Latest news with #PriscillaQueenOfTheDesert
The Independent
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Fans revisit Terence Stamp's iconic Priscilla performance after his death
Following the death of actor Terence Stamp on Sunday, fans have been revisiting his most popular performances. A notable role was Bernadette Bassenger, a transgender woman, in the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. In the musical comedy, Stamp's character embarks on a journey through the Australian Outback with two drag queens on a bus called Priscilla. A memorable scene features Stamp, alongside Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce, performing CeCe Peniston's 'Finally' as the film's grand finale. Watch the video in full above.
The Guardian
15 hours 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.
News.com.au
a day ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Terence Stamp, veteran actor and star of iconic Aussie film, dead at 87
Veteran British actor Terence Stamp, who starred in one of the most beloved Australian films of all time, has died at the age of 87. A prolific star of the stage and screen who started his acting career in 1960, Stamp made a name for himself with a breakthrough performance in his 1962 movie debut Billy Budd, for which he earned an Oscar nomination. He was also known for his performances in blockbusters like the 1978 Superman movie and its sequel, and 1999's Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. But it was his groundbreaking performance as transgender woman Bernadette Bassenger in the 1994 Aussie smash Priscilla, Queen of the Desert that endeared him to Australian audiences and reignited his acting career well into his 60s. Stamp was nominated for a BAFTA, an AFI Award and a Golden Globe for his moving performance in the cinema classic. The actor's family told news outlet Reuters that he died on Saturday. '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 in a statement. 'We ask for privacy at this sad time.' Stamp's final screen role was in the 2021 film Last Night in Soho. Making such a splash at the start of the 60s with his debut film role, Stamp became one of the biggest stars of the time – thanks to his prolific work rate and also his relationship with model and fellow 60s icon Jean Shrimpton. He later confessed he struggled to find work after the decade ended. 'I was so closely identified with the 1960s that when that era ended, I was finished with it,' he once told French daily Liberation. Stamp married once, on New Year's Eve 2002. He was 64 and his 29-year-old Bride was an Australian-Singaporean woman named Elizabeth O'Rourke who he'd met in Bondi, Sydney. The couple divorced six years later.
News.com.au
a day ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Terence Stamp, 60s icon and Superman villain, dies
British actor Terence Stamp, a leading man of 1960s cinema before reinventing himself in a series of striking roles -- including as Superman villain General Zod -- has died aged 87, UK media cited his family announcing Sunday. "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," media quoted the family saying. Stamp, exploded on to the screen in the 1960s as a leading man, even then sometimes playing troubled characters. At one point, he seemed to specialise in playing brooding villains Later still, he broke out of that typecasting to play a partying transgender woman in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert". From Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Theorem" to a villain's role in one of the "Star Wars" films, the handsome leading man captivated audiences in both art house films and Hollywood blockbusters. He lent his magnetic presence to more than 60 films during a career that spanned a range of genres. - Heroes and villains - The London actor from a working-class background, born on July 22, 1938, had his first breakthrough in in Peter Ustinov's "Billy Budd". His performance as a dashing young sailor hanged for killing one of his crewmates, earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for Best New Actor. Carving out a niche for his alluring depictions of broody villains, he won Best Actor at Cannes in 1965 for "The Collector", a twisted love story adapted by William Wyler from John Fowles's bestselling novel. His 1967 encounter with Federico Fellini was transformative. The Italian director was searching for the "most decadent English actor" for his segment in an adaptation of "Spirits of the Dead", a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories. Fellini cast him as "Toby Dammit", a drunken actor seduced by the devil in the guise of a little girl. Another Italian great, Pasolini, who cast him in the cult classic "Theorem", saw him as a "boy of divine nature". In the 1969 film, Stamp played an enigmatic visitor who seduced an entire bourgeois Milanese family. - 'Kneel before Zod!' - He also had a relationship with Jean Shrimpton -- a model and beauty of the sixties -- before she left him towards the end of the decade. "I was so closely identified with the 1960s that when that era ended, I was finished with it," he once told French daily Liberation. But the dry spell did not last long. Stamp revived his career for some of his most popular roles, including in 1980's "Superman II", as Superman's arch-nemesis General Zod. His famous line from that film, "Kneel before Zod!" was spreading online in social media tributes after the news broke of his death. Other roles followed, including that of Bernadette, a transgender woman in "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (1994), in which Stamp continued his exploration of human ambiguity, this time in fishnet stockings. He continued to pursue a wide-ranging career, jumping between big-budget productions such a villain's role in "The Phantom Menace" one of the Star Wars films to independent films like Stephen Frears's "The Hit".
ABC News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Terence Stamp, star of Superman movies and Priscilla, dies aged 87
British actor Terence Stamp, best known for his roles in Superman and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, has died aged 87. The London-born actor starred opposite Christopher Reeve's Superman as the arch-villain General Zod in Superman and Superman II in the late 1970s. He first reached success in the 1960s and even auditioned for the part of James Bond, before landing roles in films such as Star Wars and Valkyrie. He died on Sunday morning, aged 87, his family said in a statement. The cause was not immediately known. "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 statement said. He is known to Australian audiences for his role portraying a transgender woman in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in 1994. With its array of outlandish outfits and make-up, the film won best costume design at the Oscars and has inspired several stage musicals around the world. "It was only when I got there, and got through the fear, that it became one of the great experiences of my whole career," Stamp said. But after early success in the 1960s, the revival of his acting career nearly never happened at all. Stamp liked to recall how he was on the verge of becoming a tantric sex teacher at an ashram in India when, in 1977, he received a telegram from his London agent with news that he was being considered for the Superman film. At that point, he had been largely out of work for eight years. "I was on the night flight the next day," Stamp said in an interview with his publisher Watkins Books in 2015. Terence Henry Stamp was born in London's East End in 1938, the son of a tugboat coal stoker and a mother who Stamp said gave him his zest for life. As a child he endured the bombing of the city during World War II and the deprivations that followed. "The great blessing of my life is that I had the really hard bit at the beginning because we were really poor," he said. He left school to work initially as a messenger boy for an advertising firm and quickly moved up the ranks before he won a scholarship to go to drama school. Until then, he had kept his acting ambitions secret from his family for fear of disapproval. "I couldn't tell anyone I wanted to be an actor because it was out of the question. I would have been laughed at," he said. He shared a flat with another young London actor, Michael Caine, and landed the lead role in director Peter Ustinov's 1962 adaptation of Billy Budd, a story of brutality in the British navy in the 18th century. That role earned him an Academy Award nomination and filled him with pride. "To be cast by somebody like Ustinov was something that gave me a great deal of self-confidence in my film career," Stamp told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2019. "During the shooting, I just thought, 'Wow, this is it'." Famous for his good looks and impeccable dress sense, he formed one of Britain's most glamorous couples with Julie Christie, with whom he starred in Far From the Madding Crowd in 1967. But he said the love of his life was the model Jean Shrimpton. "When I lost her, then that also coincided with my career taking a dip," he said. After failing to land the role of James Bond to succeed Sean Connery, Stamp sought a change of scene. He appeared in Italian films and worked with Federico Fellini in the late 1960s. "I view my life really as before and after Fellini," he said. "Being cast by him was the greatest compliment an actor like myself could get." It was while working in Rome – where he appeared in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Theorem in 1968 and A Season in Hell in 1971 — that Stamp met Indian spiritual speaker and writer Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1968. Krishnamurti taught the Englishman how to pause his thoughts and meditate, prompting Stamp to study yoga in India. Mumbai was his base but he spent long periods at the ashram in Pune, dressed in orange robes and growing his hair long, while learning the teachings of his yogi, including tantric sex. "There was a rumour around the ashram that he was preparing me to teach the tantric group," he said in the 2015 interview with Watkins Books. "There was a lot of action going on." After landing the role of General Zod, the megalomaniacal leader of the Kryptonians, in Superman in 1978 and its sequel in 1980, both times opposite Christopher Reeve, he went on to appear in a string of other films, including in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in 1994. Other films included Valkyrie with Tom Cruise in 2008, The Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon in 2011 and movies directed by Tim Burton. He counted Princess Diana among his friends. "It wasn't a formal thing, we'd just meet up for a cup of tea, or sometimes we'd have a long chat for an hour. Sometimes it would be very quick," he told the Daily Express newspaper in 2017. "The time I spent with her was a good time." In 2002, Stamp married for the first time at the age of 64 — to Elizabeth O'Rourke, a pharmacist, who was 35 years his junior. They divorced in 2008. Asked by the Stage 32 website how he got film directors to believe in his talent, Stamp said: "I believed in myself. "Originally, when I didn't get cast I told myself there was a lack of discernment in them. "This could be considered conceit. I look at it differently. Cherishing that divine spark in myself." Reuters
