Malcolm McLaren as played on screen by David Hayman (1986),
Mark Gatiss (2010), and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (2022)
I.
I am not an actor. Not in any professional sense, at least. But I imagine that portraying a well-known public figure whose persona is established in the cultural imagination is particularly difficult because the audience already knows how they look, move, and speak.
Rightly or wrongly, viewers will scrutinise the performance in order to assess its accuracy and if something feels off - perhaps only in the smallest detail - this can make the whole thing seem fake and awkward.
Getting the voice right - but without sounding like one is simply doing a comic impression - is perhaps the hardest thing of all. Nevertheless, there are some actors who enjoy the challenge and have an almost chameleon-like ability to play famous real-life figures; one thinks of Michael Sheen, for example, who has given legendary performances as Tony Blair, Brian Clough, and Kenneth Williams [1].
Whether Sheen has some supernatural ability to get under the skin of others and channel their essence -or is just a consummate professional who does intensive research, works closely with voice coaches, and has the kind of features and physique that lend themselves well to different roles - I don't know.
But he's an immensely gifted actor and it's a shame he hasn't played Malcolm McLaren as I think he'd do a great job. He even has the slightly goofy grin, naturally curly hair, and Aquarian-white complexion needed for the role.
Still, who knows, maybe one day ... And in the meantime, we have three other actors to discuss who have given us their on-screen versions of Malcolm: David Hayman, Mark Gatiss, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster ...
II.
Of the three, Scottish actor David Hayman faced perhaps the greatest challenge when preparing to play Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren in Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy (1986). For he had to embody someone who was a still living (and still notorious) cultural provocateur.
Because Malcolm was such a distinctively animated character, Hayman could not rely on simply reading a standard script outline for his interpretation. He was obliged to meticulously study many hours of filmed interviews with McLaren in order to try and master his accent and intonation which was an amusingly camp mix of art school affectation and cockney [2]. Obviously, he also attempted to get McLaren's theatrical hand gestures and mannerisms spot on too.
Primarily, however, Hayman focused on capturing McLaren's mercenary energy, portraying him as a scheming, detached observer of events who viewed human tragedy purely from the perspective of marketing and media. In Cox's film, he gleefully delivers a line describing Sid Vicious as a fabulous disaster rather than a mere bass player.
That's not entirely unfair or inaccurate, but it does mean we are not shown anything of McLaren's greatest asset - his charm.
Malcolm possessed a very powerful, highly contradictory kind of charisma that he used to captivate, influence, and, yes, manipulate people. There was a reason that so many individuals bought into what Johnny Rotten would dismiss as McLaren's bullshit and if he prioritised cultural provocation over the well-being and long-term success of the band, well, that's not something that troubles me.
My main gripe with Hayman as McLaren is this: he looked too damn old! Malcolm was a young-looking 31-year-old when Sid Vicious joined the Sex Pistols in February 1977. But Hayman, aged 37, was a much more mature screen presence in 1985 when the film Sid and Nancy was shot, as can be seen in the above photo. (And note to wardrobe: McLaren never wore Lennon-style sunglasses.)
Finally, it's interesting to discover that a planned meeting on set to film a promotional face-to-face between McLaren and his cinematic doppelgänger was abandoned after Malcolm saw some early footage from the film and was appalled by how the production was shaping up.
III.
Next on our list is Mark Gatiss, who played McLaren in the biographical drama Worried About the Boy (dir. Julian Jarrold, 2010) [3], about the rise to fame of the singer Boy George (played by Douglas Booth) who very briefly sang on stage with Bow Wow Wow (as Lieutenant Lush) [4].
With slightly unfortunate timing, the 90-minute film aired on BBC Two on 16 May 2010, just five weeks after Malcolm's death.
Gatiss approached the role differently to Hayman and gives us a markedly different vision of McLaren, whom he portrayed as more of an old-school impresario and natural-born showman who was then shifting aesthetically from punk nihilism to a new romanticism.
Hayman's McLaren was cruel and calculating: Gatiss tapped into the lighter side of his character; flamboyant and eccentric, a man with wild hair and waving hands who could charm the birds from the trees; less arch-manipulator and more a shrewd and inspiring mentor to young artists such as George (and before him Adam Ant).
Reflecting on playing real public figures like McLaren, Gatiss later revealed that his philosophy is not to attempt an exact impersonation, but to try and convey a suggestion of the person without letting the truth get in the way of the story being told.
In other words, whereas Hayman gave audiences a darker, perhaps psychologically more realistic version of McLaren, Gatiss delivered the performative, larger-than-life figure who wished to cause trouble and make cash from chaos in the name of fun rather than malice.
Critics and viewers rightly praised Gatiss's performance. Writing in the Financial Times (21 May 2010), John Lloyd described it as a "vividly cynical cameo". Again, my only issue would be that Gatiss was just slightly too old for the role and his McLaren seems to be based more on a mid-rather than an early '80s version of the character.
IV.
The most recent actor to try on McLaren's tartan bondage suit is Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who played him in Danny Boyle's six-part miniseries Pistol (2022) [5]. Arguably, his was the standout performance of the entire show - salvaging an otherwise Disneyfied production - and he cleverly pitched it somewhere between David Hayman's hard-edged version and Mark Gatiss's high camp take on the character.
Rather than frame McLaren as a detached puppet master, Brodie-Sangster and series writer Craig Pearce actively tried to avoid making him a one-dimensional villain. Brodie-Sangster aimed to show why it was that young, working-class kids would willingly follow him in the first place, highlighting McLaren's genuine, infectious passion for a cultural and artistic revolution.
Because he has so much more screen time to develop the character, Brodie-Sangster is able to both experiment with the character and relax his way into it. He later admitted that he found playing the part not only a lot of fun, but liberating for him as an actor.
Physically, Brodie-Sangster had a distinct advantage over the earlier actors who played the part. For he actually possessed the slight build, youthful face, and naturally boyish energy of the real McLaren. Also, during filming he was the exact same age as Malcolm in 1977 and that certainly helped. As does the fact that he pretty much nails the distinct, slightly high-pitched, breathless cadence of McLaren's vocal delivery [6].
There's a joy in his performance and no trace of tiredness. Having said that, McLaren's character isn't softened too much or emptied entirely of its more Machiavellian aspects. And whilst it's arguable whose performance is best - Hayman's, Gatiss's, or Brodie-Sangster's - the latter's is certainly my favourite.
In sum: without possessing the uncanny power of Michael Sheen to transform into the character being played, each of the three captured a vital facet of a McLaren who spent his entire life ensuring that nobody could ever completely pin him down.
V.
Finally, to end on an ironic note, it might convincingly be argued that the best performance by someone playing McLaren was given by McLaren himself in Julien Temple's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980).
In fact, so good was his hyper-stylised performance in this film that there are still people to this day who take it for an accurate representation - i.e., who miss the fact that McLaren was acting and that he wasn't aiming to expose the truth about himself but construct a self-satirising myth; that the film was a fictionalised narrative in which McLaren played the version of himself that he wished to be - not a documentary, ffs.
The film's relentless cynicism was so perfectly tailored to McLaren's public persona that audiences completely fell for it - believing the lie that the Sex Pistols project was merely a manufactured, art-school scam used to sell bondage trousers from 430 King's Road.
In later years, McLaren regretted being too good an actor. Being mistaken for his role as The Embezzler proved to be burdensome, when it meant that the public, the press, and cultural historians refused to see him as an avant-garde artist, but only as a fast-talking fraud and failure.
Malcolm McLaren as Malcolm McLaren (The Embezzler)
in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)
Notes
[1] Sheen played Blair in three works written by Peter Morgan: The Deal (dir. Stephen Frears, 2003), The Queen (dir. Stephen Frears, 2006), and The Special Relationship (dir. Richard Loncraine, 2010). He played Clough in The Damned United (dir. Tom Hooper, 2009), and Williams in Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa! (dir. Andy De Emmony, 2006). Sheen has also played other famous faces including David Frost, Chris Tarrant, and Prince Andrew.
[2] One could write an entire post trying to describe McLaren's unique accent and intonation. His voice bridged the gap between his Jewish North London roots and his art school education. Thus, he retained the flat vowels of Estuary English, but stretched them out theatrically.
Sometimes, he spoke breathlessly at speed; at other times he spoke quite softly and deliberately as if drawing you into a secret. The pitch would go up and down depending on his level of excitement and this gave the delivery its camp and comic aspects. The most notable thing, however, was how he spoke about popular culture with the elevated vocabulary and conceptual framing of a French intellectual, creating a surprising juxtaposition and making him a highly articulate and amusing storyteller.
[3] Click on the link provided in the main text and go to 1:02:22-1:08:10 to watch Gatiss's short but memorable performance as McLaren.
[4] Bow Wow Wow were the band McLaren assembled and managed after the Sex Pistols. George O'Dowd - who would become known to the world as Boy George - was, at that time (1980), a nineteen-year-old "gender-defying club kid noted for his soulful singing voice, sassy demeanour and outrageous appearance". O'Dowd's relationship with McLaren and the band was, however, extremely short-lived and he made only a couple of appearances on stage with them. See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020). The line quoted is on p. 471.
[5] Don't get me started on Pistol ... Readers who want to know what I think of this show can see the post 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration' (30 Mar 2021).
[6] Brodie-Sangster noted in promotional interviews that he found McLaren's voice the hardest element to capture, describing it as a mix of a salesman's hustle and an intellectual's lecture, delivered with an almost childlike glee.
