Terence Stamp in five films

British actor Terence Stamp, who has died aged 87, played characters who tended to be both charming but disturbing, and starred in more than 60 films since his Swinging Sixties beginnings.

Here are five that gained classic or cult status:

– ‘Billy Budd’ (1962) –

Adapted from Herman Melville’s short novel about a dashing sailor, Stamp won immediate acclaim for his first major screen performance playing the titular character.

British legend Peter Ustinov directed the film and starred as the ship’s captain, who has to intervene when drama breaks out between Budd and a comrade.

An adaption of Melville’s novel had enjoyed a popular run on Broadway in the 1950s before its movie adaptation, which picked up four BAFTAs, a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nod for Stamp.

– ‘The Collector’ (1965) –

Never more handsome or disturbing, Stamp played a kidnapper with a chip on his shoulder and a passion for collecting butterflies who captures a young woman and locks her up in his basement.

The adaptation by William Wyler of John Fowles’s classic novel brought out all the twisted power and class dynamics explored in the book, and was a triumph at Cannes, picking up best actor for Stamp.

– ‘Theorem’ (1968) –

This near-wordless cult classic by Italian master Pier Paolo Pasolini gets under the skin of bourgeois life through the arrival of a stranger, played by Stamp, into a rich family.

Mysterious, attractive, he lures various family members into sex and in doing so unlocks forbidden passions, though what he unleashes is hardly happiness.

Pasolini’s film, which was initially banned, is “a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void,” according to the Criterion Collection.

It was Stamp’s second collaboration with an Italian legend after shooting the short “Toby Dammit” earlier that year with Federico Fellini.

“The great experience of my life was working with Fellini. It was a peak in the way I was performing at the time,” Stamp said in a 2017 interview.

But shooting “Theorem” was a rather different experience — he had no lines and Pasolini barely spoke to him at all.

“He had his own agenda. He was creating an ambience that I was part of.”

– ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ (1994) –

One of the most madcap and memorable comedies of the 1990s was a surprise popular hit worldwide and brought queer cinema into the mainstream.

Stamp played a transgender woman accompanied by two drag queens driving a bus through the Australian outback in hope of meeting new friends.

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,” said Stamp.

“It was probably the most fun thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

– ‘Last Night in Soho’ (2022) –

Edgar Wright’s British indie hit mixing horror and time travel featured Stamp as a shady but charming barfly with a mysterious connection to Swinging Sixties London.

He spooks a fashion student who has flashbacks to the 1960s, when Soho was full of brothels rather than sandwich shops, and the film takes a devilish turn with Diana Rigg as a landlady hiding many skeletons in her cupboard.

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