smacked in the face with the passage of three decades

The problem with mirrors is that they lie. You can look in a mirror every morning and you will never age. Perceptually, you are never older than you were yesterday. A photo in the morning newspaper however, can be a shocking revelation. It happened to me in turning to today’s Review section in The Globe and Mail and Bob Strauss’ profile of 1970s star Malcolm McDowell.

McDowell was my heart-throb actor as far back as far back as 1969 or ‘70 when I first saw him play Mick Travis in if... My all-time favourite movie, if... is a film of teenage rebellion and rampant homoeroticism – a powerful combination for a not-yet-out gay college boy recently relocated from the farm to the big city and dealing with all kinds of pressures.

To see the photo of McDowell headlining Strauss’ story was to be smacked with the reality of the passage of 35+ years. It was a genuine OMG moment when it hit me that the white-haired man in the picture was the incredibly sexy man I lusted over three decades ago, a big part of the reason I went to see this movie over and over again. McDowell’s roles always were strictly heterosexual, but he was so handsomely rugged and beautiful. In if... he was surrounded by gay characters which only exacerbated the tension.

The news that McDowell has survived a bout of cocaine addiction and, with his third wife, has infant children to complement his adult offspring was a revelation. HIs long list of over 150 television and movie credits is a tribute. His optimism that there is still much to do is an inspiration. While the peak of his stardom may have come with A Clockwork Orange in 1971, he is not resting easy three and a half decades later and neither should those of us who also may some days think we peaked in the early ‘70s.