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 doesn’t laugh or dabble in trivia—I had to know, for example, if Samantha Eggar was everything I dreamed her to be—but the hours spent with Terence are rich, intense and rewarding. They are also efficient. Terence is a communicator—telling 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 disappointment—a 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 lion’s face—forged 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, Zod—yet 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 outset—evading 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 1960s—not through an anecdote, but a look of supreme confidence and control. It was also here that I met Tom Stamp’s boy—laughing impishly, fleetingly, at a momentary lapse of discretion. That same day I met Marlon Brando, not through some clichéd impression but a story of poignant self-deprecation.
Later, we were shooting a scene in which the protagonist’s family fled to the basement during an air raid. The screenplay had been painstakingly researched and vetted by several experts—including 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 play—oblivious 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 Stamp—not 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 experiences—he 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 wasn’t 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 author’s world as much as this author’s 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