Terence Stamp obituary: magnetic 60s icon who enjoyed a Superman comeback

It’s apt that Terence Stamp, who has died at the age of 87, appeared on Desert Island Discs twice, as he reckoned he had lived two lives – before and after Fellini. He met the Italian director when starring in ‘Toby Dammit’ in the Edgar Allan Poe portmanteau Spirits of the Dead (1968). But, while Fellini presented Stamp in a new light, as the washed-up actor getting increasingly drunk and disoriented while in Rome to collect a high-speed award, he also introduced him to Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher who helped Stamp recalibrate his worldview during an extended hiatus after he had been left heartbroken by model Jean Shrimpton and seen his career stall because “when the 1960s ended, I just ended with it”.

Terence Henry Stamp was born in Stepney on 22 July 1938. Bombed out of Bow, he was raised in Plaistow with his four younger siblings by an emotionally distant tugboat pilot and the home-making mother who kindled his love of films at the age of three by taking him to see Gary Cooper in Beau Geste (1939). Hiding his scholarship at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art because his father disapproved of his acting ambitions, Stamp did the repertory rounds and shared a Harley Street flat with Michael Caine before landing his film debut as the victimised angelic blonde sailor in Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd (1962), which brought him an Oscar nomination and fame as “the most beautiful man in the world”.

In his third feature, William Wyler’s The Collector (1965), Stamp won the best actor prize at Cannes for his sensitively sinister display as a socially awkward amateur entomologist who imprisons an art student in his farmhouse basement. He didn’t get on with Joseph Losey (Modesty Blaise, 1966), Ken Loach (Poor Cow, 1967) or John Schlesinger (Far from the Madding Crowd, 1967), even though the comic-book romp, the realist drama and the Thomas Hardy adaptation all reinforced his reputation as a swinging 60s icon. As did the reference (intentional or not) to his brief romance with Julie Christie in the Kinks hit ‘Waterloo Sunset’.

There were doubts, however, and Stamp later lamented letting insecurity prompt him to turn down Romeo and Juliet and Camelot, respectively with Audrey Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave. But he never regretted passing Alfie (1966) on to his erstwhile roommate. Nevertheless, triumphs like Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Theorem (1968), which saw Stamp at his enigmatic best as the stranger who seduces each member of a bourgeois Italian household, felt undeserved and he spent much of the next decade seeking enlightenment and perspective in Indian ashrams. 

By sheer luck, a telegram addressed to ‘Clarence’ Stamp found him at the Blue Diamond (rather than the ‘Rough Diamond’) hotel in Pune and the prospect of a scene with Marlon Brando resulted in him hitting the comeback trail, as General Zod in Superman (1978). The Kryptonian was more prominent in Superman II (1980), with Stamp’s black hair and goatee persuading DC Comics to change the bald villain’s appearance on the page. Stamp enjoyed the experience, but steered clear of blockbusters after being bored rigid while playing Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999), although he did voice Jor-El in Smallville (2003 to 2011).

Content with his new status as a character actor, Stamp relished stealing scenes as an abducted gangland squealer in The Hit, the Devil in The Company of Wolves (both 1984), and an oily British businessman in Wall Street (1987). He also freely admitted taking roles to pay the rent (he never owned a home), although he insisted that he always gave of his best in such Hollywood paydays as Legal Eagles (1986), Young Guns (1988) and The Real McCoy (1993). 

Stamp was still capable of springing surprises, however. Having won the Silver Bear at Berlin for Beltenbros (1992), he cropped up in Oscar-winning costumes in Australia to play trans woman Bernadette Bassenger in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), which earned Stamp BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. Sadly, he won’t now get to reunite with Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving in the sequel that Stephan Elliott announced last year.

For six decades, Stamp had to put up with the media swooning over his 60s catalogue while largely overlooking his later output. Such unbalanced coverage does an injustice to the actor and the man. With his piercing blue eyes and sartorial elegance, he remained physically striking. But there was a greater presence, control and self-awareness about Stamp in his later years, as can be seen in the Tim Burton duo of Big Eyes (2014) and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016), and also the British comedy Song for Marion (2012), in which he finally summoned the courage to sing on screen. 

Yet compare Stamp as Wilson, the Cockney crook and grieving father investigating his daughter’s Los Angeles death in The Limey (1999) and the clips from Poor Cow that Steven Soderbergh employed as flashbacks to explore Wilson’s relationship with his child. Same actor, very different performances, one long-distance Kuleshov effect.  

Having been badly injured when a horse fell on him while filming Bitter Harvest (2017), Stamp slowed down prior to his final appearance as the Silver Haired Gentleman in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho (2021). Perhaps now he’s gone, people will realise that there was much more to Terence Stamp than the 8½ films he made in the 1960s.

• Terence Stamp, 22 July 1938 to 17 August 2025