[Source: Reuters]

The British actor Malcolm McDowell has spent more than six decades playing rebels, villains, outsiders and authority figures.

At 83, he has never seriously considered ​retiring, and his latest role feels unusually personal.

In “Last Train to Fortune”, available ‌on streaming platforms from Friday, McDowell plays Cecil Peachtree, a schoolmaster who believes books can open minds and change lives.

The character’s faith in literature and education struck a chord with the actor, ​who traces much of his own career back to a teacher who transformed ​the way he saw the world.

“I wouldn’t have been an actor without ⁠this man,” McDowell said, recalling a boarding school headmaster who introduced him to ​Shakespeare, took pupils to watch Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud perform, and encouraged his growing ​interest in theatre.

“He inspired me absolutely to be an actor.”

A LIFE SHAPED BY CURIOSITY

His latest film centres on Peachtree’s efforts to share his love of books, a theme McDowell embraced eagerly.

Long before becoming ​known for roles in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” and dozens of films and television ​series that followed, he was an enthusiastic reader.

“Books are the most wonderful places to escape to,” he ‌said, ⁠recalling stories that carried him thousands of miles from his own life.

McDowell acknowledges that reading occupies a different place in modern life. But rather than look back, he returns to a different idea.

“Being curious is the cornerstone to intelligence,” he said, arguing that ​curiosity underpins everything from ​reading and travel to ⁠art and education.

“We wouldn’t have moved on as a human race if there hadn’t been great curiosity.”

Asked what question he finds ​himself asking more often with age, McDowell paused: “‘What’s it all been ​about? What ⁠the hell is it?'”

Yet there is little sense of regret.

“I know that I’ve led the most privileged life doing something that I totally love,” he said.

For McDowell, that enthusiasm is ⁠closely ​tied to the message at the heart of “Last Train ​to Fortune”.

“If just a kid sees this movie and says, ‘You know what? I’d like to read a Charles ​Dickens story’, then I think it’s all worthwhile.”