able to name a single other film he has been in. What happened to him?
Well, unfortunately, his amazingness in "A Clockwork Orange" was just too good and he got typecast for that role. I scanned through his whole bio on imdb.com that lists over 150 roles, all but about 10 of which are after "Clockwork" and they are mostly just crap. The movie "Time After Time", which is the one I just saw him in is the only half decent film. Well, I'd say more than half decent, I'd say pretty darn solid. He played a vastly different character- a romantic and geeky version of author H.G. Wells who travels with his time machine to the 1980s. He was great! He had that some sort of cockiness, but in a way that personified nerdy genius rather than diabolicalness, that really worked! And with a beard and glasses, he looked vastly different. He was a downright gentleman!
It's a shame, really, that this happened to him. He had so much presence, and after seeing "Time after Time" he could play other roles convincingly. He is sadly now confined to voicing the role of the villain cat in Disney's "Bolt" (with ugh, Miley Cyrus too). His photo shoot with the Entertainment Weekly just made me miss him and wish he could go back in time and film less crap. His eyes are still pretty freaky.
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