DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Terence Stamp, the British actor whose diverse portfolio of roles included super-villain General Zod in the original "Superman" films, a psychopathic kidnapper in "The Collector" and a transgender woman in "The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert," died Sunday at age 87. Today, we'll listen back to a conversation Terry Gross had with Terence Stamp in 2002. But first, we'll start with this appreciation.
Terence Stamp was born in London in 1938, just before World War II. His working-class upbringing during tough times didn't make him a likely prospect as a young actor, but he followed his passion and struck gold early. He first made it to the big screen in 1962 in the starring role of Billy Budd, based on the story by "Moby Dick" author Herman Melville. Stamp played the title role - a childishly innocent sailor recruited onto a British warship in 1797. The officers were tyrants, and Billy - after watching a fellow sailor get whipped - complained to his new mates. But the more agitated he got, the more he stuttered.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILLY BUDD")
TERENCE STAMP: (As Billy Budd) It's wrong to flog a man.
(As Billy Budd, stuttering) It's against his being a man.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Aye. Aye, lad. It is that.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Why do you stammer, boy?
STAMP: (As Billy Budd) Because I sometimes can't find the words for what I feel.
BIANCULLI: Terence Stamp was nominated for an Academy Award for that supporting performance, and other roles quickly followed. On Broadway, he landed the title role in a play called "Alfie," but the show lasted less than a month. When the film version was offered, he turned it down, and it ended up going instead to his flatmate Michael Caine. But for a while, the roles were plentiful and meaty. He starred opposite Julie Christie, with whom he later became romantically involved, in "Far From The Madding Crowd." He was directed by Federico Fellini in a segment from "Spirits Of The Dead," Oliver Stone in "Wall Street," Steven Soderbergh in "The Limey" and George Lucas in "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace." He played the Kryptonian supervillain General Zod opposite Christopher Reeve in "Superman" and drew rave reviews as a transgender woman in a traveling cabaret show with two drag queens in "The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert."
His roles were as plentiful as they were eclectic. He accepted parts in broad comedy films like "Get Smart" and "Bowfinger," in erotic films such as "Bliss," and even acted as the host of the 1997 TV anthology series, "The Hunger." He certainly brought his own unique vibe to that job. In this episode, he opens the show, wielding a sinister-looking hunting knife, using its sharp edge to point out parts of a disembodied brain, which is floating inside a fish bowl - until that is, he uses the hilt of his knife to shatter the glass.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE HUNGER")
STAMP: (As The Host) Phrenology - the belief that different parts of the brain are responsible for different kinds of thoughts. Romantic love over here, vision over here. The ability to recognize letters here, lust here, reason miles away over here. Connecting the two, a bridge of neurons 26,000 miles long. Do you think you could get from here to there...
(SOUNDBITE OF GLASS SHATTERING)
STAMP: (As The Host) Oh, no. I don't think so.
BIANCULLI: Terence Stamp's final role ended up being one of his very best. In 2021, in "Last Night In Soho," he played a mysterious character, identified in the credits only as the Silver-Haired Gentleman. There was a reason for the secrecy, because the character's true identity is revealed only at the end. But throughout the movie, he keeps popping up, following or observing the central character of the film - a young woman played by Thomasin McKenzie. The first time he approaches her, she fears he's a stalker. But the way he reacts suggests he has something else in mind, and he's almost humorously dismissive of her concerns.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "LAST NIGHT IN SOHO")
STAMP: (As Silver-Haired Gentleman) Excuse me. Excuse me, love. I'm talking to you, Blondie.
THOMASIN MCKENZIE: (As Eloise) Sorry, I have to be somewhere.
STAMP: (As Silver-Haired Gentleman) I'm not trying to pick you up, sweetheart. Don't worry.
MCKENZIE: (As Eloise) I'm not worried.
STAMP: (As Silver-Haired Gentleman) You look familiar to me. Who's your mother?
MCKENZIE: (As Eloise) My mother's dead.
STAMP: (As Silver-Haired Gentleman) I thought she might be. Most of them are.
BIANCULLI: When Terry Gross spoke to Terence Stamp in 2002, he was starring in the French film "My Wife Is An Actress." He played a young sportswriter who's married to an attractive actress. He's afraid she will fall for one of her leading men and even be aroused by their love scenes. Terry asked Terence Stamp if love scenes are arousing or just work.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
STAMP: Well, it can be either, you know? It can be absolutely acting, and it can be absolute passion. I think the great Warren Beatty once said that the way to get stars in a movie is to find out who wants to shag who.
TERRY GROSS: (Laughter) Is it ever embarrassing when it really is passion?
STAMP: Well, it's never passion-passion because, you know - because everybody's there. It's like - you'd have to be a real exhibitionist to get real passion - I mean, actual passion. But I think you have a good idea during a love scene. I mean, if you're interested in your co-star, then you have a good idea of whether it's going to lead to real passion because it's so kind of intimate.
GROSS: Do you think you could tell the difference on screen between relationships on screen that are just acting and relationships on screen where there really is some passion beyond the acting?
STAMP: I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean - well, you're talking about good actors, right?
GROSS: Yes, that's right. Exactly, right.
(LAUGHTER)
STAMP: With bad actors, you can't tell anything. So...
GROSS: Exactly, exactly. I'd like to do, like, a film retrospective with you. So let's go back to your very first movie, "Billy Budd." This was made in 1962. It's based on the Herman Melville story. You play a teenager who's impressed to serve on a British ship during war with France. And you're the epitome of decency and goodness, whereas the master-at-arms is a sadist and very villainous. After he sets you up to take a fall for a crime you're innocent of, you try to defend yourself verbally, but your speech impediment prevents that. You have something of a stammer. You punch him. He dies from a head wound when he hits the ground, and then you're court-martialed. This was your first role in a movie, and it's the leading role in a prestigious film. You must have had to learn a lot on camera.
STAMP: Well, I did, and I didn't. In fact, as two young, out-of-work actors, I was sharing digs with Michael Caine. And although Michael Caine wasn't known - you know, he hadn't been just discovered; he was absolutely unknown - he did know a lot about the technicalities of filming. And so he kind of versed me in those, so I knew the technicalities and felt confident in that. You know, I knew how to hit marks. I knew about sort of camera angles. I knew about lenses. And frankly, when I started the movie, a kind of amazing thing happened because I just discovered that - it was like I knew it. It was as though it was absolutely second nature to me. Everything I saw that was new, I understood almost instantaneously. So it wasn't really - I mean, it was nerve-wracking because I had no way of dealing with the - like, the artistic vision that you have in your head and doing it, you know, when they say action. So that was a kind of a problem and a fear. But for the most part, I just had, like, an instinctive understanding of it, really.
GROSS: How old were you when you made "Billy Budd"?
STAMP: I had my 21st birthday during the movie.
GROSS: Was acting a far-fetched ambition from someone from your neighborhood?
STAMP: Yes. I saw my first movie, and I just wanted to be that. And I never really spoke about it. In other words, it was a very private sort of fantasy that I had. And when it got to sort of near leaving school - in other words, let's say I was like 15, 16 and we got our first television, I started making remarks about, oh, I could do that; oh, I could do better than that. And my dad, he sort of wore that for a bit. And then one evening, I was carrying on about how good I thought I could be in that part, and he said to me, listen, son, people like us don't do things like that. And I went to sort of protest. And he said, son, I just don't want you to talk about it anymore. And my dad was, you know, something of a stoic, and he didn't say much. So when he said something, it had - you know, it had a kind of - quite a heavy reverberation to it. But in fact, it didn't deter me at all. I wasn't allowed to talk about it. But I was used to not talking about it. I mean, it was - I understood that it would have been ridiculous to everybody else, you know? So all it did was it made a kind of a steam kettle into a pressure cooker.
BIANCULLI: Actor Terence Stamp talking with Terry Gross in 2002. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2002 interview with British actor Terence Stamp, who died Sunday at age 87. His last acting role was in "Last Night In Soho" in 2022, and his first was in 1960 in an episode of the British TV series "Spy-Catcher." Two years later, he played the title role in the movie "Billy Budd" and was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for it. It was a meteoric rise from very humble beginnings.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: Now, you said that you grew up in a very Cockney neighborhood. So did you have a Cockney accent when you started to act?
STAMP: Oh, sure. I mean, when I finally realized that I would have to go to drama school, you know, to get my foot in the door, I'd - you know, in those days it wasn't like today, where if you could lift a lot of weights or if you could play football, you become an actor. You know, you weren't - you couldn't get in to see anyone unless you'd been trained. There was no such things as sort of untrained actors. So I had to get into drama school. And you had to do a classical piece. You had to do a piece of Shakespeare and a modern piece, and I chose Romeo's death speech. And I can - now I can imagine how hysterical it must have been - you know? - like, Romeo as a sort of cockney barrow boy, you know?
GROSS: You write a little bit about your accents in one of your memoirs. And you say that you convinced yourself that since you had a natural ear and could pick up accents easily, instead of learning to speak proper English, you would just treat English roles - standard English roles - as a dialect and, you know, just learn it for those roles. Did that strategy work out?
STAMP: It worked out. Yes, it worked out. I mean, it worked out for sort of 20 years. But eventually, you know, I had to sort of - and the thing was, I think looking back, it was something to do with a loss of identity. Like, I didn't - I wanted to retain my own voice. But as well, I thought - I think that it was - there was a lot of sort of fear and trepidation involved in learning, like, to speak in a completely different way, so eventually treating parts - treating all the parts I did as a dialect. I still had a kind of a London - I had a sort of London foggy accent for years. And it was only sort of - you know, when I was sort of in my 40s that I thought to myself, well, I might as well really just see if I can perfect my voice, see if I can have what they call RP. I think it's called received pronunciation. I'll see if I can have RP voice without losing, you know, the quality that makes my voice my own.
GROSS: So what did you do?
STAMP: Well, I just - I had always been interested in breath. One of the things that I'd learned at drama school was this thing called the full breath and speaking on support, you know, which we all had to learn to do before everybody had throat mics. And so I had continued that study. I'd taken my study from just, like, learning to breathe theatrically to sort of mystical breathing and breathing exercises - yoga, stuff I'd learned, like, in India. And so I just kind of widened my area of learning, really. And I just continued to find, you know, really wonderful voice teachers and study with them and pick up things that I could get from them. And so it was a kind of an ongoing thing. I mean, I'm still a bit of a sucker for - like, if I hear there's a great voice teacher in town, I'll go and check them out, you know, because I think there's a great kind of - I think there's a great mystery in the voice. But also, I think that it's something that is almost a lost art. And for - my own personal understanding is that any study, any work that you do on your voice is really capital in the bank. I don't regret any of the money that I've spent, you know, studying voice.
GROSS: I want to play a scene from your movie "The Limey," and this is a pretty recent film. And in this film, you play a working-class guy who's just gotten out of prison in England. And you've come to California to avenge the murder of your daughter. You think she was murdered by a record executive who made his fortune in the 1960s. He's played by Peter Fonda. Anyways, in this scene, you're talking to a Drug Enforcement Agency agent, who you think has some clues about where to find this record executive you're looking for. And you're talking to him in this really thick cockney accent. It's not the way you speak in the rest of the movie. It's just something you're putting on for him in this scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE LIMEY")
STAMP: (As Wilson) How you doing, then? All right, are you? Now, look, squire; you're the governor here. I can see that. I'm on your manor now. So there's no need to get your knickers in a twist. Whatever this bollocks is that's going down between you and that slag Valentine, it's got nothing to do with me. I couldn't care less. All right, mate? Let me explain to you. When I was in prison - second time - no, tell a lie - third stretch - yeah, third - there was this screw what really had it in for me. And that geezer was top of my list. Two years after I got sprung, I sees him in Holland Park. He's sitting on a bench feeding bloody pigeons. There was no one about. I could have gone up behind him and snapped his [expletive] neck - wallop. But I left him. I could've knobbed him, but I didn't 'cause what I thought I wanted wasn't what I wanted. What I thought I was thinking about was something else. I didn't give a toss. It didn't matter, see? This bloke on the bench wasn't worth my time. It meant sod all in the end 'cause you got to make a choice - when to do something and when to let it go, when it matters and when it don't. Bide your time. That's what prison teaches you, if nothing else. Bide your time, and everything becomes clear. And you can act accordingly.
GROSS: Terence Stamp in a scene from "The Limey." Terence Stamp, did you ever talk that way (laughter)?
STAMP: No, I didn't really. Well, I may have. But when I was working on it - that was really how my dad spoke and how my uncle spoke. And strangely enough, in England, I got a lot of stick for that. You know, people - critics said, oh, nobody talks like that. But the truth is that they haven't been to the local Turkish bath on Saturday morning, you know, where everybody talks like that.
GROSS: Now, were you starting to act in a time when it was becoming more acceptable, more possible for working-class actors who didn't speak received English to - or received pronunciation, whatever it's called - to get started? You know, was it more acceptable to talk like you did and still be on the stage?
STAMP: I think more than more acceptable. It was actually something that was needed because what had happened in England was that they had passed a bill - a politician called Rab Butler had passed a bill whereby all kids had an opportunity of going to a grammar school. They had this thing called the 11+. And if you passed the 11+, it didn't matter what strata of society you came from. You could get to go to one of these rather good grammar schools. And the end of the '50s, the big sort of mass of working-class kids who previously hadn't had a higher education were being sort of released into the world. And they were giving birth - that was giving birth to the great working-class playwrights. And the working-class playwrights were really writing plays that needed a different kind of actor. They wanted, like, working-class actors. And I think that that was the beginning of that sort of '60s wave of, you know, working-class guys.
GROSS: And were you cast in any of those plays?
STAMP: Yes. Yes, I was cast. The first play I ever did professionally was called "Long And The Short And The Tall," which was a play by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall. And it had spawned a host of actors. I mean, the lead part had been written with Albert Finney in mind. Albert had got sick, Peter O'Toole had stepped in, became a big success. Michael Caine was Peter O'Toole's understudy and never got to play the part, so he did the tour, which was where I met him. So that was the first play that I was in that was one of those plays. But of course, there was, like, Osborne, there was Pinter, there was Arnold Wesker. You know, it was a - kind of a whole clutch of working-class playwrights that were writing wonderful things.
BIANCULLI: Terence Stamp speaking to Terry Gross in 2002. After a break, we'll continue their conversation, and film critic Justin Chang reviews the popular new horror film "Weapons." I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COLOURS")
STAMP: (Singing) Yellow is the color of my true love's hair in the morning when we rise, in the morning when we rise. That's the time - that's the time I love the best.
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. Let's get back to Terry's 2002 interview with British actor Terence Stamp. He died Sunday at the age of 87. His films include "Billy Budd," "Far From The Madding Crowd," "The Limey" and "The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert." He was part of the wave of working-class actors and playwrights who came up in the 1960s.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: You started to become very well-known in the '60s. And in fact, you became kind of a symbol of London in the '60s. In Shawn Levy's new book about London in the '60s, he writes that you were among the swingingest of young Londoners - handsome, stylish and always up for some wild scene.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: What was it like to become known in the '60s when everything from the class system to sexual mores was loosening up?
STAMP: Well, I think it was the best time and place a boy could be, really. It was like after the pill and before AIDS, you know? So it was an extraordinary release. And I think that we felt it particularly in England because we'd been confined by the - you know, by World War II and the kind of poverty after World War II, which drifted right on, really, through the '50s. So I think that - I think of the '40s and the '50s as being in black and white. And I think that with - you know, with the birth of the decade of the '60s, it suddenly burst into technicolor.
GROSS: Now, it's said that you and Julie Christie, who were a couple for a while, are the Terry and Julie in the Kinks' song "Waterloo Sunset." Is that accurate?
STAMP: Yeah, that's absolutely true. Ray Davis actually told my brother Chris that. My brother Chris discovered The Who and, you know, with his partner, Kit Lambert, made them, I think, into the great group they became. But Ray Davis told my brother Chris that - that when he was writing the lyrics to "Waterloo Sunset," he envisaged Julie and myself for that lyric.
GROSS: We were talking about your voice and how you used to have a Cockney accent and how you learned to speak differently for movies and theatre. I want to play a scene from your movie, "Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert." This is a 1994 Australian comedy in which you played a transsexual who has an act with two drag queens in which you lip sync and dance to disco hits. And in this scene, you're in the dressing room with the two drag queens. You're all putting on makeup. And this is shortly after you've fallen on your head in shock upon learning that one of the drag queens in your act not only used to be married, but he has a son.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT")
STAMP: (As Bernadette) For Christ's sake, Mitzi, why didn't you tell us? Why the hell did you have to shock me like that? Oh, this lump on my head is getting bigger by the second. I'm about to make my Northern Territory's debut looking like a [expletive] Warner Brothers cartoon character has hit me over the head with an iron.
GUY PEARCE: (As Felicia) I think you look more like a Disney witch myself.
STAMP: (As Bernadette) Oh, shut your face, Felicia. At least I don't look like somebody's tried to open a can of beans with my face.
HUGO WEAVING: (As Mitzi) I'm sorry, girls. I couldn't stand the thought of you bagging me in the bus for two weeks. Anyway, what difference does it make now?
STAMP: (As Bernadette) Oh, about 2 inches to my head, for one.
WEAVING: (As Mitzi) Did you get a good look at him? He's got my profile, that's for sure.
PEARCE: (As Felicia) I think I'm going to be sick.
STAMP: (As Bernadette) I hate to be practical here, but does he know who you are? I mean, does he know what you do for a living?
WEAVING: (As Mitzi) Well, he knows he has a father in the show business, cosmetics industry.
STAMP: (As Bernadette) Oh, Lord, I don't understand.
WEAVING: (As Mitzi) No, you don't understand, so stop trying to. It'll be fine.
STAMP: (As Bernadette) Well, it better be.
GROSS: That's Terence Stamp in a scene from "Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert." Now, one of the things I find really interesting about your performance in that movie is that you didn't really change your voice. You changed the kind of language that you use and the way you'd speak, but you don't try to make your voice higher in it, even though you're playing a transsexual. Tell us why you didn't do that.
STAMP: Well, during the - you know, during the time I was sort of researching the role, I was getting introduced to actual transsexuals - you know, guys who had actually been sort of - tried to change themselves physically from being a man to being a woman. And one of the things that I noticed about them vocally was that they either spoke below the break or above the break. So either they were sort of hello, darling, and yes, my name is this, or they were sort of speaking above the break. And during rehearsal, I really tried both of those vocal sort of approaches. And the director said to me, like, don't worry. You know, just, like - just your voice is fine. You know, don't really worry about affecting a voice, you know? He said, like, a lot of trannies to do that, but it'll be - it'll put too much - like, a strain on the performance, you know, if you confine yourself to just an area of voice. So that's really how the finished product came about.
GROSS: And look at how, say, Lauren Bacall's voice deepened as she got older (laughter).
STAMP: Right, right.
GROSS: What surprised you most by how you looked as a woman with a long blond wig and makeup and, you know, women's clothes, heels?
STAMP: Well, I was rather - I have to say first out that, you know, when I saw the movie, I was, like, bitterly disappointed.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STAMP: I had understood - I had been led to believe that, you know, the camera man was making me look like Lauren Bacall and Princess Diana and Candy Bergen, you know? And so I'd given - been given the performance believing that I was being made to look like this real babe, you know? And only about five minutes before I saw the film, which was at the Cannes Festival, the DP came up to me and said, listen, Terence. I don't want you to be upset with me, you know, but, like, I really didn't make you look good, you know? And I was really - I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you know, I didn't do the best for you. I said, why? He said, well, Stephan didn't want me to, you know? I said to him, Steph, you know, I can make him look wonderful, like it's just a lighting thing. And Steph said, no, no, no. I want him looking dodgy, you know? Don't make him look good kind of thing. And then I'm at the premiere, you know, and the film starts, and there I am looking like this old tomcat, you know? So I was like - I was really taken aback. It was a huge, just instant dismantling of my ego.
GROSS: Because you wanted to look like a beautiful woman.
STAMP: Yeah. I was real - that's what I was - exactly. I was choosing - earring, oh, I see Michelle Pfeiffer wear those. I can wear those, you know? I mean, I was, like - I was really into it. And I said to Stephan earlier, you know, why did you do that to me? Why did you - I really don't understand, you know? And he said, well, that's the point, you know, that I - what I wanted was a creature who believed that she was beautiful, and the reality was she was an old dog, you know? So in other words, he wanted a kind of - he thought that the character would be more touching if that element was there. He just didn't want me looking, you know, like Lauren Bacall.
GROSS: Did that work for you when you started to see it that way?
STAMP: No, no, I always hated it. I always thought it was a lost opportunity to be a babe.
GROSS: (Laughter).
BIANCULLI: Terence Stamp speaking with Terry Gross in 2002. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's interview with British actor Terence Stamp, who died Sunday at age 87. When we left off, they were talking about his role as Bernadette in the 1994 film "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: (Laughter) Now, Maureen Dowd had a New York Times Magazine article with you after "Priscilla" was released. And in that article, you say that you used to have this fear of looking stupid on screen and that that used to hold you back. But after "Priscilla," you stopped worrying about that. Accurate?
STAMP: Well, I hate to contradict the lovely Maureen Dowd. The way in which I - what I felt about that was that I didn't know that I had this fear of looking stupid. It was a kind of - I was tethered by it, but I didn't know it. And during "Priscilla," it came up, and I had to confront it. And I had to confront it because what I was doing was absolutely ridiculous, and there was no way of doing it without risk of looking an absolute idiot. And when I'd gone through it, in other words, when it had happened, then I saw it, and then I saw the extent to which I'd been limited by it. So in other words, the movie was a growth experience on that level.
GROSS: I want to say I might - that's basically what she says you said.
STAMP: OK, OK. OK.
GROSS: And if I misrepresented what she said you said, I apologize for that. But I think she represented what you said very accurately. So can you put your finger on what you did differently after that?
STAMP: No, not really. Well, I can explain to you. I can't really give you examples, but after it, after the take, it happened - actually, the freeing - the breakthrough happened during the performance of "Shake That Groove Thing," you know? And I'm in this town called Broken Hill and - which is a lot of - like, it's sort of a mining town where most of the guys are out of work, you know? And they'd got all these miners in to be extras. And the way they'd kept them there was by giving them lots of beers and stuff.
And I came out of the trailer and I've got these kind of like putty-colored Queenie's tights, which I've put my false nail through so they're laddered. And I've got these sort of pink knickers with, like, little stars stuck on them. And I've got a red wig with detachable pigtails. And we're all standing on a bar in our high heels waiting to do this number in front of this very raucous audience of miners.
(LAUGHTER)
STAMP: And in fact, as I was standing there, like, the thoughts that were going through my head were like, what are you doing here, you know? You're the best-dressed man in Britain, you know?
GROSS: (Laughter).
STAMP: You're a middle-aged man. You were the great Iago of your drama school. You know, you're a scholar and a philosopher, you know? And then suddenly there was, like, playback (vocalizing), and you do it, and you do it. And we did it. And I was - I had done it. I had done the lip sync. I had done the dancing. I had made an absolute ass of myself. And I was kind of in the stratosphere, you know? And I think that after that - so in other words, it was a kind of - it was like an inner dimension, you know? It was something - it was, like, a sort of reservoir of energy that had never been released before. And after "Priscilla," I never had to really consciously draw on that. I mean, I haven't done anything that sort of extended my fear barrier, but there is that kind of understanding within me that I'm fearless, you know? I mean, I would never really turn down another movie from fear. And I was able to look back and see that I had turned down wonderful roles...
GROSS: Like what?
STAMP: ...Because I was frightened. I turned down "Camelot" with the wonderful Josh Logan, you know?
GROSS: And you would have had a singing role in that?
STAMP: Yeah. I would have been the king, you know?
GROSS: "If Ever I Would Leave You," is it (laughter)?
STAMP: Yeah, he wanted me.
GROSS: That would have been Terence Stamp singing that?
STAMP: Yeah. And that was the fear, you know? And it wasn't - I didn't really know it until I had that breakthrough. And I thought, yeah, I turned that down for the wrong reason. You know, I turned it down because I was frightened that my singing voice wouldn't have been good enough, you know? And there were lots of things like that I - roles that I've turned down because, you know, later on in life, I saw, yeah, I could've - of course, I could have done that. You know, I could have gone through that fear barrier earlier.
GROSS: Well, you know, you haven't had the most prolific career. You've been making a fair number of movies lately, but there was a period in, I guess, the '70s and part of the '80s when you weren't doing that much and part of what you were doing was international productions. Was that a conscious choice, to...
STAMP: No, no, no. On the contrary. You know, the '60s ended and I ended with them. I was sort of out of work for 10 years, really. And, you know, that was like a tragedy for me, but it was just one of those things. It wasn't anything that I could - if I had wanted to continue working during the '70s, then I would've had to have done real crap, you know? And I'd already - I'd been spoiled, you know? I'd worked with Ustinov, Wyler, Fellini, Pasolini, Losey. I didn't want to do sort of Cockney lorry drivers, you know, and gangsters and stuff. So I just - I was out of work. I was out of work from about '69 till I got the "Superman" movies.
GROSS: How would you describe the phase of your career you're in now?
STAMP: How would I describe...
GROSS: (Laughter).
STAMP: Oh, I think I'm a golden oldie now, you know? I think I'm an old master with wisdom and vestiges of sex appeal.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: I think one of your greatest performances - and this is, you know, my humble opinion - is in "The Limey." I think you're just so wonderful in that film.
STAMP: It's funny with "The Limey" because it was something that - it's to do, I think, with resignation. You know, when you resign yourself to the fact that, you know, you're never going to get another great role, then something happens. And when it happened, it was just so wonderful. I mean, to work with a guy like Soderbergh, you know, who's - I - in my book, you know, he's the greatest American director since Willi Wyler, you know? He's just so extraordinarily talented.
But a funny thing happened. They had a cast and crew screening and - at the Directors Guild right here on Sunset Boulevard. And he asked me to come and look at it. And a friend of mine - a great friend of mine called Richard La Plante was actually in California. And I said, come with me. You know, I just - I needed a bit of backup, you know, 'cause none of us really knew what Steven had been doing. Like, we didn't actually know that he was, you know, making a film that was sort of outside the time-space concept, you know? We didn't realize that it was going to be, like, a nonlinear movie.
And anyway, I go along to this. And it was only supposed to be sort of, you know, 40 or 50 people. The place was packed. There were hundreds of people. And it was just extraordinary. It was just an extraordinary event for me. And you could tell from the audience that everybody was locked into it from the first frame, you know, which is the way you can tell a great master director. You know, they pick you up and you're confident that they're going to take you somewhere and put you down, you know? And everybody in that movie was, like, totally attentive.
And - but on the way home, I said to my friend, like, what do you think of it? He said, my God, I think it's, like, the best thing you've ever done. And I was a bit taken aback, you know, because that seemed - I thought, well, I've done lots of terrific things. But when I was going to sleep that night, I thought to myself, you know something? If it had to end here - like, if this had to be the last one - really, from "Billy Budd" to "The Limey" was, like, more than any young actor could hope to do, really.
GROSS: Well, Terence Stamp, a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
STAMP: Not at all.
BIANCULLI: Actor Terence Stamp speaking with Terry Gross in 2002. He died Sunday at the age of 87. For a time in the 1960s, he and actress Julie Christie were a couple. And earlier in the interview, he confirmed that they were the Terry and Julie mentioned in the famous Kinks song "Waterloo Sunset." Let's hear it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WATERLOO SUNSET")
THE KINKS: (Singing) Waterloo sunset's fine. Waterloo sunset's fine. Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station every Friday night. But I am so lazy, don't want to wander. I stay at home at night. But I don't feel afraid. As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset, I am in paradise.
BIANCULLI: Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new horror film "Weapons." This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
