Monday, February 23, 1998
Stamp strides back in the act with ‘Love Walked In’
FILM Famous ’60s star avoids cliche stereotype by relying on
versatility
By Michelle Nguyen
Daily Bruin Contributor
In the 1960s, actor Terence Stamp ("The Adventures of Priscilla,
Queen of the Desert") was courted by big guns Frederico Fellini,
Peter Ustinov and Ken Loach. But then, as he explains, it was
because he was so identified with the ’60s, "When the decade ended,
I ended with it."
Cut to Terence Stamp, the swami, in orange robes and with hair
he had not cut in seven years, living in an ashram in Puna, India.
After ending with the decade, he had become a wandering traveler,
cutting off all ties with Fellinis and the rest if the world of
leading men.
Eight years into his acting sabbatical, he’s holding an
old-fashioned telegram in his hand in the foothills of Bombay. His
long-suffering agent was beckoning him. The telegram was addressed
to Clarence Stamp.
"It said would you be prepared to come back to London to meet
Richard Donner about the two Superman films with Marlon Brando, and
could you stop in Paris to talk to Peter Brook about ‘Meetings with
Remarkable Men,’ and I thought, ‘Wow’. This was back in the
universe, back in the marketplace. The universe knockin’ on my door
again, and that was my comeback," Stamp recalls with amused
nostalgia.
But it would be a rebirth into a different kind of career.
"I was no longer a star, just a jobbing actor," Stamp explains.
He went on to create a niche for himself in roles that stretched
his ability. Hence, the ’60s Stamp of "Billy Budd" stardom became
the Bernadette of "Priscilla Queen of the Desert." Today, Stamp is
content to play a non-leading man, as he does in "Love Walked In,"
a modern film noir. But, at first, he did not make the transition
into the world of "jobbing actors" wholeheartedly.
"I was dragged screaming into that," Stamp says frankly. "It
wasn’t anything I wanted. I was getting pissed off that I wasn’t
getting the Tom Cruise parts."
He continues, "All of us actors are lazy. I mean I’d love to be
in ‘X Files’ and just be in a nice suit and say the words. But the
truth is you have to really work and really stretch yourself, which
you never choose to do actually. I don’t think leading men choose
to do that. They all want to be sort of a Robert Redford and Warren
Beatty, get all the good lines, wear the great costumes, get good
close-ups."
But the meditations he gathered traipsing through the rice
fields of Bali and living in the straw rooms of Kyoto prepared him
for the life of an actor who would see intrinsic value in his
work.
"The shift happens, and you’re no longer doing the work for the
possibility of getting an Oscar," Stamp says. "You’re doing the
work for the work."
He adds, "I’m not beautiful enough. I don’t have enough grace to
just be Terence Stamp in a great suit the way Cary Grant was, Gary
Cooper was. I have to be this actor in whom anyone can mirror their
fantasies. I gotta be the perfect mirror. I gotta keep the mirror
clean."
He does play a dashing man in a great suit though, in "Love
Walked In." The film, costarring Dennis Leary and Aitana
Sanchez-Gijon, sees him as hard-shelled millionaire named Fred
Moore who falls in love with Vicky Rivas (Sanchez-Gijon), the
sensuous lounge singer who is married to her pianist, Jack Hanaway
(Leary).
Vicky and Jack are poor and in love, playing in a small unknown
bar called the Blue Cat Lounge to make a living. Then Jack’s old
friend Eddie comes to visit. He is a private investigator and
concocts a scheme for Vicky to seduce Moore, a Blue Cat patron, so
that he can take photos of them and get commission from Moore’s
rich and suspicious wife. Moore is an easy target because he has
been in a long, loveless marriage which he endures for money.
"What was interesting to me was to be able to convey that
hardened shell around his heart, cracking and becoming like wax and
kind of melting, and then kind of overwhelming him," Stamp
explains.
"So that he’s suddenly seeing things with a totally different
perspective," Stamp continues. "He’s looking at it with an open
heart and he understands that everything else has to be sacrificed,
all the money, everything. He comes to this woman unadorned."
Stamp plays the role of a man who makes up the third side of the
love triangle, an easily targetable cliche, but as Director Juan J.
Campanella explains, "He is someone who can take a character who
might in other hands become a cliche and add layers and layers of
depth. He always gets below the veneer to the most human
level."
Stamp’s appears next in "Kiss the Sky," in which he plays a
former Amsterdam junkie who becomes a Zen monk named Kozen, a
continuation of his experiment in versatility.
FILM: "Love Walked In" is currently playing.