Robert Oliver Reed (13 February 1938-2 May 1999) was an English actor known for his upper-middle class, macho image and hellraiser lifestyle.
Notable films include The Trap (1966), playing Bill Sikes in the Best Picture Oscar winner Oliver! (1968), Women in Love (1969), Hannibal Brooks (1969), The Devils (1971), portraying Athos in The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), playing a Teddy Boy in Tommy (1975), The Brood (1979), Lion of the Desert (1981), Castaway (1986), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), 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 5th most popular star at the box office.
An alcoholic, Reed had issues with drink that were well publicized, from appearances on chat shows to a high-profile friendship with drinking partner and The Who drummer Keith Moon, whom he met while working on Tommy.
Reed was born on 13 February 1938 at 9 Durrington Park Road, Wimbledon, to Peter Reed, a sports journalist, and Marcia.
When he got out of the army, Reed began his acting career as an extra in films. He appeared uncredited in 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).
More information: A Podcast on Film
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.
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.
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 which he wrestled naked with Alan Bates in front of a log fire. In 1969 Interstate Theatres awarded him their International Star of the Year Award.
Take a Girl Like You (1970) was a sex comedy with Hayley Mills based on a novel by Kingsley Amis; 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.
More information: The Quietus
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 cruel stepfather, a 1950s Teddy Boy, based on The Who's 1969 concept album Tommy and starring its lead singer Roger Daltrey.
Reed was a villain in Disney's Condorman (1981) and did the horror film Venom (1981).
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).
Reed was in Return to Lonesome Dove (1993); Funny Bones (1995); Russian Roulette-Moscow 95 (1995); Luise knackt den Jackpot (1995); Die Tunnelgangster von Berlin (1996); The Bruce (1996); Jeremiah (1998); The Incredible Adventures of Marco Polo on His Journeys to the Ends of the Earth (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 out-take footage. The film was dedicated to him.
More information: The Guardian
I'm just a tawdry character who explodes now and again.
Oliver Reed
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