By Chrissy Iley
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Terence Stamp will always be elegantly handsome. Even though he’s now 74, he carries himself tall and proud and his eyes are riveting.
When we meet he is enjoying the California sunshine, in a cashmere sweater and his legs darkly tanned in athletic shorts. Soon he will return home to what he calls Blighty to promote his latest film, Song For Marion, in which he plays the sometimes curmudgeonly, sometimes sweet, Arthur opposite Vanessa Redgrave.
He is clearly slightly tortured that he no longer has a home in London. ‘I’d love to come back to England but my taste has developed in excess of my earning capacity,’ he says. ‘Whenever I see a place that I like I’m about a million or two short. When I’m in London I live in hotels or friends put me up or let me have apartments if they’re not there.’
Divorced: Terence Stamp pictured with his ex-wife Elizabeth O'Rourke - who is 35 years his junior - in 2003
In the Sixties he was considered the handsomest man alive. He dated models Jean Shrimpton and Celia Hammond, and actress Brigitte Bardot.
He dressed beautifully with hand-made shirts and hand-stitched brogues. These days, he is a fan of the less elegant Birkenstock sandals.
‘I used to be a foot fetishist. I had such beautiful shoes. But my feet changed shape and now I can only wear them for limited periods,’ he says.
He once had a beautiful, prestigious Georgian home in the Albany apartment block, Piccadilly, one of the capital’s most prestigious addresses. It was there that he made risotto for Princess Diana, whom he had met at the 1987 premiere of Wall Street. It was his brown rice with morels recipe that he finished off with truffles instead of parmesan.
‘I put in two little cubes of truffles from Milan, one was black and one was white, so it was very chic. She ate it all.’
Stamp has always loved beautiful women, but he says that the quality he finds most drawn to is modesty. ‘I find that beguiling in a woman.’
He himself has a kind of modesty that verges on the self-deprecating. He seems incredibly self-contained, which was apparently a disappointment to some of his earlier lovers. He just didn’t want to commit, although he says that it’s because he got damaged quite early on by women. ‘I got injured emotionally.’
Model girlfriend: Terence Stamp pictured with his then girlfriend Jean Shrimptonin 1965
To everyone’s surprise that didn’t stop him marrying at the age of 64. His wife, Elizabeth O’Rourke, was 35 years younger than him. He was working in Sydney and walked in to the pharmacy where she was training as a pharmacist in 1998. They married in a low-key ceremony in 2003, and they remained very private. But they divorced in 2008 on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour.
‘One of the things I’ve learned in life is that it’s very easy to make a lover from a friend but it’s very hard to make a friend from a lover.’ He laughs again, but this time it carries a littl e pain with it.
‘We had an incredible amount of fun. She went back to Australia and that’s why I don’t see her, but if I do go there, I’m sure I will. There’s a lot that can happen with the passing of time.’
Was he incredibly upset about the break-up? ‘Yeah, I was, absolutely. I always said I’ll try anything once other than incest or Morris dancing. Seriously though, I’d never been married and I thought I would try it, but I couldn’t make a go of it.’
I ask if he is still friends with her? ‘Not really,’ he says. He’s never talked about the marriage or break-up before.
His latest role in Song For Marion required two terrifying things for him. He had to sing, and look ordinary.
The film traces the end of the lives of an elderly couple living on a council estate. Marion, played by Redgrave, has cancer and finds joy in the lo cal choral group. Arthur takes her to choir practice. After her death his brittle heart is broken, and he eventually sings in her place.
‘I realised it was a wonderful script but immediately had fears about the singing,’ he says. ‘In the Sixties the director Josh Logan begged me to play King Arthur in the musical of Camelot. I turned it down because of my fear.
‘It is one of the few things in my career that I really regret. When the movie came out and I saw Richard Harris do it I thought, “Well, I could have sung it as well as thatâ€.
‘By the time I’d heard they’d cast Vanessa to play my wife I knew I wanted to do this film. I thought the universe had given me a second chance to conquer my fear of singing.
‘But the other reservation I had with Song For Marion was that I felt I don’t play ordinary very well. I feel I’m never convincing as that.’< br />
Perhaps that’s because he has a deep seated fear that he is ordinary. ‘I originally turned down The Collector â€" [the intense psychological thriller in which he starred with Samantha Eggar in 1965] because I didn’t want to be a spotty invisible bank clerk with a snotty nose.’
But he would go on to make his name in Modesty Blaise and as bad boy Sergeant Troy in Far From The Madding Crowd with Julie Christie.
After a fallow Eighties his career revived when he played a drag queen in The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert (1994) and the dangerously vengeful father in Stephen Soderbergh’s The Limey (1999). He’s always been drawn to the exciting and the exuberant, the over-the-top and the dark.
In his first film, Term of Trial (1962), Laurence Olivier criticised his voice. He mimics Olivier in a high-pitched tone telling him: ‘You’ve got a terrible voice. I know you’ve left drama school, but remember as your looks go your voice will become empowered.’
Stamp says: ‘It was because of him that I began to study the voice. And he adds: ‘I only had two lessons for Song For Marion. We did the singing live and I did it in one take.’
But when Stamp first met the director there was tension. ‘I wasn’t as enthusiastic as he was hoping for and he said to me, apropos of nothing, “You’re worried about your looks, aren’t you?†And I thought that was so insightful of him. I said, “Yes, I amâ€.
‘He told me that I shouldn’t be because he’d written it about his own grandfather “and he was as good looking as youâ€. And when I thought of my own mum and dad and their real love relationship and how neither of them were ever unfaithful I identified with it more.’
Stamp’s parents Tom and Ethel were working class East En ders. Tom was a stoker, then tugboat captain on the Thames, while Ethel raised their six children.
‘My dad never earned more than 12 quid a week; actually he wasn’t cut out to be married with kids. At heart he was a bachelor,’ says Stamp. ‘He was really handsome and I don’t think any of us boys were as good looking.’
Has Stamp himself ever wanted to be a father?
‘I can’t really say that I did, except for maybe I thought about it recently â€" I guess it’s safe to think about being a dad because now I’m not going to be one.’
But there is a little longing in his voice when he says: ‘Just these past ten years I’ve thought it must be really wonderful to have a daughter.’
He doesn’t drink alcohol or eat wheat or dairy. ‘You won’t believe how rarely I get sick,’ he says.
‘When I was married my wi fe was a pharmacist. She had a double first from Sydney University. I would try to tell her about my diet. She said, “What do you know, you’re uneducated?â€, which was true.
‘But whenever I got a cold, mine lasted for a couple of hours and hers a week. Eventually she looked at my diet and thought there was something to it. You learn the hard way.’ He gives a wry little laugh.
Stamp is grateful that he still has a career, but he doesn’t seem to chase roles. ‘I make decisions based on the fact that you have to listen to what the universe is telling you,’ he says.
He gave up his company selling wheat-free, dairy-free food after his business partner couldn’t do it any more, and lives quietly in Ojai, California.
So, he’s let go of his possessions, a business, and even his beloved hand-made shoes. Is there anything that he is worried about letting go of?
‘Sure. I hate letting go of my hair.’ He chortles, happy in the knowledge that vanity will never leave him.
- Song For Marion is in cinemas on February 22.
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