Malcolm McDowell has played his fair share of bad guys over the years, most recently Mr Linderman in Heroes and Dr Loomis in the forthcoming remake of Halloween. Abbie Bernstein spoke to him about his wicked lives.

Your role as Mr Linderman in Heroes is the latest in a long line of McDowell villains. Deep down, is there perhaps a little bit of evil inside you?

Any part you play always has a little bit of yourself in it, and of course I have a bit of the devil in me. Doesn’t everyone? I just get paid to have fun with it! I enjoy it very much, and it’s great fun getting to do away with Captain Kirk and so on. He'd had a good run! With this part particularly, the word ‘relish’ comes to mind. The wonderful scenes I have with Adrian [Pasdar] were a pleasure, and I had a great time doing it. But listen, I don’t only play heavies. I suppose it's just what I'm best known for.

Do you think Linderman is really evil or just misunderstood?

I never really get into that sort of definition of the characters. I suppose you could make a case for Hitler being misunderstood, couldn’t you? I've played a fair share of villains, and this is one of the really good ones, but I like them all. Linderman is such a fabulous, well-written part that I haven’t really had to do much acting at all!

The character also has the power to heal, but is willing to kill to achieve his ends. Does that contradictory nature affect your portrayal?

Well, it’s not a conscious thing. He’s delightful with children and pets, he tells a good joke, and he’s obviously got a wonderful side to him. But he has a dark side, and he feels that the world is in such a state that the answer is to start again. It’s obviously a strange way of going about things, but I think there are real people who think the same, and they are dangerous. I think Linderman must have had quite an unhappy childhood. But I’m not allowed to say anything about what happens, so I have to leave a big question mark.

How does Linderman compare to your take on Doctor Loomis in Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween?

Well, that’s completely different, because Loomis is a psychoanalyst of some note. God knows how good a doctor he really is, with a patient like Michael Myers, of course, but he’s a well-meaning man. Linderman, on the other hand, is rather… arch. He’s running a big empire, and those sort of people all have one thing in common, don’t they? To put it in black and white terms, one is a good guy and one is a bad guy.

Are you paying homage to Donald Pleasence's original Loomis in the remake?

I must be one of the only people on the planet never to have seen any of the Halloween films. I asked the director, Rob Zombie, if he thought I should see them, and he said, "No, better not." Of course, I knew Donald Pleasence, and I could imagine him playing Loomis with that wonderful sinister thing of his. But this is a reinvention of it, and my Loomis is completely different, I presume.

I guess there will be some people who will be disappointed if they think I’m just going to copy what he did, but I’ve signed for three films in total, so they obviously think it’s going to be a big hit.

You've appeared in several genre films over the years. What attracts you to them?

I get asked to do them! You’re only as good as what they ask you to do, and I’m very lucky that I was asked to do Heroes. It's the same with Loomis [in Halloween]. I’ve been very lucky through the years to have a few good parts amongst the crap. And, let’s face it, there’s quite a lot of crap out there. So when the odd little pearl comes my way, I seize on it and say, "Thank you very much!"

What other projects are you working on at the moment?

I'm in London doing a movie called Doomsday with Alexander Siddig, who is my nephew and a very good actor. He told me they wanted me to do it, so I did. Next, I’m on my way to the Cannes Film Festival to show my tribute to the great director Lindsay Anderson, who was very important in my life, and a man I loved dearly. I can’t believe they invited me to show it at Cannes. It’s absolutely extraordinary for me, but there you are.

I'm also in a miniseries of War and Peace as Prince Bolkonsky, which is a wonderful part. I've no idea when that will be shown in the States, but they’re going to screen it right through the night in Rome, the whole nine hours of it. It's a big Euro-pudding, with seven or eight countries involved. I’ve seen quite a bit of it and it’s really quite wonderful. I do most of my scenes with Brenda Blethyn, who’s terrific. I think it’s quite a remarkable event and a beautiful production.

How do the multimedia aspects of a show like Heroes affect what you do?

I’m not really savvy to all that, but I know it’s huge online. I was asked to talk about the show for some recording or other recently, and I had no idea what the hell I was talking about. So I made it up as I went along, and I had fun doing it. The possibilities are endless, aren’t they?

Heroes seems to have a lot of political parallels, with Mr Linderman in particular not unlike [White House advisor and former chief of staff] James Baker. Does that kind of real-life angle colour your portrayal in any way?

I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me, "You were playing Rupert Murdoch, right?" I’ve had that with at least half a dozen characters that I’ve played, and the answer’s always no! But I think that writers do look to the headlines for inspiration, and quite rightly, because they are mirroring whatever's going on in society. So, in a second-hand sort of way, we are getting handed down these characters from real life, but I don’t think they’re ever meant to be a copy. After all: the hell with that! Who on earth wants to play Dick Cheney?