He was once the embodiment of youthful rage and rebellion. Now, the Clockwork Orange star is reconciled to a life of golf, gangster flicks and the odd glimpse of genius

Malcolm McDowell was the insolent prince of early-70s cinema, the Liverpool salesman who stormed the establishment’s barricades. You can see him on screen in Lindsay Anderson’s If…., kickstarting a bloody revolution inside an English public school. You can see him in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, hanging with his droogs at the Korova milk-bar, making up his rassoodock what to do with the night. The sky was the limit. The world was his oyster. One felt he could achieve pretty much anything.

If McDowell’s life was a movie, he would either have gone on to be crowned king or he would have exploded and vanished, ideally before he turned 30. But real life has a way of monkeying with the script, which may explain why McDowell is now a snowy-haired 77-year-old. He is a father of five, an avid golfer and a jobbing Hollywood actor specialising in baddies. His wild youth is behind him. He has made peace with his lot. “I had an incredible first few years,” he explains. “And of course that was the golden age. But you can’t keep playing the rebel for ever.”