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The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Terence Stamp: the mesmerisingly seductive dark prince of British cinema
'A stranger arrives, makes love to everyone and then leaves,' said Pier Paolo Pasolini to Terence Stamp, outlining the plot of his 1968 classic Theorem. 'That's your part.' Stamp exclaimed: 'I can play that.' It was the role that the man was born to play and would play, with subtle variations, throughout his career. From his first appearance as the eerily beautiful sailor in 1962's Billy Budd through to his last manifestation as 'the silver-haired gentleman' in Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho, Stamp remained a brilliantly, mesmerisingly unknowable presence. He was the seductive dark prince of British cinema, an actor who carried an air of elegant mystery. 'As a boy I always believed I could make myself invisible,' he once said. He showed up and made magic, but he never stuck around for as long as we wanted. Stamp's talent was timeless but he was a creature of the 60s, forged in the crucible of postwar social mobility and as much a poster boy for the era as his one-time flatmate Michael Caine. 'Terry meets Julie, Waterloo station, every Friday night,' Ray Davies sang on the Kinks's Waterloo Sunset and while he wasn't necessarily singing about Stamp and Julie Christie – at least not consciously – the actors and the song have now become intertwined, part of a collective cultural fabric, to the point where that mental image of the two of them by the Thames is almost as much a part of Stamp's showreel as his actual 60s pictures. He was born in London's East End, the son of a tugboat coalman who regarded acting with horror, and his rough-hewn swagger lent a crucial grit and danger to his refined matinee idol aesthetic. He gave a superb performance – full of seething chippy rage – in 1965's The Collector, a role that won him the best actor prize at Cannes, made an excellent dastardly lover in Far from the Madding Crowd and whipped up a storm in Federico Fellini's uproarious Toby Dammit. But he was always a more febrile movie actor than his compatriots – Caine, Sean Connery, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole – and so his career proved more fragile and never truly bedded down. 'When the 60s ended, I almost did too,' he once said, ruefully acknowledging a decade-long slump that only came to an end when he was cast as General Zod in 1978's Superman. In the subsequent years he played too many off-the-peg Brits – thuggish gangsters, evil businessmen – in subpar productions, although this only made his occasional great role feel all the more precious. Stamp was at his full-blooded best in Stephen Frears's 80s crime drama The Hit, sparked briefly as the devil in The Company of Wolves and was fabulous as Bernadette in 1994's Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. But his great later role – and arguably the ultimate Stamp performance – was in The Limey, Steven Soderbergh's 1999 revenge tale. Soderbergh cast him as Wilson, an ageing career criminal who haunts LA like a ghost. It's a film that is implicitly about Stamp's youth and age, beautifully folding the present-day drama in with scenes in Ken Loach's Poor Cow to show what happened to the golden generation of swinging 60s London – and by implication, what happens to all of us. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Somewhere along the way, wending his way up the coast to Big Sur, Stamp's knackered criminal stops being a ghost and becomes a kind of living sculpture, a priceless piece of cinema history, returned for one last gig to seduce the world and set it spinning before heading off towards the sunset.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Terence Stamp, face of 60s British cinema and star of The Limey and Superman, dies at 87
Terence Stamp, one of the stellar faces of British 60s cinema, who had a second act from the late 1970s as a character actor in the likes of Superman: The Movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Limey, has died aged 87. His family said in a statement that he died on Sunday morning. '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,' they said. 'We ask for privacy at this sad time.' Stephen Frears, who directed Stamp in the 1984 thriller The Hit said: 'He was a fine man and a fine actor. It was an honour to have directed him.' Stamp became one of British cinema's glamour figures in its most fashionable decade, scoring early high-profile roles in Billy Budd and The Collector for the directors Peter Ustinov and William Wyler respectively. His relationship with the model Jean Shrimpton in the mid-60s ensured both were key faces of the decade. Stamp became one of its most photographed people and a significant part of the new wave of working-class actors and musicians that fuelled Britain's pre-eminent position in the entertainment industry. Born in Stepney in east London, Stamp grew up the son of tugboat sailor in the slightly less tough area of Plaistow, and won a scholarship to drama school. His brother Chris also became a high-profile figure as manager of music acts including The Who and Jimi Hendrix. After meeting during a tour of The Long and the Short and the Tall, Stamp shared a flat with his fellow up-and-coming actor Michael Caine, whom Stamp later described as his guru. His first major screen role was in 1962 in Billy Budd, for which he received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. This brought him to the attention of Hollywood and he was given the lead role in Wyler's 1965 adaptation of John Fowles's thriller novel The Collector. Stamp's subsequent acting career in the 1960s was erratic. He lost out to Sean Connery for James Bond and was replaced in the lead role of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up by David Hemmings. However, he starred opposite Antonioni's favoured star Monica Vitti in Modesty Blaise, directed by Joseph Losey, appeared in Ken Loach's hard-hitting debut Poor Cow, and starred opposite his former girlfriend Julie Christie in Far from the Madding Crowd, adapted from Thomas Hardy's novel. In 1968, Stamp appeared in two films for Italian auteurs. Federico Fellini cast him in his section of the three-part omnibus film Spirits of the Dead adapted from Edgar Allan Poe, while Pier Paolo Pasolini gave him the lead role in his allegorical masterpiece Theorem. Stamp later said: 'Pasolini told me: 'A stranger arrives, makes love to everybody, and leaves. This is your part.' I said: 'I can do that!'' Stamp's profile declined sharply at the end of the decade and work dried up. 'It was a mystery to me. I was in my prime. When the 1960s ended, I just ended with it,' he said. 'I remember my agent telling me: 'They are all looking for a young Terence Stamp' … I couldn't believe it.' He went to India and stayed on an ashram and was eventually recalled by the film industry with an offer to play the villainous General Zod in Superman: The Movie and Superman II, which were filmed back to back. Stamp later said he had to come to terms with no longer being the lead actor. 'I had transmuted myself. I no longer saw myself as a leading man,' he said. 'What had happened inside of me enabled me to take the role, and not feel embarrassed or depressed about playing the villain. I just decided I was a character actor now.' Stamp returned to British cinema in the 1980s, starring opposite John Hurt and Tim Roth in Frears' The Hit, and had a cameo as the devil in Neil Jordan's literary horror film The Company of Wolves. He subsequently alternated safe-bet Hollywood roles with more adventurous work. In 1994 he played the trans cabaret performer Bernadette Bassenger in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, for which he received Bafta and Golden Globe nominations, followed by a lead role in Steven Soderbergh's revenge thriller The Limey. The subsequent decades saw more high-profile castings as interest grew in his earlier work, including roles in Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Wanted and The Adjustment Bureau, while another juicy British cinema role came his way opposite Vanessa Redgrave in Song for Marion. More recently he appeared in Big Eyes and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children for Tim Burton, and his most recently released film credit was Last Night in Soho, the retro-inspired horror thriller directed by Edgar Wright. Despite a string of high-profile relationships, including with Christie and Shrimpton, Stamp married only once, in 2002, to Elizabeth O'Rourke. They divorced in 2008.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Terence Stamp, face of 60s British cinema and star of The Limey and Superman, dies at 87
Terence Stamp, one of the stellar faces of British 60s cinema, who had a second act from the late 1970s onwards as a character actor in the likes of Superman: The Movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Limey, has died aged 87. His family said in a statement that Stamp had died on Sunday morning. '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,' the family said. 'We ask for privacy at this sad time.' Stephen Frears, who directed Stamp in the 1984 thriller The Hit told the Guardian: 'He was a fine man and a fine actor. It was an honour to have directed him.' Stamp became one of British cinema's glamour figures in its most fashionable decade, scoring early high profile roles in Billy Budd and The Collector (for directors Peter Ustinov and Willam Wyler respectively). His relationship with model Jean Shrimpton in the mid-60s ensured both were key faces of the the decade, and Stamp became one of its most photographed people as well as a significant part of the new wave of working class actors and musicians that fuelled Britain's pre-eminent position in the entertainment industry. Born in the tough working-class district of Bow in London, Stamp grew up the son of tugboat sailor in the slightly less tough area of Plaistow, and won a scholarship to drama school. His brother Chris also became a high profile figure, as manager of music acts including the Who and Jimi Hendrix. After meeting during a tour of The Long the Short and the Tall, Stamp shared a flat will fellow up-and-coming actor Michael Caine, who Stamp later described as his 'guru'. Stamp's first major screen role was in 1962 in Billy Budd, for which he received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor; this broight him to the attention of Hollywood and he was given the lead role in Wyler's 1965 adaptation of John Fowles' serial killer story The Collector. Stamp's subsequent acting career in the 1960s was erratic. He lost out to Sean Connery as James Bond, and was replaced in the lead role of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup by David Hemmings. However he starred opposite Antonioni favoured star Monica Vitti in Modesty Blaise (directed byJoseph Losey), appeared in Ken Loach's hard hitting debut Poor Cow, and starred opposite former girlfriend Julie Christie in Far From the Madding Crowd, adapted from Thomas Hardy's novel. In 1968 Stamp then appeared in two films for Italian auteurs: Federico Fellini cast him in his section of the three-part omnibus film Spirits of the Dead adapted from Edgar Allan Poe, while Pasolini gave him the lead role in his allegorical masterpiece Theorem. Stamp later told the Guardian: 'Pasolini told me: 'A stranger arrives, makes love to everybody, and leaves. This is your part.' I said: 'I can do that!'' However Stamp's profile declined sharply at the end of the decade and work dried up; he told the Guardian: 'It was a mystery to me. I was in my prime. When the 1960s ended, I just ended with it. I remember my agent telling me: 'They are all looking for a young Terence Stamp.' … I couldn't believe it.' Stamp went to India and stayed on an ashram – and was eventually recalled by the film industry with an offer to play the villainous General Zod in Superman: The Movie, released in 1978. Stamp later said he had to come to terms with no longer being the lead actor. 'I had transmuted myself. I no longer saw myself as a leading man. What had happened inside of me enabled me to take the role, and not feel embarassed or depressed about playing the villain. I just decided I was a character actor now.' Stamp returned to British cinema in the 1980s, starring opposite John Hurt and Tim Roth in Frears' The Hit, and had a cameo as the Devil in Neil Jordan's literary horror film The Company of Wolves. He subsequently alternated safe-bet Hollywood roles with more adventurous work. In 1994 he played trans cabaret performer Bernadette Bassenger in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (receiving Bafta and Golden Globe nominations), followed by a lead role in Steven Soderbergh's revenge thriller The Limey. The subsequent decades saw more high profile castings as interest grew in his earlier work, including roles in Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Wanted and The Adjustment Bureau, while another juicy British cinema role came his way opposite Vanessa Redgrave in Song for Marion. More recently he appeared in Big Eyes and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children for Tim Burton, and his most recently released film credit was Last Night in Soho, the retro-inspired horror-thriller directed by Edgar Wright. Despite a string of high-profile relationships, including Christie and Shrimpton, Stamp married once in 2002 to Elizabeth O'Rourke; they divorced in 2008.
The Guardian
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pet Shop Boys, freaks and witches: the strange genius of Jack Bond and Jane Arden
The death of Jack Bond in December last year brought an end to one of the most remarkable, and remarkably undervalued, chapters in British cinema. Bond is perhaps best known for the Pet Shop Boys movie It Couldn't Happen Here, released in 1988; but that was just one pitstop in an unusually shaped career that took the form of, if not two halves, two distinct sections that in retrospect appear subtly intertwined. Bond's commission from the Pet Shop Boys stemmed from earlier work on The South Bank Show, particularly an episode about Roald Dahl in which the author encounters characters from his books – and in fact much of Bond's career was occupied by what are essentially arts documentaries, albeit highly unconventional ones. He started off at the BBC in the early 1960s, with programmes about the first world war poets and George Orwell, culminating in a still-impressive film in 1965 about Salvador Dalí, called Dalí in New York, which investigated the constructed nature of Dalí's artist personality by using, among others, 'meta' shots of Bond himself discussing the filming process. Dalí in New York was also significant because it was the first time Bond directed a well-known writer, actor and media intellectual named Jane Arden. It wasn't the first time they had met, or worked together, but no doubt it cemented their creative relationship. Shortly afterwards, the pair would work together on what would become Bond's feature directing debut in 1967. Separation, written by and starring Arden, is a cut-up, fractured account of a woman unhappily caught between a failing marriage and a younger lover she is uncertain about, all against the backdrop of mid-60s swinging London. The fact that Arden was herself in a failing marriage (to TV director Philip Saville) and in a relationship with a younger lover (Bond himself) is no doubt relevant. Arden is a fascinating figure in her own right; apart from anything else, she appears to be the only woman in the whole of the 1970s to have a solo directing credit on a British feature film. That would be the next film she and Bond made together, The Other Side of the Underneath, based on Arden's happening called A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches, which she developed with her all-female theatre company Holocaust. Having been a successful playwright and TV writer, it is clear that in the period since Separation, Arden had absorbed the most radical ideas of the time, from anti-psychiatry to encounter-group therapy. The Other Side of the Underneath, which Bond produced and appeared in, is one of the most extraordinary, if deeply unsettling, films to have been made in the UK. Perhaps the stress of making it suggested to Arden she should share the directing of their third film, Anti-Clock, with Bond It is a bizarre, hermetic, and often baffling fable featuring one of Arden's sons, Sebastian Saville, who plays both a therapy subject and the professor attempting to treat him. Arden's motives, though, remain obscure; she killed herself in 1982 and Bond subsequently withdrew from circulation the films they made together. Twenty-five years later, however, they were rediscovered and reissued by the British Film Institute, an amazingly valuable act of cultural archaeology. Arden's death closed a chapter. In retrospect, Bond's part in it looks like an extension of the improvisatory, boundary-breaking style he brought to his documentaries – which, if you squint a bit, could also include It Couldn't Happen Here. Bond continued to make films focusing on creative personalities – notably The Blue Black Hussar in 2013 which allowed Adam Ant to ruminate on the mental health crises that derailed him some years earlier. Perhaps if Bond had made a successful awards-bait feature, or if Arden had been more inclined to create a conventional narrative, either or both of them might be more widely known, or sustain a more significant place in British film culture. Be that as it may, their films, along with Bond's solo work, are fascinating in their own right, and unquestionably worth seeking out. Separation and It Couldn't Happen Here are screening at the Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford, on 2 August, and It Couldn't Happen Here is screening in a double bill with Battleship Potemkin scored by Pet Shop Boys at BFI Southbank, London on 5 September.
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy Introduces BFI Screening Of Rare 1977 Star Wars Film Print
Star Wars on 35mm 1977 at the BFI Southbank NFT1 The second BFI Film on Festival kicked off last night with an on-stage appearance from Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy to introduce the first of two packed-out screenings of a rare original 1977 print of Star Wars. Since creator George Lucas insistent that the 1997 special editions should be the only versions of the film that should be available, this original version, sans the many not- all-welcome additions, has never been publicly screened. As such, some had assumed that Disney would also not let it see the light of day and o BFI chief executive Ben Roberts humorously implied that Kennedy's in-person appearance at the festival intro was solely to put that notion to bed. 'I know many of you did not believe that we had permission—and we find your lack of faith disturbing!' Kennedy also emphasized how special these screenings were. 'When I came into the company, there was endless conversation about where everything was, and what was, in fact, the first print,' she said. 'And it's quite remarkable— what you are going to see is, in fact, the first print. 'I'm not even sure there's another one quite like it. To be able to experience this exactly how it was in 1977 is really special.' The Star Wars print was created for the first UK release of Star Wars in December 1977, some seven months later than its May debut in the USA. This means that while many older British fans recall having seen the film in 1977, most of them would have actually seen it for the first time in 1978. The ability to project the nearly 50-year-old print is only possible because of the durability of the Technicolor dye transfer printing technique that, thankfully, was used to create this print. As Roberts explained, had it been made with the far cheaper Kodak Eastman process, it would now be falling apart. Of course, I would be surprised if anyone in the auditorium wasn't already aware of all of this. The anticipation in the room was palpable, and, as soon as the original title card for the film appeared on screen, a loud cheer went up. Initially, the image was scratchy, shaky, and covered with image artefacts, but after a few minutes, this dissipated. This enabled me to take in the solidity of the image, revealing the details in the sets and costumes—the metal coverings of C3PO and R2D2 had never seemed so real. Unlike ageing film stock, the charm, vim, and vigor of this wonderful original film never fades, and the audience laughed and cheered, seemingly as if they had never seen it before. Undoubtedly, the biggest roar of appreciation was saved for when Han Solo shoots first, summarily dispensing with Greedo. What suffered in comparison to modern projection was the sound. The famous John Williams fanfare that blasted Star Wars onto our screens had appreciably less impact than even a standard screen would now offer, let alone IMAX and Dolby Cinema premium offerings while at some parts of the film, the sound warbled a little, before returning to normal. Of course, what we now enjoy in cinemas in terms of superior audio is very much down to George Lucas. Star Wars, thanks to the genius of sound designer Ben Burtt, was one of the first movies to make full use of Dolby Stereo and, in a bid to raise theater audio in time for the release of Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, in 1983 Lucas introduced his THX cinema program. While compared to the crispness of the modern 4K digital master, the image was technically flawed, rather than distancing us, those imperfections transported us to that original moment in time long, long ago, when audiences had never seen anything like Star Wars. As Roberts said in his festival introduction, 'Every print has a story to tell. There are memories baked into those prints every time they are screened, every scratch or imperfection adds to the story, and over the coming days, you'll be part of the further stories of those prints. Kennedy revealed that she was in the UK to prep for the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling, scheduled for release in May 2027, and while it's unlikely, perhaps we can have a new hope that it gets a limited release on a film print. As Kennedy said, 'Innovation is something that we know keeps pushing cinema forward. It's all based on the past, but we're constantly trying to reinvent the future.'
