Malcolm McDowell amazed by A Clockwork Orange popularity
Malcolm McDowell says fans are still obsessed with 'A Clockwork Orange' 50 years on from the film's release.
The 79-year-old star played Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick's cult dystopian crime movie and explained that fans are still recreating his character's look on both sides of the Atlantic.
Speaking to the Metro newspaper, Malcolm recalled: "Once I was driving around under the Hammersmith flyover and I passed the Tube station and out came four boys in the white boiler suits with the bowlers and codpieces and I'm driving past... and I put the window down and looked out but of course they were oblivious.
"I thought, 'Holy God! How amazing!' I was hooting with laughter."
The star continued: "But I see it all the time now. On Halloween now, in America, people dress like that. And they always come up to me like it was a new thing.
"They say, 'You won't believe this...' And I say, 'You dressed like me on Halloween?' And they say, 'Yeah! How did you know?'"
Malcolm stars in the new film 'She Will' as a filmmaker with an abusive past and feels that the project resonates following the MeToo movement.
He said: "It is because I don't think we realise quite how the victims are affected through the decades, how they cope if they never get over it.
"This film makes that very precise statement – they're always suffering in some way. And maybe the main character, Veronica, is not able to get past it. But something traumatic obviously happened."
The movie features flashbacks of Malcolm as a young man and the actor felt it made the picture more authentic.
He explained: "It gave it an authentic ring. And I am playing a man who has been in the public eye somewhat. It's interesting, because it really made me think – the script and the film – about abuse in a different way."