Legendary British actor Terence Stamp, Oscar nominated star of Billy Budd and beloved by legions for his role as General Zod in Richard Donner's Sup
Legendary British actor Terence Stamp, Oscar nominated star of Billy Budd and beloved by legions for his role as General Zod in Richard Donner’s Superman, has died at the age of 87. In a statement shared with Reuters, Stamp’s family confirmed that he passed away on Sunday morning, and said the following: “He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, both as an actor and as a writer that will continue to touch and inspire people for years to come. We ask for privacy at this sad time.”
Born in Stepney, London on 22 July 1938 to Ethel Esther and Thomas Stamp, Terence Henry Stamp’s love affair with the massive screen began at the tender age of just three, when his mother took him to see Gary Cooper starrer Beau Geste. It was an experience that clearly left a mark on a newborn Stamp as, after completing his childhood education at Plaistow County Grammar School and working for a few years in the 1950s at advertising agencies and as a golfing assistant, Terence won a scholarship to Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in his early twenties.
Though many actors’ stories of burgeoning stardom detail years and years of struggling, striving, and training up, Terence Stamp’s star didn’t so much rise as shoot across the sky with a blinding featherlight at the dawn of the Swinging Sixties. Having done his fair share of well-reviewed repertory theatre work at the turn of the decade, Stamp — then living with a fellow up-and-comer by the name of Michael Caine and already turning heads with his cerulean blue eyes and preternatural good looks — landed his first major movie role at 23 years of age, playing murder-accused naval crewman Billy Budd in Peter Ustinov’s 1962 adaptation of Herman Melville’s eponymous book.
Critics’ reviews of Billy Budd may have been fair-to-middling on the whole, but Stamp’s performance and raw star quality was undeniable, earning the actor his first and only Oscar nomination — as well as a Golden Globe for ‘Most Promising Newcomer’. As the Sixties continued, Terence Stamp cemented his status as one of the true working-class boy-done-good heroes of the British New Wave. Off-screen, the man was the epitome of Swinging London, a sartorial trend-setter who enjoyed a string of high-profile relationships with the likes of Julie Christie, Jean Shrimpton, and Brigitte Bardot. On screen, Stamp let his work do the talking, collaborating with such feted filmmakers as William Wyler, John Schlesinger, Ken Loach, Federico Fellini, and Pier Paolo Pasolini on The Collector, Far From The Madding Crowd, Poor Cow, Spirits Of The Dead, and Teorema, often subverting his striking good looks to channel a brooding inner darkness — an ability that would become something of a calling card in his overdue career. The newborn actor made a particular impression on Wyler, who famously said of Stamp, “He’s the most intuitive actor I have worked with. He doesn’t make mistakes.”
While Terence Stamp may never have made any mistakes in front of the camera, the tail end of the Sixties did bring with it a couple of notable sliding doors moments for the actor who seemed to have the world at his feet. In 1966, Stamp turned down the chance to bring his eponymous blue-collar womaniser in Alfie from the stage to the screen, instead passing the movie on to his elderly mate Caine in what would prove to be a star-making good turn. Soon after, Stamp’s pitch to kickstart James Bond’s post-Sean Connery era in disguise as a Japanese warrior — full face make-up and all — spooked producer Harry Saltzman out of making him the spy saga’s next 007.
Inflection points like the above, coupled with the absurd word about town in the overdue Sixties that producers were already looking for “young Terence Stamp” types for roles (despite the fact Stamp himself was only a mere early thirty-something at the time), led Stamp to up sticks and move into an ashram in India, where he spent the best part of the next decade living as a swami and getting in touch with his spiritual self. When Hollywood eventually came a-calling again however in 1978, Terence Stamp answered in a heartbeat, relishing in the villainous role of megalomaniacal Kryptonian General Zod in Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman and its 1980 sequel Superman II.
Reborn as a character actor — and a hell of a good one at that — Terence Stamp’s return to the screen was a proper and lasting homecoming. Across the five decades that followed his return from India, Stamp worked at a prolific rate, amassing dozens of roles across film, television, and video games while enjoying an acclaimed second life as a memoirist, author, and cookbook co-writer to boot.
Among the movie highlights, of which there are simply too many to name just here, you’ve got the likes of eighties classics Legal Eagles, Wall Street, and Young Guns; groundbreaking, transformational in more ways than one Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce co-starrer The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, in which Stamp plays a trans woman embarking on a cross-country road trip with two drag queens; Steven Soderbergh’s low-key crime classic The Limey; and, in comparatively more recent years, an eclectic selection of gems including Yes Man, Valkyrie, The Adjustment Bureau, and Big Eyes. Somewhat poignantly, Stamp’s last major movie role came in Edgar Wright’s period horror joint Last Night In Soho, a warped love letter to the Sixties London that the actor himself had helped define.
Reflecting on his work in an interview with The Guardian back in 2015, Stamp was typically clear-eyed about his relationship to his vocation and the peaks and pitfalls of having spent over half a century in the industry. “I don’t have any ambitions. I’m always amazed there’s another job, I’m always very happy,” said Stamp at the time. “I’ve had bad experiences and things that didn’t work out; my love for film sometimes diminishes but then it just resurrects itself. I never have to gee myself up, or demand a huge wage to get out of bed in the morning. I’ve done crap, because sometimes I didn’t have the rent. But when I’ve got the rent, I want to do the best I can.”
Suffice it to say, Terence Stamp’s best was more than good enough, and his memory will live on in the immense body of work he now leaves behind. A working class hero, a man gifted with extraordinarily good looks, and a damn fine actor who did brooding better than the best of ’em, Terence Stamp will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his family at this hard time.
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