“You never stop learning. I can pretty much do most things, but there are some that are a lot harder, and those are the things I want to do,” Malcolm McDowell recount Variety to Torino Film Festival. The British actor will receive the Stella della Mole award at a ceremony on Wednesday at the National Film Museum of Italy in Turin.

McDowell looks forward to new acting challenges. “I don’t just play the regular stuff. I’m looking forward to doing this western early next year – and it should be fun, I’ve never done one – and then I think I’ll do a vampire movie. This year, I played serial killers, rapists and old grandpas.

McDowell particularly enjoys working with young directors “at the beginning of their career”. “I like that a lot, I love that… I’ve also worked with great directors and, of course, I’m very lucky. But every director is different and needs different things. Some don’t say much.

“My first director, Lindsay Anderson, came a lot from the theatre. He loved discussing the characters, and everything else, which made it feel very safe. Stanley [Kubrick] didn’t care. He was more interested in the camera, the lights, the sounds, all the filming techniques. He was a brilliant technician and his films show it.

Zooming in on his work for Italian cinema, he seems happy that some things have changed for the better. “There was a period about 30-40 years ago when Italian cinema thought what they had to do was make films in English. It was a terrible mistake. and that I was offered some roles that I really liked doing, Italian films should be in Italian.

“That’s the beauty of it, [it has] a rhythm unlike any other language. I can’t even imagine a Fellini film in English, it doesn’t even calculate. […] Thank God it didn’t last long.

When asked if he could ever imagine the cross-generational acclaim of “A Clockwork Orange,” he replied, “No one could have. It’s a movie that’s 52 years old. We’re still talking about it. is a phenomenon. I can’t think of another movie that has that kind of [thing]: young people find it, and call it their own. Every generation [does]. It’s kind of a rite of passage. Isn’t it amazing? »

Explaining why many still find Kubrick’s film so timely, he says: “At first it was the shock of violence. […] Now what is important is the political element, the right to choose and the fact that the Big Brothers stay out of your life.

Since the early 1990s, McDowell has voiced several characters in video game productions. “I did ‘Wing Commander III’ and ‘IV’, those were the first big games. Then they made a movie but I didn’t want to do it, the game was enough. But it was a very good game, and it was very popular all over the world. i just like to do [them] because children play there. […] It’s important to have a younger audience, my contemporaries are all dying.

McDowell admits he’s not a gamer himself but he’s still fascinated by good video game scripts like “Call of Duty: Black Ops II.” “I haven’t even seen it [the final result]. I think I gave it to young people.

On the future of movie theaters, McDowell sees “difficult times ahead.” “If theaters can survive, I don’t know. Fingers crossed. […] It’s always exciting to walk into a cinema and wait for the lights to go out.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult, economically. Look what happened to malls in America. They are empty. It’s because of the pandemic and everyone is getting used to ordering from Amazon. In a way, it becomes a monopoly, you become dependent on one thing. And that’s never a good thing.

McDowell is also concerned about how the rise of big players and conglomerates in the film and television industry may affect content diversity. “What happens is that it’s almost impossible to make an independent film. It’s always been difficult, of course, but it’s never been impossible. But now, because of streaming…streaming is the destination for independent films!

“It’s a shame we’re losing character-driven movies, and I don’t want to see green screen movies ad nauseam. My kids love them and that’s okay – there’s room for them, But let’s also balance it out a bit with adult content,” he says.