Terence Stamp

Terence Stamp0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty seven, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:30

A castaway is an enigmatic figure in the mainly transparent world of show business. In the sixties he made his film debut in Billy Budd and was described as the most beautiful man in the world. He seems certain to become a huge international star. Instead, he's plotted his own highly individual and often seemingly quirky path through life. Fame and fortune there have been. He's worked with Pasolini and Fellini. His Sergeant Troy in Far from the Madding Crowd is etched in the memory of anyone who saw the film. And yet there have been other occasions when he's seemed to detour from the path. The mysteries deepened because of his reluctance to give interviews. Now, however, he's handing out clues. The first volume of his autobiography is about growing up in London's East End, and the author is Terence Stamp.

Presenter1:14

Tennis, do do you look forward to uh isolation on this desert island? Well, I like to spend a lot of time on my own. Whether I'd like to.

Presenter1:22

Completely on my own, that's another question. Do you think you'd try to escape? No, I think I'd probably make do with what was there. Are you practical enough in the sense of being able to sort of be self sufficient? I mean, could you build yourself a house or a boat?

Presenter1:35

I think I probably could, as I assume I'd have lots of time. You know, it takes me a while to get things together, especially practical things. And what about the music that you've chosen to go with you? I mean, how have you gone about selecting this music? Is it mood music or would there be memories contained in all the records?

Presenter1:51

Some of the choices are very intense memories. They kind of when I hear them they transport me to where I was at the time.

Presenter1:58

And others are just um things I like to hear when I'm in certain moods. Sometimes I like to escape from a mood, sometimes I like to intensify a mood. So

Presenter2:10

Some of the choices are those.

Presenter2:12

And what about the first one? Which category does this come into? This is definitely cheering me up on a rainy day.

Presenter2:18

What is it?

Presenter2:19

It's a piece of bazooki music. The first time I heard it I just felt the top of my head was coming off and uh

Presenter2:25

It's a thing I listen to if I wake up and I'm feeling a bit down and there's no reason for it.

Presenter2:31

I put the old bazooki on and.

Presenter2:34

Generally, puts me up there.

Presenter3:05

There was a Pleasure Absorber played on the bazuki by Iodanis Somidis.

Presenter3:11

Tell you, Stan, what what was the starting point of this book that you've written? It's the first chapter, really, of your autobiography, isn't it?

Presenter3:18

Yes, I never dreamed that I would ever write a book, actually.

Presenter3:21

I met a woman.

Presenter3:23

was an agent, literary agent.

Presenter3:25

And she sort of kept on to me about it. So it was in my mind.

Presenter3:29

Then I went to shoot um Legal Eagles.

Presenter3:33

In America.

Presenter3:34

And my mother died.

Presenter3:37

And I was just kind of there.

Presenter3:40

I was trapped in this situation. I'd started the film, I couldn't really abandon them. And, um

Presenter3:47

I was really

Presenter3:49

hit by it. You know, it was just, um

Presenter3:52

The extraordinary kind of grief that I was experiencing.

Presenter3:55

And

Presenter3:57

It just occurred to me that if I r started writing down

Presenter4:02

you know, all that I could remember.

Presenter4:04

initially about my mother, it would be something to sort of focus me, you know, it would be something to hold me together, you know, while I was going through this bad period. And um it was kind of like a lamp went on in my head, you know, every time I would sit down at the piece of paper.

Presenter4:22

the memories would be really vivid and detailed, like I was just watching them in a movie in my head, you know, and and so it was written in the heat of that, really.

Presenter4:32

Your mother, of course, plainly had a had a very large effect on your life. I mean, she was obviously a very strong woman, strong working class lady, the the traditional uh woman from that background who holds the family together. Tell me about your dad, because he comes out of the book as being a a raffish, attractive character.

Terence Stamp4:39

Later.

Presenter4:49

Yeah, my father was

Presenter4:51

A stoic.

Presenter4:53

had that kind of schizophrenia that like

Presenter4:56

Drinkers have.

Presenter4:58

In the pub he was

Presenter5:00

the life and soul of the party, and wildly funny, and then at home he was just like quiet and needed time on his own and

Presenter5:08

I had always had the feeling that the core of my dad was just stainless steel, you know. It was external things that worried him, you know. He worried about, um, you know, not being able to write quickly, not being able to read very well.

Presenter5:23

Was aware of not having money for clothes and stuff like that. Didn't like to socialise, you know, nobody I can't remember anybody coming into our house.

Presenter5:31

And it wasn't because.

Presenter5:33

Mum was sort of ashamed of the home because we were all in the same boat. You mentioned the house there. I mean, that's the east end of London, let's set it where it was. And what was it like? It was lino on the floor, wasn't it? And all that. Yeah, it was. We had moved during the war, we were bombed three times from the same street, a little street called Canal Road, which was actually in Bow. And they felt that it would be tempting fate to stay there. So we moved further east to this place called Plasto.

Terence Stamp5:34

The home because

Terence Stamp5:37

Boat

Terence Stamp5:41

Yeah.

Terence Stamp5:44

Yeah, I

Terence Stamp5:52

Mm.

Presenter6:02

And I could never understand why my mum was dumb enough to take this house. You know, as I grew up I and I saw

Presenter6:12

The houses that all my friends lived in, they all seemed better.

Presenter6:16

Ours just seemed the very worst on the block. You know, it was like on the end of a street, so it had three walls that were kind of open to the elements. It was always freezing cold and the floor sloped and there was only one window in the living room and there was a sort of arctic front room that we didn't use. Another record, please don't. This puts me in the right frame of mind for...

Terence Stamp6:36

Don't please.

Presenter6:40

Sunset watching

Presenter6:42

It's a pair of Daduke flutes.

Presenter6:45

And it's the kind of thing I imagine guys play in the desert when they're on their own.

Presenter7:22

Music of Islam played on a pair of diduk flutes.

Presenter7:26

Turn the stamp

Presenter7:27

You you mentioned that you're l l raised and born in the East End of London. Do you feel part of a special tribe?

Presenter7:33

I do. My friend Terry Donovan says there's a certain kind of steeliness that we got living there. And uh I kind of recognize it and I feel it. And it's it is I know it there's a lot of sort of camp about, you know,

Presenter7:48

your cockney sparrow and, you know, smiling in the blitz and all that. But for my generation, sort of growing up in the war and and getting it, I mean, not just looking at it, I mean coming out of the the bomb shelter and and your house gone, you know, and living through that.

Presenter8:03

I felt gave me a kind of uh strength that I can fall back on in adversity, you know, or if if I'm kind of really flattened either mentally or emotionally or you know, I get a really hard knock, there's something I can kind of draw on. I know I'm not finished, you know, I would never kill myself, but there's something I can pull myself up and pull myself together and I associate that with the East End.

Terence Stamp8:22

It would never

Terence Stamp8:27

Uh

Presenter8:29

In that time when you were when those giddy times, in the sixties and seventies, when you were this this big film star, this big glamorous figure, again, was that a an important touchstone?

Presenter8:39

Yes, because it you know

Presenter8:41

There's an awful lot of talk about how wonderful the sixties were, and they were. I mean, there's no question. But there was also a lot of fear, you know. I mean, when you're absolutely nothing, you're absolutely ordinary.

Presenter8:55

And then suddenly, you know, fate throws you up on the top of the heap and you get in this kind of adulation and it takes a lot of handling.

Presenter9:03

You know, my fame kind of coincided with the sixties, which I think of as a kind of cosmic I mean, I believe it was a cosmic thing. It was a kind of worldwide motion that happened. You know, they talk about the age of Aquarius.

Presenter9:17

But that was happening to me plus this incredible fame, you know, like somebody had waved a wand and it was my turn. So it was wonderful, but it was terrifying as well.

Presenter9:28

It's interesting, of course, that the two pre-eminent figures in the acting world, the the film world in that time, were you and Maurice Micklewhite, your mate or Kane.

Presenter9:38

Good old mo. Good old mo. And the two of you you see have survived, haven't you? I mean, you're both you're both still there. Yes. So is there something about this East End thing you see?

Terence Stamp9:43

Yes, um

Presenter9:46

Yes, ma and w you know, when I met him it was in the thick of this what we called the Northern Invasion, you know, and I'd only just become an actor, but Mike was, you know, had been trying to make it for a long time, and he was kind of

Presenter9:58

uptight about this

Presenter10:00

huge invasion of kind of northern talent, you know, and he felt that like the the real Londoners were being kind of overlooked, you know, and he couldn't understand why he didn't get a chance and uh

Presenter10:11

When he met me and realized that I was a Londoner like him, there was this immediately this wonderful bond between us and he would always say, you know, our day will come, tell, you know, don't worry about it, you know, don't worry, it'll come, you know, we just gotta hang in there, tell, it'll come, it'll, you know, our turn will come. And I think that's, well, certainly came for him, all right. And you too. Another choice of record, please, Terry.

Presenter10:33

It's Ravel's pavan for a dead princess, but it's played by Ravel himself, and it's just something so touching and wonderful about it.

Presenter11:42

Ravel playing his own pavan for a dead princess.

Presenter11:46

Turnstamp, what sort of gave you that the idea, ever gave you the idea, when you were living down the east end of London, that perhaps you might make an actor?

Presenter11:55

Was there anything in your background that suggested that, you know, that you might do that as a career?

Presenter12:01

No.

Presenter12:02

No, my mother had a certain kind of frustrated theatricality.

Presenter12:08

I was a bit distant from my dad because of the whole thing of, you know, him going away during the war and me being brought up by my mother.

Terence Stamp12:11

Hmm.

Presenter12:15

And I didn't have any kind of male figure.

Presenter12:20

that I really identified with.

Presenter12:24

I mean, I just hated school and I hated the teachers and and it was it was awful. You know, when I realized that school was it for the next ten years, it just seemed like being incarcerated in a prison or something. And so my escape

Presenter12:39

came through the movies and I latched on to Coupe.

Presenter12:44

Errow and

Presenter12:45

They were my guys, you know, and so I d I was always leaving school early and nipping into the Odeon or nipping into the Granada, you know, and

Presenter12:53

I just wanted to be like them.

Presenter12:56

And later on

Presenter12:58

I realized that, in fact, you know, they weren't kind of pirates and cowboys, they were actors who made movies, and so I think that was.

Speaker 413:04

Yeah.

Presenter13:06

How it germinated shows. It's interesting, isn't it? On the the the effect that that m movies had on that generation. I mean it it really was the

Presenter13:15

The Dream Palace or something of that generation. Absolutely.

Terence Stamp13:16

Yeah, that

Presenter13:18

And it showed them horizons that that they'd never have seen. I mean, for instance, when you went to America, and I'll bet you knew New York, didn't you? Oh, sure, sure, because I'd seen all the Cagney movies, you know, and I was identifying streets and what about uh the Hollywood ladies, the Glamour Queens. Did you fall in love? My dreams, you know, were always about Jean Tierney, Rita Haylor, and Hedie Lamarley.

Terence Stamp13:24

Oh sh.

Terence Stamp13:25

Cause I

Terence Stamp13:27

Yeah.

Presenter13:39

I set my size very high.

Presenter13:42

Did you ever meet them when later on you met them? Yeah, I dated Rita Hayworth when she came back. Yeah, I read that she was in London and I.

Terence Stamp13:46

Did you

Presenter13:50

I found out she was staying at the Connell and I called her.

Presenter13:53

And uh

Presenter13:54

I said you know.

Presenter13:56

I'm Terence, and really blighted to meet you and

Presenter13:59

She said, Oh fine, yeah, you know, come and have some tea and I went to the Connaught.

Presenter14:03

Took her out to Parks, that was our first date, in Beach and Place.

Presenter14:07

That was wonderful.

Presenter14:09

Well it it wasn't a disappointment? No, not at all. I mean it was ra it was incredibly memorable. I mean you know it's when you have a long term fantasy that comes to pass,

Presenter14:22

It's extraordinary sensation you feel. You know, I remember looking at her across the candles in this kind of basement in Beecham Place and thinking, This is her, you know.

Presenter14:33

This is Gilda, you know. And she knew, you see. She was kind of the older woman, you know. I was looking at her and she would smile and and she was terrifically hip. But we did have a wonderful time. She was wonderful. She treated it like a proper date, you know. Another choice of record, please turn.

Presenter14:48

Ah yeah, this is um I don't want to explain this'cause it's fully explained in the book. It's just called uh Blue Tango. I never collected it. I just when it comes on I paralyze for a few minutes.

Presenter15:30

That was Leroy Anderson's Blue Tango. And then, in fact, uh, Terrence was a memory of you in a in a cinema, wasn't it, with a girl. In those days, I mean I mean it we're talking now about the fifties. It was a very innocent era, wasn't it? I mean, growing up sexually and that sort of thing. I mean, you took girls out, you didn't

Presenter15:46

You didn't dream of of uh

Speaker 215:47

Dream.

Presenter15:49

Oh yeah, I dreamed doing all kinds of things for them, but but it it was kind of enforced innocence, you know, because

Terence Stamp15:51

Well yeah, I

Presenter15:58

In the East End, if a girl wasn't a virgin, she was a scrubber. I mean, sh her life was over, you know. You were it's uh one or the other, you know. So girls that actually

Terence Stamp16:03

Her life was over.

Presenter16:09

You know

Presenter16:10

gave carnal knowledge, they were very, very thin on the ground, you know. I can't remember any. I mean I

Presenter16:17

Later on I suppose I started meeting local girls that were kind of a bit keen, you know, but

Presenter16:22

In uh, how should we say, my formative years, it was extremely barren. And also that one wonderful deep pain of of teenage unrequited love. That's awful, isn't it?

Presenter16:35

I'm really not sure that it's good for you, you know. I'm not sure that

Presenter16:39

The the sexual urge when it's at its strongest, which you know is in my case was from about nine onwards.

Terence Stamp16:45

Yeah.

Presenter16:47

should be that repressed. I mean, I just don't think it's particularly good for the

Presenter16:51

the nature of the beast as it were. And the things that happen to you

Presenter16:57

The kind of impressions that go in during those years.

Presenter17:02

really go in deep, you know. Things can spark me off, you know. I can see a kind of a girl walking in the street with perhaps a look that I remember from the fifties or late forties and it transports me to being a child, to seeing that look for the first time, that kind of yearning, you know, and the kind of curiosity to to know, you know.

Presenter17:27

Another choice of record.

Presenter17:30

My mother loved Mario Lanza, and this was actually her favourite, but because she loved him, she always used to take me. We used to go together to see his movies.

Presenter17:38

And

Presenter17:40

There's a lot of argument about Lenz's voice, but for me he's just the best, and I think this record states my case.

Speaker 417:47

Be my Lord, for no one else can earn this year.

Speaker 217:54

Uh

Speaker 417:59

This need that you and you alone create Just fill my arms The way you filled my dreams The dreams that you inspire

Presenter18:18

Marry Alanza and be my love.

Presenter18:21

Turn the stamp

Presenter18:22

B one of the fascinating parts of the book that I loved was this this about your growing up was this image I have of this kid going in for his first suit of really be wanting to be Jack the lad and putting his entire future in the hands of a tailor. It was a very important moment, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. Huge, huge moment.

Terence Stamp18:37

Okay.

Presenter18:39

And I was lucky, you know, because I got a good one. I mean, I think had I got a bad one, then...

Presenter18:44

My ideas about being sartorial would have ended there, you know. No, it meant it was.

Presenter18:51

Well, it was how we were in the East End, you know, the measure of your suit was the measure of you. You know, guys assess one another by

Presenter19:00

What you wore, and that was my first made-to-measure. My dad didn't have a made-to-measure suit until, you know, I made a few Bob and I started treating him.

Presenter19:09

I was lucky because I understood about good geek.

Presenter19:12

And I got lucky with a tailor and I had a made-to-measure suit. But if you understand about good gear and you can't afford it, or you're somewhere where there isn't a good tailor...

Presenter19:22

I mean, there's not a lot of good tailors anywhere, but, you know, in London there are good tailors.

Presenter19:26

What was your dad's reaction though when you came home with the suit? I mean never having had one himself. He was really proud, you know. That was the first time that I ever saw an expression of kind of pride on his face. You know, I could just read it in his face. I knew that he had never had one and he was pleased that his boy had one. There wasn't any envy, there wasn't any problem about

Presenter19:48

You know, me growing up, having something he hadn't had. He just appreciated this wonderful whistle.

Presenter19:56

It's amazing, isn't it? That uh I mean I don't know if kids listening to this would would wonder what on earth we're talking about, but in the fifties that was a terribly important moment in your life, wasn't it? Yeah.

Terence Stamp20:04

Yeah.

Presenter20:06

And it's hard now. I mean, it must be hard for kids now to to fully understand what it was like then. There wasn't any colour. I mean, there wasn't that the fashion was so structured, you know. There wasn't colours. You know, I remember the guy I saw in a green shirt.

Presenter20:26

Shirt, how did he get a green you know, you were so limited, everything was so limited, you know. Blue shoes, I remember dreaming about blue long before Elvis, you know.

Presenter20:37

Let's have another record, please. I love Netkin Cole. I often think that um.

Presenter20:43

If there's any truth at all to reincarnation, it would be worth coming back, you know, to have a voice like Nat, all in the game, Nat Kinko.

Speaker 420:50

Once in a while he won't call, but it's all in regain.

Speaker 421:01

Soon he'll be there at your side.

Speaker 421:05

With a sweet bouquet

Speaker 421:12

And he'll kiss your lips And caress your waiting fingertips

Speaker 421:22

And your heart.

Presenter21:24

Naking Colon all in the game.

Presenter21:27

Terence, w what was your your very first appearance in the drama on the amateur stage?

Presenter21:34

Damn.

Presenter21:36

You know you know how to hurt a guy, Mike. It was a play that I did, a Somerset Mourn play called The Sacred Flame, which I did for the East Ham Choral and Dramatic Society. How old were you? I was coming up for sixteen because I was studying for my GCEs. And the fact that I accepted this part was a kind of suicide mission, you know, because I knew I had should be studied.

Presenter21:59

And I think somebody had dropped out, you know, because I was playing this sixty-five-year-old Colonel and um

Terence Stamp22:03

Okay.

Presenter22:05

It was a nightmare, just learning the word. I mean, everything about it was a nightmare. But when I I got on, we did a full public dress rehearsal at the Deaf, Dumb and Blind Society.

Terence Stamp22:07

I mean everything

Presenter22:14

I was so nervous. I mean they were in fact terrifically appreciative, you know, because some could hear and some could see.

Presenter22:24

It was my first run, you know, out there on the boards and uh

Presenter22:29

I wasn't bad, I just fell to bits, you know.

Presenter22:32

And it and uh

Presenter22:34

and the following night we played the East Ham Town Hall.

Presenter22:36

And that wasn't a lot better.

Presenter22:39

And it was reviewed.

Presenter22:41

was reviewed in the Stratford Express, you know, and and I'd kind of I'd seen Scaramouche, you know, a few weeks previous and I thought, Oh, that with the white sideboard, Stuart Granger, that's, you know, right up my street. So I'd put a bit of powder on the sideboards, you know,'cause I had this mass of black hair, you know.

Presenter22:57

And the critic said the cast is uniformly excellent, you know, with the exception of.

Presenter23:04

The young actor called Terence Stemmer, whose shock of black hair contradicts grossly with the age of and everybody saw it, you know. Everybody read the review.

Presenter23:15

Put me off acting for years. Did it really? Yeah, it did, yeah. Frightened the life out of me.

Presenter23:19

Another record, please don't.

Presenter23:22

I missed John Lennon and uh Did you know him? Yeah, I didn't know him well, but I knew him and the first time I ever met him

Presenter23:29

He just made this record.

Presenter23:31

And uh we ran at Brian Epstein's house and he played it for me.

Presenter23:35

As things turned out, I think if he'd have hidden his own love away a bit, he might still be with us. Anyway.

Presenter23:42

You've got to hide your love away.

Speaker 223:43

How could she say to me, Love will find a way?

Speaker 223:51

Gather round all you clowns, let me hear you sing

Speaker 224:03

Hey, you've got to hide your love away.

Speaker 224:10

Hey, you've got to hide your love away.

Presenter24:15

The late and great John Lennon, you've got to hide your love away.

Presenter24:20

Terrence Stamp, can I put a a quote to you that I I picked up from an interview that you gave once, one of the rare interviews you gave, I should say. And you said, If I wasn't an actor, I'd probably be a psychopath.

Presenter24:31

Yeah.

Presenter24:31

What what does that mean?

Presenter24:33

And I have a lot of things in my head, and obviously I'm kind of...

Presenter24:37

There's a lot of time when I'm on when I'm fueled by kind of high-octane gas.

Presenter24:44

As an actor, I get a chance to

Presenter24:48

Express all the the different things that come up out of me.

Presenter24:54

And so it's a kind of release. It's like a kind of a safety valve for me. That this the the the big energy in myself can be channeled into something that's productive.

Presenter25:06

I think if I didn't have that outlet.

Presenter25:09

then I would be somebody who, you know, vacillated from terrific ups to terrific downs. And that's I mean, I consider that psychotic. I mean, what I consider psychotic is um is when you're thinking hard about something other than what what is happening.

Presenter25:29

You know, if you're you're just walking down the street, but you're thinking you that's the last thing on your mind is walking down the street. You're you're involved in uh planning robberies and.

Presenter25:40

making millions and

Presenter25:42

doing all kinds of things. You know, I think that's kind of s I term that psychotic behavior. It's just I'm lucky'cause I can do something with it. All these things that occur to me, I can channel them. No final choice of record, please dance.

Presenter25:55

Great Jim, another one lost crossing the bridge. Jim Morrison, who I knew.

Presenter26:02

Who I think probably had the definitive rock'n'roll voice, Here's to you, Jim, light my fire.

Speaker 426:17

Just the main old

Speaker 426:21

Shout out the nail of fire

Speaker 426:24

China said the night on

Presenter26:40

Like my father Dawson, Jim Morrison.

Presenter26:44

Terence Stamp, you're now on this d desert island. You've got three important things to decide. Now the first is that along comes some tidal wave and it it wipes away seven of your records. You're left with one. Which one will you choose to keep?

Presenter26:57

I think the flutes. The flutes. The flutes. The de Duke.

Presenter27:01

And what about the

Presenter27:03

The book. You assume you've got the Bible there, assume you've got the works of Shakespeare.

Presenter27:08

The book I'd like to have is something called The Joy of Cooking.

Presenter27:13

And I just assume that

Presenter27:15

I'm gonna be able to cook or if I'm not gonna be able to cook

Presenter27:19

We had time to sit down and read the book.

Presenter27:21

And what about the luxury object, inanimate? Remember Nina and Frederick?

Presenter27:26

Frederick's mother.

Presenter27:28

Had

Presenter27:29

what she used to call her summer duvet, and it was made of this tiniest of eider feathers.

Presenter27:39

It was so light you could

Presenter27:41

Light shone through it when you held it up.

Presenter27:44

And I loved it.

Presenter27:46

and when she passed away,

Presenter27:48

She left it to Frederick, and he gave it to me.

Presenter27:52

And

Presenter27:53

It's so wonderful.

Presenter27:55

that I often travel with it. It really kind of

Presenter27:58

Get you bedded down for the night. I think that's

Presenter28:01

My luxury item.

Presenter28:03

Turner Stam, thank you very much indeed.

Terence Stamp28:13

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