Stamp - Rare Stamps: Reflections on Living, Breathing, and Acting

Reflections on Living, Breathing, & Acting

Terence Stamp

With a Foreword by
Christopher McQuarrie

ESCARGOT BOOKS ONLINE LTD

Published by

Escargot Books Online Limited
North Yorkshire, England LS21 2JJ Copyright 2011 Terence Stamp. All rights reserved. Terence Stamp asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. ISBN 978-1-908191-05-2 (ePub)
ISBN 978-1-908191-18-2 (Kindle) Cover Photograph Rankin 2011 Author Photograph Betina La Plante 2011 Digital editions by eBooks By Barb for booknook.biz

For Maude and Calixte

I wish to thank my friend and colleague Richard La Plante for his skills, encouragement, and for taking time from his own book to edit mine.

Stamp Album

Double Feature

I CANNOT CLAIM to know Terence Stamp well. We have collaborated on one film, attended one elaborate housewarming, and shared a total of two long meals. While we have been acquainted for a few years, the time we have spent one-on-one can be measured in hours.

I can make the case, however, that I know Terence Stamp intimately. The time one spends with him is not spent frivolously. That is not to say one doesnt laugh or dabble in triviaI had to know, for example, if Samantha Eggar was everything I dreamed her to bebut the hours spent with Terence are rich, intense and rewarding. They are also efficient. Terence is a communicatortelling as much with a sigh as I could express in a paragraph. He never told me anything expressly about Ms. Eggar. Instead, he told me what she said about him in her autobiography. But the way he said it told me everything. Not what he knew, but what he felt. And in that moment I felt it too.

I suspect this was not an accident.

Terence has a deceptive face. And while this can be said about a great many actors, the deception often masks a disappointmenta revelation that an icon is merely human or, in certain cases, even less. Terence, however, has a face that hides his true nature. It is a lions faceforged to communicate cool indifference. In truth, Terence is indifferent to being cool. At our first meeting, he arrived wearing shorts, a casual cotton shirt and pink rubber crocs. He was carrying several bags, having stopped to do some essential shopping on the way. My partners and I were prepared to meet Billy Budd, the Collector, the Limey, Zodyet here we were, opposite someone who appeared to have almost forgotten the appointment. Within five minutes it became clear, however, that the aforementioned roles were mere facets of the man. He controlled the meeting from the outsetevading nothing while asking more questions than he answered. He was not auditioning for anything. We were.

I suspect this was not an accident.

Months later, we were on set in Berlin. Terence was dressed in the handmade suit of a retired German general circa 1944. The conversation turned to his younger obsession with fine clothes and the fascinating characters that cut for him. It was here that I met the Terence, and the London, of the 1960snot through an anecdote, but a look of supreme confidence and control. It was also here that I met Tom Stamps boylaughing impishly, fleetingly, at a momentary lapse of discretion. That same day I met Marlon Brando, not through some clichd impression but a story of poignant self-deprecation.

Later, we were shooting a scene in which the protagonists family fled to the basement during an air raid. The screenplay had been painstakingly researched and vetted by several expertsincluding eyewitnesses to many of the events. But only Terence observed that when he ran to his childhood basement during the Blitz, he did so with a sense of excitement and adventure. The finished scene is still the hardest one for me to watch. The tension we had intended is there sure enough, but how much better, how much truer might it have been with the protagonist watching in horror as his children playoblivious to the bombs falling ever closer?

Einstein said All learning is experience. Everything else is just information. And there is much to be learned from Terence Stampnot just from the information he can impart, but from the experiences he is equipped uniquely to convey. Whether from the benefit of his years of experience or some innate inbred ability, Terence does not just relate experienceshe truly shares them. And he shares them truly.

It would be easy to say we live in an era when craft is losing ground to commerce. In fact, it would be hard to find the era when that wasnt easy to say. The truth is that craft has somehow always managed to survive despite commerce. It does so when hard-won knowledge and traditions are rediscovered and embraced by those seeking something deeper than commercial success alone. Perhaps you are here seeking such knowledge. Perhaps you are here to learn more about Billy Budd, the Collector, the Limey or Zod. Perhaps you are here strictly by chance. In any case, when you turn the page you will not enter this authors world as much as this authors world will enter you. From there, you will cease to be a reader. You will have become a witness, a curator, a vessel.

This is not an accident.

~ Christopher McQuarrie

T he role of the artist, as I imagine it, has always been with us. Squatting around a fire, tired after a day of hunter/gathering, an individual is moved to stand up and re-enact something he has seen or heard. Or, maybe grabs a smouldering piece of wood and draws an outline of a bird in flight. The watchers are astounded. Ahh! It is the gasp of their collective vowel that affirms his spontaneous action. The first performing artist is born.

At this point in our communing, it would be lax of me if I didnt make clear how unlikely my embarkation on a life in showbiz was.

I was the eldest child of Tom Stamp, a stoker in the Merchant Navy (one up from a galley slave and known as a donkey-man) and a typewriter mechanic (at work erasing the Made in Germany part of the decal from the soon-to-be-for-sale Imperial machines). The signs did not bode well for a life of treading the boards.

I had made it to the local grammar school, in itself a small miracle. Yet, nevertheless, when my dad, God bless him, told me, Son, people like us dont do things like that! he wasnt kidding.

However. On one of my lengthy subterranean forays to work in Londons West End, I made the decision to give it a go, spurred by the fact that if I failed, I would at least have tried. If I didnt make it as a performer, I might at least enjoy a life in show business.

Fifty years on, in the flash of an eye, I tell you this: No one can predict the workings of the universeand while many may try, what I say is, power over circumstance or others is enslavement, yet power over oneself is mastery. The latter is what interests yours truly, and its this we will be sharing in this tome.

***

You can only rehearse for tomorrow, never the moment, is a truism that is often overlooked in the excitement of a young actor at the outset of his journey. As what is being discussed here are the benefits and how I encountered them in my life path, I hope to divide this into sections. What can be prepared and what cant. Wish me luck!