"Theorem," "Superman," "Priscilla"... British actor Terence Stamp dies at the age of 87

By The New Obs with AFP

Pasolini immortalized him in "Theorem," Stephen Elliott transformed him into a trans person in "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," and George Lucas into the master of the universe in "Star Wars": the British Terence Stamp, who died Sunday at the age of 87, captivated experimental films and Hollywood productions with his ambiguous blue eyes.

Angel or demon, this emblem of the "Swinging Sixties" has woven his filmography between purity and decadence, blurring conventions and certainties with his magnetic presence.

It was with the role of an angelic sailor hanged for having killed one of his teammates that this son of a worker made his breakthrough in 1962: "Billy Budd" by Peter Ustinov earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Actor.

He then also naturally moved on to play a psychopath in "The Obsessed," a twisted love story by William Wyler. He won the Best Actor Award at Cannes (1965).

Fame came like a comet to this Londoner born on July 22, 1938.

His father, from whom he inherited his good looks, fueled the ships' boilers; his mother had four more children. His family was crammed into a house without sanitation, in a neighborhood east of the city.

"The first 18 years of my life were very difficult," he recalled in "Le Figaro." He was hungry, "his brain wasn't cut out for school," and he had a bad accent. Bewitched by Gary Cooper, he dreamed of becoming an actor from the age of four.

At 17, he found an alter ego in James Dean in "East of Eden." He left home and, against his father's wishes, won a scholarship to drama school, where an agent noticed him.

In the early 1960s, British cinema became interested in the working class. Terence Stamp took advantage of this. Ken Loach hired him for his first film, "No Tears for Joy" (1967). But, the actor lamented to "Télérama," "he didn't understand that I was part of this milieu that he liked to talk about in his films."

His meeting with Fellini in 1967 was decisive: in search of the "most decadent English actor" for his adaptation of "Les Histoires extraordinaires", the Italian found in him his "Toby Dammit", a drunken actor whom the devil seduces in the guise of a little girl.

“Something extraordinary and unexplained happened between us. A thunderbolt that completely unblocked me. Playing finally became a pleasure.”

Pasolini, who hired him for his "Theorem," saw in him a "boy of divine nature" : in 1969, he played an enigmatic visitor of stunning beauty who seduces an entire bourgeois Milanese family. Fascinated by his angelic blondness, Pasolini, however, did not speak to him during the shoot.

But after this scandalous role as the "uncrucified Christ," Terence Stamp began a ten-year journey through the wilderness. He was barely 30 years old when Jean Shrimpton, a model and beauty of the sixties, left him.

"I was so identified with the 60s that when the era ended, I was finished with it," he summed up for "Libération."

The desperate former sex symbol embarks on a mystical world tour and, like his British contemporaries, settles in India.

He was still in an ashram studying tantric sex when his agent contacted him in 1977: Richard Donner wanted him to play General Zod in "Superman." His career was revived. At the same time, Peter Brook hired him for "Meetings with Remarkable Men."

The role of Bernadette, the trans character in "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (1994), came as he grew weary of playing British villains in Hollywood. The male icon continued his exploration of ambiguity in fishnet stockings.

Until the end, he led a somewhat schizophrenic career between big productions ("Star Wars", "The Sicilian", "Wall Street") and independent films like "The Hit" by Stephen Frears (1984) or "The Englishman" (1998) by Steven Soderbergh.

To retrace the youth of this London gangster who arrives in California to avenge his daughter, the American director borrows passages from Ken Loach's "No Tears for Joy." These images capture Terence Stamp in his dazzling sixties English beauty.