Risque Role Made Briton a Soviet Star

Who is the most popular Western actor with Soviet audiences?

Tom Cruise? Bruce Willis? Jack Nicholson? Rob Lowe?

No, no, no and no.

The mystery guest is Malcolm McDowell, a Briton who has starred in such films as “Buy and Cell,” “Cross Creek,” “Sunset,” “The Caller,” “Cat People,” “Royal Flash” and “High Aces”--none of which has ever made anyone’s 10 best list and none of which is responsible for McDowell’s enormous popularity in the U.S.S.R. Not even “A Clockwork Orange.”

It was McDowell’s title role in “Caligula,” Penthouse Magazine’s 1980 X-rated porno flick, that became the rage of Russia and other Soviet states.

It was a wildly rapacious, often naked, McDowell in the part of Caligula, ravishing everything and everybody in sight, that warmed the hearts of Soviet filmgoers. The role made McDowell a superstar in the land of caviar and vodka.

McDowell now is starring in Moscow in “Assassin of the Tsar” even while a restrospective of his movies is showing across the Soviet landscape.

“The Soviet Union has always pirated English and American movies,” McDowell said, “and I know they have always loved my pictures. I heard 10 years ago they were showing my films on television.

“When I arrived at a theater recently where they were showing one of my 20-year-old films for the retrospective, 2,700 people stood up and cheered. I couldn’t believe it. That wouldn’t happen to me anywhere else on Earth.

“But of all foreign films the most popular was ‘Caligula.’ The heavy porno stuff was cut down to a double X instead of a triple X. They loved it because it was a different film experience.

“I doubt if my future film career will be in the Soviet Union, but I’m delighted my work is appreciated there.”