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 confirmed to Reuters. 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 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 his career with this innocent character, he would mostly play villains over the course of 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 198o 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), and the way the three were clad, all in black, introduced a whiff of sex and S&M into a very vanilla movie.
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-fier “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 sex 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 own way.
In Soderbergh’s “The Limey,” he played a Brit recently released from prison who travels to Los Angeles to discover the truth about this 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 clearly modeled on Scientology called Mind Head.
Stamp appeared in a wide variety of films in the 2000s, including sci-fier “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.
Terence Henry 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.
Stamp was married to Elizabeth O’Rourke from 2002-08.
