Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British actor Terence Stamp.
Last updated on November 23, 2024.
Terence Henry Stamp is an English actor. After training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he started his acting career in 1962. He has been referred to as the "master of the brooding silence" by The Guardian. His performance in the title role of Billy Budd, his film debut, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer. Associated with the Swinging London scene of the 1960s – during which time he was in high-profile relationships with actress Julie Christie and supermodel Jean Shrimpton – Stamp was among the subjects photographed by David Bailey for a set titled Box of Pin-Ups.
At this point, it's either for fun or it's for money. I don't take movies that I don't really like.
I have to be stretched in some way. There's not enough things that come my way that I fancy.
When I tested for Billy Budd, I had that kind of confidence that comes with the certainty that you're not going to get something. I was very rough around the edges.
All actors are incredibly insecure.
My favorite film is Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power in The Razor's Edge.
In the case of Elektra I really wasn't sure I could pull it off. There were so many intellectual leaps. My character, Stick, is blind, but he can see better than most people. So I had trouble kind of finding the logic.
It wasn't until I saw James Dean that I began to think that maybe I could actually do this. Movies didn't have to be just this fantasy with this impossibly handsome guy.
I've never wanted to become a politician, an interior decorator, I've never wanted to speculate and make a load of money. I just wanted this.
He's Soderbergh, we're working for him. It doesn't matter what he's doing; we'll see it at the premiere.
A lot of people only see me as villains.
From the very first movie I ever made to the current time, there have been times between action and cut when I've sensed some kind of new dimension that I haven't been familiar with before.
Unless I try, I'm never really going to be at ease with myself.
In my youth I dreamed of being an illustrator.
My star was kind of fading towards the end of the '60s and suddenly I got this call from Fellini, who just appeared to kind of love me!
I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.
I was very disappointed that so much of the work I did on The Haunted Mansion didn't arrive in the final cut.
What I wanted more than anything was a long career.
As a boy I believed I could make myself invisible. I'm not sure that I ever could, but I certainly had the ability to pass unnoticed.
Peter Ustinov was the first really positive influence in my career. He was real and he bore witness to it. The things he said to you, he lived them.
With Fellini, the fear dropped out of my work because it was such a happy experience... hanging out with Fellini, having pasta on the set with Fellini, and going out with Fellini!
I have always had this energy, which I think of as overdrive.
It's such a performance to bring stuff into America. It's a great luxury when I am in England.
A lot of young directors, they're not confident; they're not open to the emotional level of the scene.
A lot of newspapers say, Terence Stamp is playing himself and we're as bored as he is.
I wasn't at all sure I could make that sort of leap into that sort of comic book reality.
Although you have some films that are a real bummer, there's always a film that comes up where it's just heaven.
I've been doing Tai Chi on and off for 20 years. The fundamentals of all martial arts are the same.
I'm still tap dancing. I'm still going.
The very first film I ever saw was during the war. My mother took me, I must have been about 4, and that was Beau Geste, with Gary Cooper.
I loved the scent of the wallflowers in the evening.
Vancouver is the most wonderful place. I put it up there with San Francisco and Sydney as a kind of magic sort of harbor city.
A lot of newspapers say Terence Stamp is playing himself and we're as bored as he is.