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When he died at age 87 this week, the outpouring of appreciation for Terence Stamp’s iconic ’60s cool and decades of remarkable performances made it clear he was still beloved. Stamp personified our image of Swinging London in many ways. He featured in a famously apocryphal story about the Kinks’ song “Waterloo Sunset” — apparently the so-called “Terry and Julie” of the lyrics may or may not be in reference to Stamp and his then-girlfriend, Julie Christie.
But it was through his work in film that he made an impact. Stamp was a true original, a shapeshifter, a tough guy, and a charmer; one of the rare working-class British actors left who survived a childhood during the blitz and channeled bloody-mindedness, raw talent, and strong instincts. From his earliest roles of the 1960s, he proved capable of enigma, malevolence, and swagger, but equally possessed an otherworldly blue-eyed beauty that made him as effective playing innocents as it did villains. The latter roles captured the public imagination; his angular face and soft-spoken menace gave him a devilish quality that was often deployed by filmmakers. From his ’60s heyday to the later films that would pay homage to his persona, there simply weren’t many actors like Terence Stamp, whose film career was so idiosyncratic and his image so unmistakable. Here are ten of his best.
Billy Budd (1962)
Directed by Peter Ustinov
Before he ever played an elegant devil incarnate or extraterrestrial villain, Terence Stamp played an angelic naïf. In actor-writer-director Ustinov’s tackling of Herman Melville’s seafaring 18th-century novel, the young stage actor starred as the titular naïve young seaman who suffers under the sadistic whims of his superior Claggart (Robert Ryan) and is eventually falsely accused of a crime. With Christlike simplicity and martyrdom, Stamp gives a frankly astonishing performance for an actor in a debut role. He earned a Supporting Actor nomination at the Academy Awards for his efforts. Streaming on VOD.
The Collector (1965)
Directed by William Wyler
Early in his screen career, Stamp can be seen trying to depict shades of villainy and malice. In acclaimed Hollywood director Wyler’s film about isolation and madness, he plays a strange young man who purchases a rural farmhouse in order to ensnare and kidnap a young woman (Samantha Eggar) he is obsessed with. A portrait of psychological collapse and proto-incel masculinity, Wyler utilizes Stamp’s more inscrutable qualities to portray a possible serial killer in the making. As he forces his prey into increasingly domestic scenarios and even asks for her hand in marriage, we can see the DNA of dozens of future films about real stalkers and predators. With an uncomfortably real level of sexual tension between the leads, it’s a complicated and dark viewing experience. Streaming on VOD.
Poor Cow (1967)
Directed by Ken Loach
Master of British kitchen sink Ken Loach made this excellent film about a scrappy young woman, Joy (Carol White), and her unwise love affair with a bad-boy London spiv, Tom (Stamp), whose abusive behavior and stints in and out of prison leave her to raise their son essentially alone. Stamp doesn’t take up a huge amount of screen time — it is very much Carol White’s film and her protagonist’s story — but he is a powerfully charismatic presence when he appears. Watching his hold over Joy and, ultimately, his damaging impact on her life is like watching a car crash in slow motion, but Stamp brings just enough charming machismo to the part to make us understand how things go so terribly wrong. Unavailable to stream in the U.S.
Far From the Madding Crowd (1967)
Directed by John Schlesinger
For two stars of the Swinging ’60s at the absolute peak of their powers, see Terence Stamp and Julie Christie in this lush adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel about a bewitching woman with three different suitors pursuing her. Made by Schlesinger with no less than Nicolas Roeg as his director of photography — and with sly knowledge of Christie and Stamp’s real-life affair — there’s a vivid of-the-moment spirit to the movie. Stamp is the dashing but ruthless soldier Sergeant Troy, and if Christie’s capricious protagonist is destined for misfortune, he has a large part to play in it. Leaning into the ridiculous beauty of both its leads, all cheekbones and blue-eyed yearning, the film is a moody and thoughtful interpretation of its literary origin. Streaming on VOD.
Teorema (1968)
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Perhaps Stamp’s signature role came from bold Italian filmmaker Pasolini, whose interest in queer sexuality, sin, damnation, deviancy, and Catholicism often made potent cinematic mixtures. (You may know him best for the controversial Salo.) A mysterious but hypnotically charming interloper enters a Milanese family home and seems to leak into the nuclear family’s problems and frustrations like an airborne disease; through flattery, seduction, and careful manipulation, he manages to bed each member of the family, eventually exposing the hypocrisies and falsity at work within the unit. A spectacular vision of devilry and temptation, it’s hard to imagine anyone but the sylphlike, sexy Stamp pulling all the strings. Streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Toby Dammit segment, Spirits of the Dead (1968)
Directed by Federico Fellini
In Fellini’s phantasmagorical anthology film, featuring a trio of star-studded vignettes based on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, Stamp appears as a hedonistic Shakespearean actor visiting Rome and driving recklessly around the city in his new Ferrari. With his deathly pallor and Byronic charm, Stamp was perfect as the self-destructive, swaggering scoundrel who is haunted by visions of a spectral little girl. Based on Poe’s short story “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” it runs a mere 40 minutes, but Stamp and Fellini elevate what could otherwise be a minor-key story. Streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Superman II (1980)
Directed by Richard Lester
As powerful villain General Zod, Terence Stamp brings a seriousness and majesty to the role that shows he’s operating on a level way above the ordinary comic-book movie performance. As a wise, near godlike space entity hellbent on dominion over Planet Earth, his demand to “Kneel Before Zod” is as fascistic as it is terrifying. There are other great actors in Superman II — Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman not least among them — but it’s hard to think of another cast member doing such impressive work, while still capable of the offhand knowing twinkle, laser-eyed attack, or fish-out-of-water joke. Streaming on HBO Max.
The Hit (1984)
Directed by Stephen Frears
In Frears’s sun-drenched neo-noir, a pair of British hit men — played by the weary John Hurt and his mouthy apprentice Tim Roth — are hunting an old gangster turned snitch who’s retired to Spain. Seething with menace and dark humor, this underappreciated masterpiece of ’80s crime flicks saw new respect on its Criterion rerelease in 2009. Terence Stamp plays the quarry for our protagonist hit men, and in his cynical position, he does everything he can to coolly manipulate and postpone his inevitable murder. Tanned and unusually calm for a man in his position, he even makes being a hostage seem bizarrely Zen. Streaming for free on Tubi.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Directed by Stephen Elliott
This Australian cult favorite may have been cast differently — i.e., accurately — today, but it’s still a hoot. Two drag queens (Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving) and a transgender woman (Stamp) go on a road trip in a tour bus across the not-always-friendly Australian outback. As Bernadette, Stamp is moving and warm, slipping into a comic mode and a role that he openly admitted he had been unsure about taking on initially. It was far from his comfort zone, but as ever, he proved his versatility, open-mindedness, and talent for inhabiting his characters with tenderness. Streaming for free on Tubi.
The Limey (1999)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Paying homage to its leading man’s ’60s heyday, Soderbergh’s The Limey is a masterpiece of elliptical crime storytelling, beautifully shot, and offers up deeper, melancholic themes of parenthood and guilt. Here, Stamp is pitted against a smarmy California counterpart played by another counterculture screen legend — Peter Fonda, of Easy Rider fame — and both men show how much the optimistic hedonism of the ’60s has soured. Soderbergh gave Stamp one of his great late career roles in doing so. As a London father and former ne’er-do-well searching for his missing daughter in L.A., and eventually going on a quest for vengeance against the men responsible, Stamp is a fount of buried rage and regret. Cleverly threading his scenes as a young errant dad from Poor Cow into flashback sequences, Soderbergh presents Stamp as living cinema history, and gives him lines made memorable through his gloriously unhinged delivery: “Tell ’em I’m coming. You tell ’em I’m fucking coming!” Streaming for free on Tubi.
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