Terence Stamp, the London-born actor whose stunning looks helped define the 1960s film scene — but who was best known to Americans as General Zod in the early “Superman” films — died Sunday. He was 87.
Stamp’s cause and location of death were not immediately released by his family.
“He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, both as an actor and as a writer that will continue to touch and inspire people for years to come,” Stamp’s family told Reuters news service.
Stamp was best known globally as the villainous Zod from 1980’s “Superman II,” in which his plans for world domination are foiled by Christopher Reeve’s Superman.
But Stamp was also a crucial figure in Britain’s 1960s film scene, so charming that his 1962 movie debut as the title character in 1962’s “Billy Budd” earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
He followed that breakout performance with a number of leading man roles, including in “The Collector” and “Far From the Madding Crowd.” Once dubbed “the most beautiful man in the world,” Stamp was also known for his romances with a number of beautiful women, including actress Julie Christie and model Jean Shrimpton.
But when the decade flipped, Stamp’s career flipped with it.
“It’s a mystery to me. I was in my prime. When the 1960s ended, I just ended with it,” he told the Guardian in 2015. “The day-to-day thing was awful, and I couldn’t live with it. So I bought a round-the-world ticket and left.”
Getty; Warner Bros.
Terence Stamp in “Billy Budd” in 1962 (left) and in “Superman 2” in 1980 (right). (Getty; Warner Bros.)
Stamp was living off the grid in India when he got a telegram asking if he’d be interested in the Superman films. He was on a plane back to Hollywood the next day.
“During that time away from the screen, I had transmuted myself. I no longer saw myself as a leading man,” he told the Guardian. “What had happened inside of me enabled me to take the role, and not feel embarrassed or depressed about playing the villain. I just decided I was a character actor now and I can do anything.”
Following the Superman movies, Stamp joined a wide variety of projects in the back half of his career, including 1984’s “The Hit,” 1987’s “Wall Street” and 1999’s “The Limey.”
Throughout his time in Hollywood, Stamp did very little TV work, explaining that he much preferred movies but sometimes needed the money.
“I hated appearing on TV,” he told the British Film Institute in 2013. “I hated the work, I hated the workload, I hated that it was about dialogue not pictures. But I’d done it because I was broke.”
One of Stamp’s best-reviewed later career performances was as a trans woman in “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” in 1994, a role he said he was initially anxious about.
”Cross-dressing has been around at least since Shakespeare,” Stamp told People magazine in 1994. ”It would be nice if greater androgyny were the next big social development. It would make relationships easier.”
Stamp had no children, and though he was in several high-profile relationships, he was only married once — a six-year union with Elizabeth O’Rourke that ended in 2008. His final film role was a brief appearance in 2021’s “Last Night in Soho.”
With News Wire Services
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