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Ammon
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Ammon
Actor Terence Stamp, who starred as Superman villain, dies aged 87
Ammon News - Terence Stamp, the English actor who played the arch-villain General Zod in the original Superman films, has died at the age of 87. In a career that spanned six decades, the Oscar-nominated actor starred in films including The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Far From the Madding Crowd and Valkyrie. Stamp died on Sunday morning, his family said in a statement to Reuters news agency. "He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, both as an actor and a writer that will continue to touch people for years to come," they said. Bafta said it was "saddened" to hear of Stamp's death and highlighted his two Bafta nominations in 1963 and 1995. His Superman co-star Sarah Douglas described him as "beyond gorgeous and talented". "So saddened to learn that Terence has left us," she wrote on Instagram. Born in Stepney, east London, to working-class parents on 22 July 1938, Stamp attended grammar school before pursuing a career in advertising. After securing a scholarship for drama school, he shot to fame in the 1960s, making his debut playing the titular role in Billy Budd, a 1962 film about a naive young seaman in the 18th century. His performance earnt him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor and a Golden Globe for best newcomer.
See - Sada Elbalad
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- See - Sada Elbalad
Terence Stamp, "Superman" and "Priscilla" Star, Dies at 87
Yara Sameh English-born Terence Stamp, who burned brightly as a young actor in the 1960s, with praise heaped upon him for roles in 'Billy Budd,' 'The Collector' and 'Far From the Madding Crowd,' memorably played the villain General Zod in the Superman films and was the highlight of Steven Soderbergh's 'The Limey,' died Sunday, his family said. He was 87. '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,' said the statement from his family. Stamp brought a fierce, blue-eyed stare and an intense integrity to his roles. He was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor for 1962's 'Billy Budd.' More recently, he had appeared in Tim Burton's 2014 film 'Big Eyes,' in which Stamp played an influential art critic who scorns the work of Margaret Keane, which is popular with the masses. In 2013, he played another aesthete, an art thief who has become an informer, in 'The Art of the Thief.' His final roles were a brief cameo in Edgar Wright's 2021 'Last Night in Soho' and an appearance on the TV series 'His Dark Materials.' From 2003 to 2011, the veteran actor, in a twist from his earlier role as a villain in the 'Superman' films, had recurred (via voice only) on the TV series 'Smallville' as Jor-El, Superman's real father from the planet Krypton. But it all started for Stamp with the splash he made in 1962 in his first film, Peter Ustinov's adaptation of Herman Melville's novel 'Billy Budd.' The New York Times said of the young actor's performance: 'Terence Stamp, a new English actor with a sinewy, boyish frame and the face of a Botticelli angel, is perfect as Billy Budd, the innocent, trusting sailor who cannot comprehend wickedness. Billy Budd, in character, and in performance, is almost too good to be true.' While Stamp began with an innocent character, he would mostly play villains throughout his career. For his performance in William Wyler's 1965 film 'The Collector,' in which he played an odd, repressed young man who kidnaps a beautiful woman, played by Samantha Eggar, with whom he becomes obsessed, Stamp won the best actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He played the sidekick to the title heroine, played by Monica Vitti, in 1966 spy spoof 'Modesty Blaise' and impressed some critics in his role as the hateful cavalry officer Frank Troy in John Schlesinger's 'Far From the Madding Crowd' in 1967 (Roger Ebert said he was 'suitably vile'). The same year, he also starred in director Ken Loach's indictment of British society, 'Poor Cow,' which was more significant for its politics than for its quality. After starring in the execrable Western 'Blue,' Stamp starred in the Fellini-directed segment of the 1968 anthology film 'Spirits of the Dead,' as 'an out-of-control movie star stuck in the surreal purgatory of his own fame,' in the words of critic Nathan Rabin. Next up was the starring role in Pasolini's ineffable, controversial masterpiece 'Teorema,' in which Stamp played a Visitor who seduces each member of an Italian household in turn. During his unusual run of successful pictures in the 1960s, the deeply handsome Stamp was romantically involved with the likes of Julie Christie, Brigitte Bardot, and especially supermodel Jean Shrimpton. Still in the mood for the offbeat, Stamp next starred in 'The Mind of Mr. Soames,' in which he played a man brought to consciousness after being in a coma since birth. It offered him an opportunity to do some very primal acting as a defiant adult toddler. The 1970s saw Stamp work little, and mostly in little-seen European films, such as 'Hu-Man,' opposite Jeanne Moreau, and 'The Divine Nymph' with Laura Antonelli. He spent much of the decade living at an ashram in India. He appeared briefly at the beginning of 1977's 'Superman,' in a brief but highly memorable scene in which General Zod and his co-conspirators are banished from Krypton, and Stamp's Zod was brought back as the principal villain in the 1980 sequel. In 'Superman II' Zod, along with his two accomplices, introduced an element of real menace that was missing from the original film (in which Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor was a more genial supervillain). Yet Stamp still retained his taste for the artfully obscure, as with theater director Peter Brooks' little-seen but visionary film 'Meetings With Remarkable Men.' Nevertheless, his work in the 'Superman' movies had brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and by the 1980s, he was often working in more high-profile projects. In Stephen Frears' 1984 film 'The Hit,' Stamp turned in an intriguing performance as a mob stool pigeon who's been kidnapped so that he can be killed before the boss he squealed against, but instead of acting terrified, he serenely accepts his fate while subtly manipulating his two kidnappers, played by John Hurt and Tim Roth. The actor was even fifth-billed in 1986's 'Legal Eagles,' the big-budget romantic comedy starring Robert Redford. Stamp's performance in Oliver Stone's 1987 'Wall Street' was lost amid all the star power in the film, but his was a critical role with a complex moral backdrop — he played the big financial player morally outraged by Gordon Gecko's shenanigans, to which he would not stoop himself, and was perhaps director Stone's suggestion that one could be a power on Wall Street without entirely abandoning one's moral compass. He appeared in Brat Pack Western 'Young Guns,' and he played the villain in sci-fi 'Alien Nation,' starring James Caan and Mandy Patinkin. The 1994 Australian film 'The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert' caused quite a sensation for its story of two drag performers and a trans woman on a road trip through the Outback, and those who were still following Stamp's career at that point were quite surprised to find him show up in the film as said trans woman. Roger Ebert said, 'At the beginning of the film we're distracted by the unexpected sight of Terence Stamp in drag, but Stamp is able to bring a convincing humanity to the character.' The actor gave an interesting, invested performance as a therapist with unusual methods in 1997's 'Bliss.' Stamp perhaps never achieved a higher profile than he had in 1999, when he appeared in three wildly different films, all successful in their way. In Soderbergh's 'The Limey,' he played a Brit recently released from prison who travels to Los Angeles to discover the truth about his daughter's death. Variety said: 'Pic's most interesting element is the positioning of two icons of 1960s cinema, the very British Terence Stamp and the very American Peter Fonda, as longtime enemies. A key scene alludes to Stamp's landmark late-'60s movies: Wyler's 'The Collector' and Pasolini's 'Teorema.' Indeed, the two lead performances mirror key roles Stamp and Fonda have played in the past 30 years.' Soderbergh used extensive footage from Ken Loach's 1967 film 'Poor Cow,' to depict the past of Stamp's character. Also in 1999, the actor played Chancellor Valorum, leader of the Galactic Republic, in 'Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,' and in the Steve Martin-Eddie Murphy comedy 'Bowfinger,' Stamp gamely played the guru of a Hollywood cult group modeled on Scientology called Mind Head. Stamp appeared in a wide variety of films in the 2000s, including sci-fi 'Red Planet,' Soderbergh's 'Full Frontal,' 'My Boss's Daughter,' Disney's 'The Haunted Mansion,' Angelina Jolie starrer 'Wanted,' Tom Cruise starrer 'Valkyrie,' and 'The Adjustment Bureau.' He played Brigham Young in 2007's 'September Dawn' — and Siegfried, head of KAOS, in the feature adaptation of 'Get Smart.' Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave had a popular success in 2013 with the sentimental British film 'Unfinished Song,' in which he played a wheelchair-using curmudgeon married to a woman dying of cancer but still singing in the church choir. Stamp was born in Stepney in London. He trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, then performed with a variety of provincial repertory theatres. His most notable effort during this time was a national tour of Willis Hall's play 'The Long the Short and the Tall' together with Michael Caine. He starred in the play 'Alfie!' on Broadway in 1964. When it came time for the film version, the busy Stamp recommended his roommate, Caine, who became a star as a result. His autobiography 'Stamp Album' was published in 1988. 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Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Terence Stamp: 1960s icon who was the 'master of the brooding silence'
Terence Stamp's dashing good looks and smouldering glare made him a star of 1960s cinema. One of the stalwarts of Swinging London, the working class actor's first film earned him an Oscar nomination. With actress Julie Christie or supermodel Jean Shrimpton on his arm, he specialised in playing sophisticated villains: including Superman's arch nemesis, General Zod, and the petulant Sergeant Troy in Far From the Madding Crowd. The Guardian called him the "master of the brooding silence", but Stamp's acting proved to have range as well as depth. Thirty years after his career began, he shocked his fans - but picked up a Golden Globe nomination - as transgender woman Bernadette Bassenger in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Terence Henry Stamp was born in Stepney, east London, on 22 July 1938. He died aged 87 on 17 August, his family said. His father, a man Stamp once described as "emotionally closed down", was a ship's stoker and often away from home. Young Terence's interest in acting began to blossom when his mother took him to the local cinema to see Gary Cooper in Beau Geste, a film that left a deep impression on him. After enduring the Blitz in the east end of London, the Stamp family moved to the more genteel Plaistow - where Terence attended grammar school before getting the first of a series of jobs in advertising agencies. In his autobiography, Stamp Album, he recalled how he loved the life, but he could not shake off the feeling he wanted to be an actor. Having been turned down for National Service because of problems with his feet, he won a scholarship to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art - which got rid of his cockney accent. After completing his studies, he set out on the grinding local repertory circuit that was the training ground for all aspiring actors in the 1950s. On one occasion, he found himself in a touring production of The Long and the Short and the Tall alongside another budding actor named Michael Caine, with whom he would later share a flat. Stamp's leap to stardom came when he was cast in the title role of a 1962 film, Billy Budd, based on the Herman Melville novella. His performance as the naïve young seaman, hanged for killing an officer in self-defence, won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer. In the same year, he appeared in Term of Trial alongside Laurence Olivier. Stamp was hailed as one of the new wave of actors from working-class backgrounds, such as Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, who were also making a name for themselves. In 1965, Stamp starred in an adaptation of the John Fowles novel The Collector, as the repressed Frederick Clegg who kidnaps a girl and imprisons her in his cellar. By now, he was regularly seen at the most fashionable 1960's gatherings, and his good looks brought him plenty of female attention. There was a relationship with the actress Julie Christie, who he'd approached after seeing her holding a gun on a magazine cover in 1962. The affair only lasted a year, but was later immortalised by the Kinks in the song Waterloo Sunset: with a line referencing Terry and Julie crossing over the river. He turned down the chance to star in Alfie, having played the part on stage. His flatmate, Michael Caine, took the role instead and it launched his career. In 1966, Stamp appeared as Willie Garvin - a rough Cockney diamond - in the film version of Peter O'Donnell's comic strip, Modesty Blaise. And, a year later, he starred as a bank-robber-with-a-soft-heart in Ken Loach's kitchen sink drama, Poor Cow. Stamp found Loach difficult. The director, he felt, was too political and hid the script from the cast - preferring to feed them lines while shooting each scene. "Before a take, he'd say something to (co-star Carol White)," he complained, "and then he would say something to me, and we only discovered once the camera was rolling that he'd given us completely different directions. That's why he needed two cameras, because he needed the confusion and the spontaneity." He was reunited with Julie Christie in Far From the Madding Crowd. He was dating Jean Shrimpton by then, but their on-screen chemistry was still evident. "On the set, the fact that she had been my girlfriend just never came up," he told The Guardian in 2015. "I saw her as Bathsheba, the character she was playing, who all the men in the film fell in love with. But it wasn't hard, with somebody like Julie." With cinematographer Nicholas Roeg, Stamp helped choreograph the famous fencing demonstration scene: in which Sergeant Troy's sword skills captivate - and eventually seduce - Bathsheba Everdene. But the film got poor reviews and failed at the box office. And Stamp fell out with the director, John Schlesinger. "He didn't strike me as a guy who was particularly interested in film," the actor recalled. "Plus I wasn't his first choice: he really wanted Jon Voight." But Stamp's star was beginning to fade. An outing in Blue - a "pretentious, self-conscious, literary Western without much zest", according to one critic - didn't help. He was approached to play James Bond when Sean Connery relinquished the role, but his radical ideas of how he should interpret the character did not impress producer Harry Saltzman. Stamp suggested that he might start a Bond film disguised as a Japanese warrior - and slowly reveal himself to be 007. "I think my ideas about it put the frighteners on Harry," he speculated. "I didn't get a second call from him." There was a spell in Italy where he worked with the directors Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini but, by the time he returned to London, the 60s were drawing to a close and he was no longer in fashion. "When the 1960s ended, I just ended with it. I remember my agent telling me: 'They are all looking for a young Terence Stamp.'" He was still only 31. Disillusioned, he bought a round-the-world ticket and found himself in India - experimenting with vegetarianism, yoga and living in a spiritual retreat. It was there, in 1976, that he received a message addressed to 'Clarence' Stamp, offering him the part of General Zod in Superman. With his leading man days behind him, Stamp discovered that playing villains was liberating. Superman and the sequel, Superman II, put him firmly back on the public stage - and he appeared in a bewildering variety of genres. There were Westerns like Young Guns, crime dramas like The Hit and The Real McCoy - and even a gothic thriller in Neil Jordan's fantasy, The Company of Wolves. But his most unlikely - and celebrated - performance was as transgender woman in the Australian film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in 1994. Stamp was not keen to do the film - in fact, he thought the initial offer was a joke. But a female friend persuaded him to take the part - which saw his character journey across the outback with two drag queens, played by Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce. "It was a challenge, a challenge I couldn't resist because otherwise my life would have been a lie", said Stamp. Over the next 10 years, Stamp appeared in two dozen films - playing a wide variety of parts. In 1999, he entered the Star Wars canon: playing a politician battling corruption in Episode I: the Phantom Menace - an experience he later described as "dull". More satisfyingly, he starred in The Limey: as a career English criminal hunting for his missing daughter. A decade later, he was nominated for a Bafta for his role as the grumpy husband of a dying woman in A Song for Marion. In 2002, he married for the first time at the age of 64. Stamp had met Elizabeth O'Rourke in a chemist shop in Australia. She was 35 years younger, and the marriage lasted six years. Terence Stamp continued to act well into his 80s. The parts - like his fleeting appearance as a silver-haired gentleman in Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho in 2021 - grew smaller, although a sequel to Priscilla was in development. He will be remembered as the actor who blazed like a comet at the height of the 1960s, surrounded by the decade's most beautiful women. His career fizzled close to extinction, but he showed an impressive ability to reinvent himself - with his ability to project style and menace bringing him to the attention of new generations. It was a career that unfolded with no thought or planning, no clear strategy and no goal in mind. "I don't have any ambitions," Stamp once said. "I'm always amazed there's another job." "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."
Boston Globe
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Terence Stamp, luminary of 1960s British cinema, dies at 87
And he could act: The role brought Mr. Stamp an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award for most promising newcomer. Advertisement He presented a very different image three years later, playing a dark-haired psychopath who loves butterflies but decides to move up to capturing humans in 'The Collector' (1965). Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up As he carried a bottle of chloroform toward a beautiful art student (Samantha Eggar), those startlingly blue eyes now seemed terrifying. In The New York Herald Tribune, critic Judith Crist called his performance 'brilliant in its gauge' of madness. He received the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. He grew a sinister black mustache to play the sadistic Sergeant Troy, who mistreats the heroine (Julie Christie) in 'Far From the Madding Crowd' (1967), based on Thomas Hardy's novel. Reviews were mixed, but Roger Ebert praised Mr. Stamp's performance as 'suitably vile.' Looking back in 2015, a writer for The Guardian observed, 'Stamp has an animation and conviction in this role that he never equaled elsewhere.' Advertisement Not long after that, Mr. Stamp largely disappeared for almost a decade. He came back as a character actor. When he made his entrance in Richard Donner's 'Superman II' (1980), boldly crashing through a White House roof, audiences saw the young man who had been called the face of the '60s, now with a seriously receding hairline, devilish facial hair, and a newly mature persona. His character, Zod, an alien supervillain with a burning desire to rule the world, also appeared in the first 'Superman' movie. Mr. Stamp had a busy career for the next half-century, perhaps most memorably in 'The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert' (1994), with yet another new on-screen look. His character, Bernadette, a middle-aged transgender woman, wore dangly earrings, a grayish-blond pageboy, tasteful neutrals, and not quite enough makeup to hide the age lines. 'I've got a kind of more developed feminine side of my nature,' he said in 2019 when asked about the role in a Reuters interview, 'so it was a chance to knowingly explore that.' 'I had to think about what it would be like to be born into the wrong body,' he added, 'and born into a body that wasn't the same as one's emotions.' Terence Henry Stamp was born July 22, 1938, in London, one of five children of Thomas Stamp, a tugboat stoker with the Merchant Navy, and Ethel (Perrott) Stamp. In the low-income neighborhoods of the East End where the Stamps lived, expectations were low. 'When I asked for career guidance at school, they recommended bricklaying as a good, regular job,' Mr. Stamp recalled in a 2011 interview with the Irish newspaper The Sunday Business Post, 'although someone did think I might make a good Woolworths' manager.' Advertisement After leaving school, Mr. Stamp worked in advertising agencies, but he secretly wanted to become an actor and began lessons at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. 'Billy Budd' is usually referred to as his first film, but in England, 'Term of Trial,' in which he appeared as a young tough alongside Laurence Olivier and Simone Signoret, was released a month earlier. (In the United States, 'Billy Budd' opened first.) He did theater work in England but had only one Broadway experience — a disaster. He played the title role in 'Alfie!,' a play about a callous young South London bachelor, which opened in December 1964 and closed three weeks later. Shawn Levy, in his book 'Ready, Steady, Go!,' had an explanation: 'It was so dark and frank and mean and true and generally disharmonious with the optimistic, up-tempo tenor of the moment.' But moments pass. Mr. Stamp turned down the same role in the 1966 film version, and Michael Caine — who happened to be his flatmate — took it instead. It made him a star. Mr. Stamp did star in 'Modesty Blaise' (1966), as a secret agent's Cockney sidekick; Ken Loach's 'Poor Cow' (1967), as a sensitive working-class guy; and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Theorem' (1968), as a mysterious stranger who beds every single member of a household, including the maid. Federico Fellini directed him as a self-destructive, alcoholic actor in 'Spirits of the Dead' (1968). Advertisement In 1969, Mr. Stamp moved to an ashram in India and became a swami. Some said it was because of a romantic breakup, but he professed a simpler motive: He couldn't find work. Although he was barely in his 30s, casting agents were already looking for 'a young Terence Stamp.' Around eight years later, he received a message from his agent about the 'Superman' movie. He accepted, he often said, because he wanted to work with Marlon Brando, who played Jor-El, Superman's father. Between 1978 and 2019, Mr. Stamp appeared in more than 50 films. He received particular praise for Steven Soderbergh's 'The Limey' (1999), in which he played an ex-con on the trail of a drug-trafficking record producer (Peter Fonda) as he avenges his daughter's death. He also had roles in 'Legal Eagles' (1986), 'Wall Street' (1987), 'Young Guns' (1988), 'Alien Nation' (1988), and 'Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace' (1999), as chancellor of the Galactic Republic. In 'Unfinished Song' (2012, originally 'Song for Marion'), he played a gruff pensioner with a dying wife (Vanessa Redgrave). After having been a Superman-franchise villain, Mr. Stamp was the voice of the superhero's noble Kryptonian father in the television series 'Smallville.' His final film was the horror thriller 'Last Night in Soho' (2021). A Times review called his entrance alone 'a master class in minimalist menace.' In the 1960s, Mr. Stamp had highly publicized romances with British supermodel Jean Shrimpton and with Christie. In 2002, at age 64, he married Elizabeth O'Rourke, a 29-year-old Australian pharmacist; they divorced in 2008. Information on survivors was not immediately available. Looking back philosophically in 2017 on his life's ups and downs, Mr. Stamp told The Telegraph, 'The thing that has been constant is that from the very beginning I always seemed to be the opposite to everybody else.' Advertisement This article originally appeared in
CNN
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
British actor Terence Stamp, ‘Superman' star and famed figure of swinging London, dies at 87
Terence Stamp, the British actor who became synonymous with Swinging London in the 1960s, has died, his family said Sunday, according to Reuters. He was 87 years old. Stamp first came to prominence when he took on the titular role in the 1962 film 'Billy Budd.' The black and white drama, directed by Peter Ustinov, who also starred, saw Stamp nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor - the only Oscar nomination of his lengthy career. He went on to star in a host of films in the 1960s, among them John Schlesinger's Thomas Hardy adaptation 'Far From the Madding Crowd' and Ken Loach's first feature film, 'Poor Cow.' CNN has reached out to his representatives for confirmation of his death. He was a star who rose from humble beginnings in London's East End, about as far from Hollywood as you can get. He was born on July 22, 1938, to parents Ethel and Thomas, a merchant seaman. In a 2013 interview with the British Film Institute (BFI), Stamp revealed that his father tried to deter him from a career in showbiz. 'He genuinely believed that people like us didn't do things like that,' he said. But his mother, he said, 'loved every second of it.' 'In retrospect, my mother must have always wanted me to do it and must have wished that she could have been more supportive. But my dad was the head of the family and I never really knew what he thought of it because he was of that generation. 'He was a merchant seaman, he shovelled coal, and in that confined living quarters any show of emotion would have been considered unbearably flash.' Stamp would become one of the biggest figures of 1960s London, romantically linked to model Jean Shrimpton and actresses Julie Christie - his 'Far From the Madding Crowd' co-star - and Brigitte Bardot. His only marriage came in 2002 - to an Australian pharmacist 35 years his junior - but that lasted just six years, according to the Guardian. Stamp famously roomed with fellow actor Michael Caine, who was also a rising star at the time. The pair lost touch, however, as he disclosed in an interview with The Guardian newspaper in 2015. 'We just went different ways. I can understand it: in many ways he was much more mature than me,' he said of Caine, who was five years older. 'Caine gave me all my early values, like making sure you were doing good stuff, waiting for the right things – then as soon as he got away he did exactly the opposite. Went from one movie to another.' After a few years away from the screen, Stamp appeared in the 1978 blockbuster 'Superman' as the superhero's adversary, General Zod. He reprised the role of the comic book villain in the sequel two years later. Ironically, more than two decades later Stamp went on to voice the role of Superman's father Jor-El in the TV series 'Smallville.' His many screen credits also included his role as drag queen Bernadette in the 1990s Australian comedy 'The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.' Of his eclectic career - including roles in Hollywood's 'Wall Street' and 'The Adjustment Bureau' - he told the Guardian that he had no ambitions, adding: '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.'
