Oliver Reed facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Oliver Reed
Reed in 1968
Born	Robert Oliver Reed (1938-02-13)13 February 1938 Wimbledon, London, England
Died	2 May 1999(1999-05-02) (aged 61) Valletta, Malta
Burial place	Bruhenny Graveyard, Churchtown, County Cork, Ireland
Education	Ewell Castle School
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1955–1999
Spouse(s)	Kate Byrne ​ ​ (m. 1959; div. 1969)​ Josephine Burge ​ (m. 1985)​
Children	2
Relatives	Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (grandfather) Sir Carol Reed (uncle)

Robert Oliver Reed (13 February 1938 – 2 May 1999) was an English actor known for his well-to-do, macho image and "hellraiser" lifestyle. After making his first significant screen appearances in Hammer Horror films in the early 1960s, his notable films include The Trap (1966), playing Bill Sikes in the 1968 Best Picture Oscar winner Oliver! (a film directed by his uncle Carol Reed), Women in Love (1969), Hannibal Brooks (1969), The Devils (1971), portraying Athos in The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974); the lover and stepfather in Tommy (1975), Funny Bones (1995) and Gladiator (2000).

For playing Antonius Proximo, the old, gruff gladiator trainer in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, in what was his final film, Reed was posthumously nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 2000. At the peak of his career, in 1971, British exhibitors voted Reed fifth most popular star at the box office. The British Film Institute (BFI) stated that "partnerships with Michael Winner and Ken Russell in the mid-60s saw Reed become an emblematic Brit-flick icon".

Early life

Robert Oliver Reed was born on 13 February 1938 at 9 Durrington Park Road, Wimbledon, southwest London, to Peter Reed, a sports journalist, and Marcia (née Napier-Andrews). He was the nephew of film director Sir Carol Reed, and grandson of the actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and his mistress, Beatrice May Pinney (who later assumed the name 'Reed'), she being "the only person who understood, listened to, encouraged and kissed Oliver". Reed claimed to have been a descendant (through an illegitimate step) of Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia. Reed attended 14 schools, including Ewell Castle School in Surrey. "My father thought I was just lazy," Reed later said. "He thought I was a dunce."

Reed claimed he had worked as a boxer, a bouncer, a taxi driver and a hospital porter. He then did his compulsory army service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. "The army helped," he said later. "I recognized that most other people were actors as well. I was in the peacetime army and they were all telling us youngsters about the war."

Career

Early years

Reed began his acting career as an extra in films. He appeared uncredited in Ken Annakin's film Value for Money (1955) and Norman Wisdom's film The Square Peg (1958). Uncredited television appearances included episodes of The Invisible Man (1958), The Four Just Men (1959) and The Third Man. He appeared in the documentary Hello London (1958).

Reed's first break was playing Richard of Gloucester in a six-part BBC TV series The Golden Spur (1959). It did not seem to help his career immediately: He was not credited in the films The Captain's Table (1959), Upstairs and Downstairs (1959), directed by Ralph Thomas, Life Is a Circus (1960), The Angry Silence (1960), The League of Gentlemen (1960) and Beat Girl (1960). He played a bouncer in The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) for Hammer Films with whom he would become associated; the director was Terence Fisher. Reed was then in The Bulldog Breed (1960), another Wisdom film, playing the leader of a gang of Teddy Boys roughing up Wisdom in a cinema.

Reed got his first significant role in Hammer Films' Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), again directed by Fisher. He went back to small roles for His and Hers (1961), a Terry-Thomas comedy; No Love for Johnnie (1961) for Ralph Thomas; and The Rebel (1961) with Tony Hancock.

Leading man

Reed's first starring role came when Hammer cast him as the central character in Terence Fisher’s The Curse of the Werewolf (1961). Hammer liked Reed and gave him good supporting roles in the swashbuckler The Pirates of Blood River (1962), directed by John Gilling; Captain Clegg (1962), a smugglers tale with Peter Cushing; The Damned (1963), a science fiction film directed by Joseph Losey; Paranoiac (1963), a psycho thriller for director Freddie Francis; and The Scarlet Blade (1963); a swashbuckler set during the English Civil War, directed by Gilling, with Reed as a Roundhead.

During this time, he appeared in some ITV Playhouse productions, "Murder in Shorthand" (1962) and "The Second Chef" (1962), and guest-starred in episodes of The Saint. He also had the lead in a non-Hammer horror, The Party's Over (made 1963, released 1965), directed by Guy Hamilton.

Michael Winner and Ken Russell

In 1964, he starred in the first of six films directed by Michael Winner, The System (known as The Girl-Getters in the US). The film was seen by Ken Russell who then cast Reed in the title role of The Debussy Film (1965), a TV biopic of French composer Claude Debussy. Reed said this was crucial to his career because "That was the first time I met Ken Russell and it was the first part I had after I'd had my face cut in a fight and no one would employ me. Everybody thought I was a cripple." It was also the first time he broke away from villainous roles. "Until that time they thought I was a neolithic dustbin," said Reed. Reed later said "Hammer films had given me my start and Michael Winner my bread then Ken Russell came on the screen and gave me my art."

He narrated Russell's TV movie Always on Sunday (1965). Reed returned to Hammer for The Brigand of Kandahar (1965), playing a villainous Indian in an imperial action film for Gilling. He later called it the worst film he ever made for Hammer. He guest-starred in episodes of It's Cold Outside and Court Martial, the latter directed by Seth Holt. He had a regular role in the TV series R3 (1965). Reed was the lead in a Canadian-British co-production, The Trap (1966), co-starring with Rita Tushingham.

Reed's career stepped up another level when he starred in the popular comedy film The Jokers (1966), his second film with Winner, alongside Michael Crawford. After playing a villain in a horror movie, The Shuttered Room (1967), he did a third with Winner, I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967), co-starring with Orson Welles. Reed was reunited with Russell for another TV movie, Dante's Inferno (1967), playing Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Oliver! and stardom

Reed's star rose further as a result of playing Bill Sikes in Oliver! (1968), alongside Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Mark Lester, Jack Wild and Harry Secombe, in his uncle Carol Reed's screen version of the successful stage musical. It was a huge hit, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Reed receiving praise for his villainous performance.

He was in the black comedy The Assassination Bureau (1969) with Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas, directed by Basil Dearden; and a war film for Winner, Hannibal Brooks (1969).

More successful than either was his fourth film with Russell, a film version of Women in Love (1969). In 1969, Interstate Theatres awarded him their International Star of the Year Award.

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970) was a thriller directed by Anatole Litvak. The following year, Reed appeared in the controversial film The Devils (1971), directed by Russell with Vanessa Redgrave.

An anecdote holds that Reed could have been chosen to play James Bond. In 1969, Bond franchise producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were looking for a replacement for Sean Connery and Reed (who had recently played a resourceful killer in The Assassination Bureau) was mentioned as a possible choice for the role, with Timothy Dalton and Roger Moore as the other choices. Whatever the reason, Reed was never to play Bond. After Reed's death, the Guardian Unlimited called the casting decision, "One of the great missed opportunities of post-war British movie history."

Reed (left) with Carole André and Marcello Mastroianni in Dirty Weekend (1973)

He made a series of action-oriented projects: The Hunting Party (1971), a Western shot in Spain with Gene Hackman; Sitting Target (1972), a tough gangster film; and Z.P.G. (1972), a science fiction film with Geraldine Chaplin. In March 1971, he said he would make a film, The Offering, which he would co-write and produce, but it was not made. He did The Triple Echo (1972) directed by Michael Apted, and featured Reed alongside Glenda Jackson. Reed also appeared in a number of Italian films: Dirty Weekend (1973), with Marcello Mastroianni; One Russian Summer (1973) with Claudia Cardinale; and Revolver (1973) with Fabio Testi.

He had great success playing Athos in The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974) for director Richard Lester from a script by George MacDonald Fraser. Reed had an uncredited bit-part in Russell's Mahler (1974), was the lead in Blue Blood (1973) and And Then There Were None (1974), produced by Harry Alan Towers. His next project with Ken Russell was Tommy, where he plays Tommy's stepfather, based on The Who's 1969 concept album, Tommy, and starring its lead singer Roger Daltrey. Royal Flash (1975) reunited him with Richard Lester and George MacDonald Fraser, playing Otto von Bismarck. He had a cameo in Russell's Lisztomania (1975).

Reed appeared in The New Spartans (1975), then acted alongside Karen Black, Bette Davis, and Burgess Meredith in the Dan Curtis horror film, Burnt Offerings (1976). He was in The Sell Out (1976) and The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976) with Lee Marvin. After Assault in Paradise (1977), he returned to swashbuckling in Crossed Swords (UK title The Prince and the Pauper) (1977), as Miles Hendon alongside Raquel Welch and a grown-up Mark Lester, who had worked with Reed in Oliver!, from a script co-written by Fraser.

Reed did Tomorrow Never Comes (1978) for Peter Colinson and The Big Sleep (1978) with Winner. He and Jackson were reunited in The Class of Miss MacMichael (1978), then he made a film in Canada, The Mad Trapper, that was unfinished. Reed returned to the horror genre as Dr. Hal Raglan in David Cronenberg's 1979 film The Brood and ended the decade with A Touch of the Sun (1979), a comedy with Peter Cushing.

1980s

After the 1970s, Reed's films had less success. He did a comedy for Charles B. Griffith, Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980) and played Gen. Rodolfo Graziani in Lion of the Desert (1981), which co-starred Anthony Quinn and chronicled the resistance to Italian occupation of Libya. On 20 January 2016, ISIS used a clip of Lion of the Desert as part of a propaganda video threatening Italy with terrorist attacks.

Reed was a villain in Disney's Condorman (1981) and did the horror film, Venom (1981). He was a villain in The Sting II (1983). He also starred as Lt-Col Gerard Leachman in the Iraqi historical film Al-Mas' Ala Al-Kubra (a.k.a. Clash of Loyalties) (1983), which dealt with Leachman's exploits during the 1920 revolution in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Reed was in Spasms (1983), Two of a Kind (1983), Masquerade (1984), Christopher Columbus (1985), Black Arrow (1985) and Captive (1986). He says he was contemplating quitting acting when Nicolas Roeg cast him in Castaway (1986) as the middle-aged Gerald Kingsland, who advertises for a "wife" (played by Amanda Donohoe) to live on a desert island with him for a year.

Reed was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1986 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at Rosslyn Park rugby club in west London. Reed was in The Misfit Brigade (1987), Gor (1987), Master of Dragonard Hill (1987), Dragonard (1987), Skeleton Coast (1988), Blind Justice (1988), Captive Rage (1988), and Rage to Kill (1988). Most of these were exploitation films produced by the impresario Harry Alan Towers filmed in South Africa and released straight to video.

He was in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) (as the god Vulcan); The Lady and the Highwayman (1989) with Hugh Grant; The House of Usher (1989); The Return of the Musketeers (1990) with Lester and Fraser; Treasure Island (1990) with Charlton Heston; A Ghost in Monte Carlo (1990); Hired to Kill (1990); Panama Sugar (1990); The Revenger (1990); The Pit and the Pendulum (1991); Prisoner of Honor (1991) for Russell; and Severed Ties (1993).

Later years

Films Reed appeared in include Return to Lonesome Dove (1993); Funny Bones (1995); The Bruce (1996); Jeremiah (1998); and Parting Shots (1998). His final role was the elderly slave dealer Proximo in Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), in which he played alongside Richard Harris, an actor whom Reed admired greatly both on and off the screen. The film was released after his death with some footage filmed with a double, digitally mixed with outtake footage. The film was dedicated to him. In addition to his posthumous BAFTA recognition, he shared the film's nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture with the rest of the principal players.

Music

In addition to acting, Reed released several singles in the popular music vein, though with limited success. These included "Wild One"/"Lonely for a Girl" (1961), "Baby It's Cold Outside" (duet with Joyce Blair) and "Wild Thing" (1992) (duet with snooker player Alex Higgins). Oliver also later narrated a track called "Walpurgis Nacht" by Italian heavy metal band Death SS.

Personal life

In 1959, Reed married Kate Byrne. The couple had one son, Mark, before their divorce in 1969. While filming his part of Bill Sikes in Oliver! (1968), he met Jacquie Daryl, a classically trained dancer who was also in the film. They became lovers and subsequently had a daughter, Sarah. In 1985, he married Josephine Burge, to whom he remained married until his death. When they met in 1980, she was 16 years old and he was 42. In his final years, Reed and Burge lived in Churchtown, County Cork, Ireland.

In December 1974, Reed appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, a show where the guest, a "castaway", talks about their life and chooses eight favourite songs and the reasons for their choices. He named "Jardins sous la pluie" by French composer Claude Debussy as his favourite track, and when asked what book and inanimate luxury item he would take with him on a desert island Reed chose Winnie-the-Pooh by English author A. A. Milne and an inflatable rubber woman.

Activities

Broome Hall, Surrey, Reed's home for eight years from 1971

In 1964, Reed was in the Crazy Elephant nightclub in Leicester Square and got into a dispute at the bar with a couple of men that ended with Reed walking away with a dismissive remark. They waited until he went to the toilet, followed him in and attacked him with broken bottles. He received 63 stitches in one side of his face, was left with permanent scarring, and initially thought his film career was over. According to his brother, subsequent to the attack, when arguing, the burly Reed would bring his hands up in a gesture that was defensive but many men found very intimidating.

In 1993, Reed was unsuccessfully sued by his former stuntman, stand-in and friend Reg Prince, for an alleged spinal injury incurred by the latter while on location for the filming of Castaway.

He claimed to have turned down major roles in two Hollywood movies, The Sting (although he did appear in the 1983 sequel The Sting II). When the 1970s UK government raised taxes on personal income, Reed initially declined to join the exodus of major British film stars to Hollywood and other more tax-friendly locales. In the late 1970s, Reed relocated to Guernsey as a tax exile. He had sold his large house, Broome Hall, between the Surrey villages of Coldharbour and Ockley, and initially lodged at the Duke of Normandie Hotel in Saint Peter Port.

Reed often described himself as a British patriot and preferred to live in the United Kingdom over relocating to Hollywood. He supported British military efforts during the Falklands War. According to Robert Sellers, Reed tried reenlisting, at age 44, in the British army following the outbreak of the conflict but was turned down.

In 2013, the writer Robert Sellers published What Fresh Lunacy Is This? – The Authorised Biography of Oliver Reed.

Death

Reed died from a heart attack during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta, on the afternoon of 2 May 1999. He was 61 years old.

A funeral for Reed was held in Churchtown, County Cork, in Ireland where he had resided during the last years of his life. His body was interred in Churchtown's Bruhenny Graveyard. The epitaph on his gravestone reads, "He made the air move."

Aftermath

As a result of his death, Reed's remaining scenes in Gladiator had to be completed using a body double and computer-generated imagery (CGI) techniques. Despite this, he was posthumously nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor. Russell Crowe said in 2010: "I never got on with Ollie. He has visited me in dreams and asked me to talk kindly of him. So I should... but we never had a pleasant conversation."

Filmography, awards and nominations

Books

• Reed, Oliver (1981). Reed All About Me. Sevenoaks, Kent, UK: Coronet Books. ISBN 9780340260142. OCLC 1052806394. https://archive.org/details/reedallaboutme00reed.

See also

In Spanish: Oliver Reed para niños