The British actor Malcolm McDowell, renowned for his portrayal of Anthony Burgess's crazed hooligan Alex DeLarge in the film Clockwork Orange, is to take on the role of a psychotic murderer in a movie about the life of the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo.

"Evilenko" - a Ukrainian surname made from the word "evil" - is being filmed by the Italian director David Grieco, who wrote a book about the murderer. McDowell expects to end filming on location in Ukraine on June 30.

Chikatilo was the world's worst known serial killer, mutilating at least 53 people in 12 years. Women, children and drifters were his victims, yet he lived a quiet family life as a bespectacled schoolteacher.

McDowell said in an interview with the Kiev Vedomosti newspaper that nothing in his previous exercises in portraying cruelty - DeLarge and the Roman emperor Caligula - had helped with this part. "This is an ill man. He was badly treated in his childhood, but this must not serve to justify him. I do not want to feel compassion towards him or turn him into a romantic hero. He is what he is."

He said the role presented a challenge. "This is the first time I have had to interpret a character towards whom I have no positive feelings. As I am not using anything from my personality to do this, I have to invent absolutely everything."

Chikatilo, who was executed by firing squad in 1994, mutilated and sexually abused his victims. The string of murders became known as the "forest strip" killings and terrorised the southern region of Rostov where Chikatilo lived.

He was arrested three times, initially in 1978 when he first killed, and then in 1984 when a detective noticed him behaving strangely on a bus. Despite finding a rope, long wire and a knife in his briefcase, police freed him because tests showed that his blood group did not match that of the suspected killer. Another man was arrested and executed for Chikatilo's first murder, delaying a further investigation.

He was eventually caught when a policeman recalled stopping him as he emerged from some woods, his finger and ear wounded. A body was later discovered near the spot.

Analysts put his psychopathic rage down to his impotence and being bullied in his youth.

The Ukrainian-raised killer said he had seen his elder brother eaten by neighbours during the famine of the 1930s. He said: "When I used my knife, it brought psychological relief. I know I have to be destroyed. I understand. I was a mistake of nature."

McDowell said he did not do any in-depth research before travelling to Ukraine. But when he put on the kind of suit and timid spectacles Chikatilo had worn, "I immediately absorbed his personality".