Malcolm McDowell: ‘I would be a total disaster as a spy – I do love to gossip’

The actor on nailing Rupert Murdoch’s accent, working with Stanley Kubrick and missing old-fashioned dinner parties

Your new film The Partisan is about spies during the second world war. Would you make a good spy?

I honestly believe I would be a total disaster, because I do love to gossip. I would be going: “You know that guy? I think he’s working for the Russians.” I went to Russia in 1990 to make this wonderful film, The Assassin of the Tsar, and it was still very closed, even though it was glasnost and Gorbachev was in power. I was driving with my wife to the next location to Vladimir, which is an old capital of Russia, and we went past these missile silos. I turned to my wife and said: “If we’d have been doing this a year ago, we’d have been shot for seeing this. I think they’re all pointed at America.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/05/malcolm-mcdowell-interview-10-questions

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