Mary Steenburgen and Malcolm McDowell's Unlikely Reunion Sparks Attention

Sparks flew between Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen on the set of the 1978 time-travel thriller “Time After Time.” The pair’s onscreen chemistry carried over off-screen, and they wed in 1980 — a marriage that produced two children including director Charlie McDowell. But by 1990, they split and never again appeared together in a project. Until now.

The “A Clockwork Orange” leading man and the “Melvin and Howard” Oscar winner will share the screen once again in Adam Rifkin’s “Last Train to Fortune.” The film, produced by Brad Wyman, is a period Western, comedy, family movie and an unlikely reunion all in one.

Ironically, McDowell first read the script for “Last Train to Fortune” back in 1986, at the height of his relationship with Steenburgen, and agreed to star opposite Bill Paxton, with legendary Brit Lindsay Anderson directing. Rifkin, then a recent USC grad, was poised to produce alongside Brad Wyman. (Rifkin’s mother Michelle, an 83-year-old former English teacher, wrote the screenplay.)

But Anderson died suddenly of a heart attack in 1994, and the project was placed on the back burner. Over the ensuing decades, Rifkin turned his attention to other films, like the Edward Furlong starrer “Detroit Rock City” but tried to find a way to revisit his passion project. Then in 2017, Paxton died following open heart surgery, putting that dream on ice.

As the Covid pandemic was ending, Paxton’s son James was coming into his own as an actor, and McDowell lobbied for his fellow Ojai denizen to play the illiterate cowboy role he himself had eyed decades earlier. McDowell instead would play the story’s erudite teacher. The filmmakers still needed someone to play Miss Maybelle, the story’s other schoolteacher.

“We’re thinking, ‘Who would be great for that role?’ Someone said, ‘Mary Steenburgen!’ And everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, she’d be great, but would she and Malcolm want to work together?’” Rifkin tells Page Six Hollywood. “Obviously they’re a big modern family, and they all see each other at all the holidays, and everybody obviously gets along. But do they get along enough to want to work together again?” (Charlie McDowell’s wife Lily Collins is the most recent addition to the sprawling blended clan.)

The team took the Steenburgen prospect to McDowell.

“He said, ‘I think it’s a fantastic idea. James should ask her.’ And James was like, ‘Why should I ask her?’ He said, ‘Well, it might be a better way into the conversation if you broach it with her.’ So James texted her and said, ‘Hey, we’re doing this thing. This is a wonderful role for Malcolm and for me, and we just thought you’d be great in the role.’ And she said, ‘Intriguing.’ She read it. She said, ‘I’m in.’”

They quickly found themselves falling back into the easy rhythm and camaraderie they shared in “Time After Time.” Rifkin says it was evident they still enjoyed working together even if they are happily married to others (Ted Danson for Steenburgen and Kelley Kuhr for McDowell.)

“Both of them, independently of one another, said to me, ‘You know, working with Malcolm…’ or ‘Working with Mary, it just feels like old times. It’s just so natural. It’s like putting on a comfy pair of slippers.”

“Last Train to Fortune,” which also stars Bernadette Peters and Laura Marano, opens Sept. 17 at the Angelika in New York.