Terence Stamp tributes: colleagues remember British actor’s unique screen presence

Terence Stamp tributes have poured in from across the film industry following the British actor’s death on Sunday at the age of 87.

Stamp first emerged as a star of the Swinging Sixties, with acclaimed performances in Billy Budd (1962), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), Poor Cow (1967) and Teorema (1968). Later audiences came to know him through Superman II, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), Big Eyes (2014) and Last Night in Soho (2021).

Filmmaker Edgar Wright, who directed Stamp in Last Night in Soho, described him on X as “kind, funny, and endlessly fascinating.” Wright recalled their conversations about music, Stamp’s brother managed The Who and his name features in The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset, and the actor’s magnetism on screen. “In close-up, his unblinking gaze locked in so powerfully that the effect was extraordinary. Terence was a true movie star: the camera loved him, and he loved it right back.”

Producer Gale Anne Hurd, who worked with him on Alien Nation, praised both his acting and “mesmerising eyes.” Actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who starred alongside Stamp in Young Guns, remembered him as “a kind, beautiful, generous man” whose artistry raised the level of the entire cast.

His Priscilla co-star Guy Pearce wrote: “Farewell dear Tel. You were a true inspiration, both in and out of heels. We’ll always have Kings Canyon, Kings Road and ABBA. Wishing you well on your way ‘Ralph’!”

Stephen Elliott, writer and director of Priscilla, revealed Stamp initially turned down the role of Bernadette out of fear. “You’ve got to remember we were coming out of the HIV/Aids mess. It was a taboo subject,” he explained. But Elliott said Stamp, who had previously worked with Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Italy, was at a point in his career where he was ready to take risks again. “He was being voted one of the best-looking men on earth and suddenly in Priscilla he was, in his words, ‘dressed up as an old dog.’ But he put that pain into the performance, and that’s what made the film.”

Though often reserved, Stamp’s enigmatic quality only added to his reputation. As Elliott put it, “He’d show up, use the eyes, and turn everybody to jelly.”

Stamp’s wider career and personal history are well documented in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and through the British Film Institute, which highlights his part in shaping Britain’s cinematic story.

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[Image Credit | Deadline]

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