Fresh Air - Remembering Actor Terence Stamp

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

We remember British actor Terence Stamp, who died last week at age 87. He starred in the film The Limey, as an ex-con out for revenge, and in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert as a transgender performer on the road with a lip-synch club act. Stamp got his start in the ’60s, starring in the films Billy Budd, Far From the Madding Crowd and The Collector. Stamp grew up in a working class cockney neighborhood and as a teenager, when he let it be known he wanted to be an actor, his father told him, "People like us don't do things like that." He spoke with Terry Gross in 2002.Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews the new hit horror film Weapons.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at walton family foundation.org. This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David B. and Cooley. Terence Stamp, the British actor whose diverse portfolio of roles, included supervillain General Zod in the original Superman films, a psychopathic kidnapper in the collector, and a transgender woman in the adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, died Sunday at age 87.

Today, we'll listen back to a conversation Terry Gross had with Terence Stamp in 2002. But first, we'll start with this appreciation. Terence Stamp was born in London in 1938, just before World War II. His working-class upbringing during tough times didn't make him a likely prospect as a young actor. But he followed his passion and struck gold early. He first made it to the big screen in 1962 in the starring role of Billy Budd, based on the story by Moby Dick author Herman Melville. Stamp played the title role, a childishly innocent sailor recruited onto a British warship in 1797. The officers were tyrants, and Billy, after watching a fellow sailor get whipped, complained to his new mates.

But the more agitated he got, the more he's stuck. It's wrong with flogger man. I... Dear. It's stupid. To... Did... Did it?

Against his being a man. I, my lad, it is that. Why do you stammer, boy? Because I sometimes can't find the words for what I feel. Terence Stamp was nominated for an Academy Award for that supporting performance,

and other roles quickly followed. On Broadway, he landed the title role in a play called Alfie, but the show lasted less than a month. When the film version was offered, he turned it down, and it ended up going instead to his flatmate, Michael Cain. But for a while, the roles were plentiful and meaty. He starred opposite Julie Christie, with whom he later became romantically involved in Far from the Madding Crowd.

He was directed by Federico Fellini in a segment from Spirits of the Dead. Oliver Stone in Wall Street, Stephen Soderberg in the Limey, and George Lucas in Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace. He played the Kryptonian super villain General Zod, opposite Christopher Reeve in Superman, and drew rave reviews as a transgender woman in a traveling cabaret show with two drag queens in the Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. His roles were as plentiful as they were eclectic. He accepted parts in broad comedy films like Get Smart and Bowfinger, in erotic films such as Bliss, and even acted as the host of the 1997 TV anthology series The Hunger. He certainly brought his own unique vibe to that job. In this episode, he opens the show

wielding a sinister-looking hunting knife, using its sharp edge to point out parts of a disembodied brain, which is floating inside a fishbowl. Until that is, he opens, he, He uses the hilt of his knife to shatter the glass. Phrenology, the belief that different parts of the brain are responsible for different kinds of thoughts. Romantic love over here, vision over here. The ability to recognize letters here, lust, here, reason miles away over here, connecting the two, A bridge of neurons, 26,000 miles long. Do you think you could get from here to there?

Oh no. I don't think so. Terence Stamp's final role ended up being one of his very best. In 2021, in Last Night in Soho, he played a mysterious character identified in the credits only as the silver-haired gentleman. There was a reason for the secrecy because the character's true identity

is revealed only at the end. But throughout the movie, he keeps popping up, following or observing the central character of the film, a young woman played by Thomas and McKenzie. The first time he approaches her, she fears he's a stalker. But the way he reacts,

suggests he has something else in mind and is almost humorously dismissive of her concerns. Excuse me. Excuse me, love. I'm talking to you, Blondie. Sorry, I have to be somewhere. I'm not trying to pick you up, sweet art.

Don't worry. Not worried. You look familiar to me. Who's your mother? My mother's dead. I thought she might be. Most of them are. When Terry Gross spoke with Terence Stamp in 2002,

he was starring in the French film My Wife is an Act. actress. He played a young sports writer who's married to an attractive actress. He's afraid she will fall for one of her leading men and even be aroused by their love scenes. Terry asked Terence Stamp if love scenes are arousing or just work. Well, it can be either. You know, it can be absolutely acting and it can be absolute passion. I think the great Warren Beatty once said that the way to get stars in the movie is to find out who wants the shag who. Is it ever embarrassing when it really is passion?

Well, it's never passion, passion, because everybody's there. It's like you'd have to be a real exhibitionist to get real passion, I mean, actual passion. but I think you have a good idea during a love scene. I mean, if you're interested in your co-star, then you have a good idea of whether it's going to lead to real passion because it's so kind of intimate. Do you think you could tell the difference on screen between relationships on screen that are just acting

and relationships on screen where there really is some passion beyond the acting? I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, well, you're talking about good actors, right? Yes, that's right. Exactly, right. With bad actors, you can't tell anything. Exactly, exactly. I'd like to do it like a film retrospective with you. So let's go back to your very first movie, Billy Budd. This was made in 1962. It's based on the Herman Melville story.

You play a teenager who's impressed to serve on a British ship. during war with France. And you're the epitome of decency and goodness, whereas the master at arms is a sadist and very villainous. After he sets you up to take a fall for a crime you're innocent of, you try to defend yourself verbally, but your speech impediment prevents that. You have something of a stammer. You punch him, he dies from a head wound when he hits the ground, and then you're court-martialed. This was your first role in a movie, and it's the leading role in a prestigious film. You must have had to learn a lot on camera. Well, I didn't, I didn't. In fact, as two young out-of-work actors, I was sharing Diggs with

Michael Kane. And although Michael Kane wasn't known, you know, he hadn't been discovered, he was absolutely unknown. He did know a lot about the technicalities of filming. And so he kind of versed me in those so I knew the technicalities and felt confident in that you know I knew how to hit marks I knew about sort of camera angles I knew about lenses and frankly when I started the movie a kind of an amazing thing happened because I just discovered that it was like I knew it it was as though it was absolutely second nature to me everything I saw that was new I understood almost instantaneously, so it wasn't really, I mean, it was nerve-wracking because I had no way of dealing with the artistic vision that you have in your head

and doing it, you know, when they say action. So that was a kind of a problem and a fear. But for the most part, I just had like an instinctive understanding of it, really. How old were you when you made Billy Budd? I had my 21st birthday during the movie. Was acting a far-fetched ambition from someone from your neighborhood? Yes. I saw my first movie, and I just wanted to be that.

And I never really spoke about it. In other words, it was a very private sort of fantasy that I had. And when it got to sort of near... leaving school. In other words, let's say I was like 15, 16. And we got our first television. I started making remarks about, oh, I could do that and I could do better than that. And my dad, he sort of wore that for a bit. And then one evening I was carrying on about how good I thought I could be in that part. And he said to me, listen, son. people like us don't do things like that.

And I went to sort of protest. And he said, son, I just don't want you to talk about it anymore. And my dad was, you know, something of a stoics, and he didn't say much. So when he said something, it had, you know, it had a kind of quite a heavy reverberation to it. But in fact, it didn't do. deter me at all. I wasn't allowed to talk about it. But I was used to not talking about it. I mean, I understood that it would have been ridiculous to everybody else, you know. So all it did was it made a kind of a steam kettle into a pressure cooker. Now, you said that you grew up in

a very cockney neighborhood. So did you have a cockney accent when you started to add? Oh, sure. I mean, when I finally realized that I, I would have to go to drama school, you know, to get my foot in, in the door, I, you know, in those days, it wasn't like today where if you could lift a lot of weights or if you could play football, you could become an actor, you know, you weren't, you couldn't get in to see anyone unless you'd been trained. There was no such things of sort of untrained actors. So I had to get into drama school and you had to do a classical piece. You had to do a piece. of Shakespeare and a modern piece. And I chose Romeo's death speech and

now I can imagine how hysterical it must have been like Romeo is a sort of cockney-baraboy, you know. You write a little bit about your accents in one of your memoirs and you say that you convinced yourself that since you had a

natural ear and could pick up accents easily, instead of learning to speak proper English, you would just treat English roles, standard English role, as a dialect and, you know, just learn it for those, for those roles. Did that strategy work out? It worked out. Yes, it worked out. I mean, it worked out for sort of 20 years, but eventually, you know, I had to sort of, and the thing was, I think, looking back, it was something to do with a loss of identity. Like I didn't, I wanted to retain my own voice

but as well I think that there was a lot of there was a lot of sort of fear and trepidation involved in learning like to speak in a completely different way so eventually

treating parts treating all the parts I did as a dialect I still had a kind of a London I had a sort of London foggy accent for for years And it was only sort of, you know, when I was sort of in my 40s that I thought to myself, well, I might as well really just see if I can perfect my voice, see if I can have what they call RP.

I think it's called receive pronunciation. I'll see if I can have RP voice without losing, you know, the quality that makes my voice my own. So what did you do? Well, I just, I had always been interested in. breath. One of the things that I'd learned at drama school

was this thing called the full breath and speaking on support which we all had to learn to do before everybody had throat mics. And so I had

continued that study. I'd taken my study from just like learning to breathe theatrically to sort of mystical breathing and breathing exercises

and yoga stuff I'd learned like in India. And so I just kind of widened my area of learning, really. And I just continued to find, you know, really wonderful voice teachers and study with them and pick up things that I could get from them. And so it was a kind of an ongoing thing. I mean, I'm still a bit of a sucker for, like if I hear this great voice teacher in town, I'll go and check them out, you know, because I think that there's a great voice teacher.

know, because I think that there's a great kind of, I think there's a great mystery in the voice, but also I think that it's something that is almost a lost art. And for my own personal understanding is that any study, any work that you do on your voice is really capital in the bank. I don't regret any of the money that I've spent, you know, studying voice. I want to play a scene from your movie The Limey. And this is a pretty recent film. And in this film, you play a working class guy who's just gotten out of prison in England, and you've come to California to avenge the murder of your daughter.

You think she was murdered by a record executive who made his fortune in the 1960s. He's played by Peter Fonda. Anyways, in this scene, you're talking to a drug enforcement agency agent, who you think has some clues about where to find this record executive you're looking. for and you're talking to him in this really thick cockney accent it's not the way you speak in the rest of the movie it's just something you're putting on for him in this scene how you doing then all right are you now look squire you're the governor here i can see that i'm on your manner now so there's no need to get your niggers in a twist whatever this bollocks is that's going down

between you and that's like valentine it's got nothing to do with me i couldn't care less all right Okay, mate. Let me explain you. When I was in prison, second time, uh, no, tell the lie, third stretch. Yeah, third. Third. There was this screw what really had it in for me, and that geyser was top of my list. Two years after I got sprung, I sees him in on a park. He's sitting on a bench feeding bloody pigeons. There was no one about. I could have gone up behind him and snapped his fucking neck. Wallop, but I left it. I could have not with him, but I didn't. Because what I thought I wanted, what? wasn't what I wanted. What I thought I was thinking about was something else. I didn't give a toss.

It didn't matter. See, this berg on the bench wasn't worth my time. It meant so at all in the end because you've got to make a choice. When to do something and went to let it go. When it matters and when it don't. Bide your time. That's what prison teaches you if nothing else. Bide your time and everything becomes clear and you can act accordingly. Terence Stamp in a scene from the Limey. Terence Stam, did you ever talk that way? No, I didn't really. Well, I may have, but when I was working on it, that was really how my dad spoke and how my uncle spoke. And strangely enough in England, I got a lot of stick for that. You know, people, critics said, oh, nobody talks like that. But the truth is that they haven't been to the local Turkish bath on Saturday morning, you know, where everybody talks like that. Now, were you starting to act in a time when it was becoming more acceptable, more possible for working-class actors who didn't speak, received English to receive pronunciation, whatever it's called, to get started? You know, was it more acceptable to talk like you did and still be on the stage?

I think more than more acceptable, it was actually something that was needed because what had happened in England was that they had passed a bill, politician called Rab Butler had passed a bill, whereby all kids had an opportunity of going to a grammar school. They had this thing called the 11 plus. And if you passed 11 plus, it didn't matter what strata of society you came from, you could get to go to one of these rather good grammar schools. And the end of the 50s, the big sort of mass of working class kids who previously hadn't had a higher education, were being sort of released into the world. And they were giving birth, that was giving birth to the great working class playwrights. And the working class playwrights were really writing plays that needed a different kind of actor.

They wanted like working class actors. And I think that that was the beginning of that, called a 60s wave of, you know, you know, working-class guys. And were you cast in any of those plays? Yes, yes, I was cast. The first play I ever did professionally was called Long on the Shortmo Taw, which was a play by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.

And it had spawned a host of actors. I mean, the lead part had been written with Albert Finney in mind. Albert had got sick. Peter O'Toole had stepped in, became a big success. Michael came with Peter O'Toole's. understudy and never got to play the part, so he did the tour, which was where I met him.

So that was the first play that I was in that was one of those plays. But, of course, there was like Osborne, there was Pinter, there was Arnold Wesker. You know, there was a kind of a whole clutch of working-class playwrights that were writing wonderful things. Terence Stamp, speaking to Terry Gross in 2002. After a break, we'll continue their conversation, and film critic Justin Chang reviews the popular new horror of film Weapons. I'm David Vian Cooley, and this is fresh air. Yellow is the color of my true love's hair in the morning when we rise in the morning,

when we rise. That's the time. That's the time. I love the best. There is so much happening. in politics in any given week, you might need help putting it all in perspective. As your week draws to a close, join the NPR Politics Podcast team for our weekly roundup. Here, our best political reporters zoom into the biggest stories of the week, not just what they

mean, but what they mean for you, all in under 30 minutes. Listen to the weekly roundup every Friday on the NPR Politics Podcast. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at walton family foundation.org. You started to become very well known in the 60s. And in fact, you became kind of a symbol of London in the 60s. In Sean Levy's new book about London in the 60s, he writes that you were among the swingingest of young Londoners, handsome, stylish, and always up for some wild scene. What was it like? What was it like?

to become known in the 60s when everything from the class sex system to sexual mores was loosening up. Well, I think it was the best time and place a boy could be really. It was like after the pill and before AIDS, you know.

So it was an extraordinary release. And I think that we felt it particularly in England because we'd been confined by the, you know, by World War II and the kind of poverty after World War II,

which drifted right on really through the 50s. So I think that I think of the 40s and the 50s as being in black and white, and I think that, you know, with the birth of the decade of the 60s, it suddenly burst into technicolor. Now, it's said that you and Julie Christie, who were a couple for a while, are there Terry and Julie

in the King'song, Waterloo Sunset? Is that accurate? Yeah, that's absolutely true. Ray Davis actually told my brother Chris that. My brother Chris discovered the Who and, you know, with his partner, Kit Lambert, made them, I think, into the great group they became. But Ray Davis told my brother Chris that

that when he was writing the lyrics of Waterloo Sunset, he envisaged Julia and myself for that lyric. We were talking about your voice and how you used to have a cockney accent and how you learned to speak differently for movies and theater. I want to play a scene from your movie, Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

This is a 1994 Australian comedy in which you played a transsexual who has an act with two drag queens in which you lip-sink and dance to disco hits. And in this scene, you're in the dressing room with the two drag queens. You're all putting on makeup. And this is shortly after you've fallen on your head in shock upon learning

that one of the drag queens in your act not only used to be married, but he has a son. Christake, myths, why didn't you tell us? Why the hell did you have to shock me like that? Oh, this lump on my head is getting bigger by the second. I'm about to make my Northern Territory's debut, looking like a fucking Warner Brothers cartoon character has hit me over the head with an iron.

I think you look more like a Disney witch myself. Oh, shut your face, Felicia. At least I don't look like somebody's tried to open a can of beans with my face. I'm sorry, girls. I couldn't stand the thought of you bagging me in the bus for two weeks. Anyway, what difference does it make now? Well, about two inches to my head, for one. Did you get a good look at him?

He's got my profile, that's for sure. I think I'm going to be sick. I hate to be practical here. But does he know who you are? I mean, does he know what you do for a living? Well, he knows he has a father in the show business cosmetics industry. Oh, Lord. I don't understand.

No, you don't understand. So stop trying to. it'll be fine, but it better be. It's Terran Stamp in a scene from Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Now, one of the things I find really interesting about your performance in that movie is that you didn't really change your voice.

You changed the kind of language that you use and the way you'd speak, but you don't try to make your voice higher in it even though you're playing a transsexual. Tell us why you didn't do that. Well, during the time I was sort of researching the role, I was getting introduced to actual transsexuals, you know, guys who had actually been sort of tried to change themselves physically from being a man to being a woman.

And one of the things that I noticed about them vocally was that they either spoke below the break or above the break. So either they were sort of hello darling and yes, my name is this. or they were sort of speaking above the break and during rehearsal I really tried both of those vocal sort of approaches

and and the director said to me like don't worry you know just like just your voice is fine you know don't really worry about um affecting a voice you know he said like a lot of of Tran is do that, but it'll put too much of like a strain on the performance, you know,

if you confine yourself to just an area of voice. So that's really how the finished product came about. And look at how, say, Lauren Bacall's voice deepened as she got older. Right, right. What surprised you most by how you looked as a woman with a long blonde wig and makeup and, you know, women's clothes? Well, I was rather, I have to say first out, that, you know, when I saw the movie, I was like bitterly disappointed because I had understood, I had been led to believe that, you know, the cameraman was making me look like Lauren Bacourne, Princess Diner and Candy Bergen,

you know, and so I'd been given the performance, believing. that I was being made to look like this real babe, you know. And on the, about five minutes before I saw the film, which was at the Cannes Festival, the DP came up to me and said, listen, Terrence, I don't want you to be upset with me, you know, but like, I really didn't make you look good, you know. And I was really, I said, what do you mean?

He said, well, you know, I didn't do the best for you. I said, why? And he said, well, Stephen didn't want me to. you know, I said to him, Steph, you know, I can make him look wonderful. Like, it's just a lighting thing. And Steph said, no, no, no. I want him looking dodgy, you know, don't make him look good kind of thing. And then I'm at the premiere, you know, and the film starts.

And there I am looking like this old Tomcat, you know. So I was like, I was really taken aback. It was a huge instant dismantling of my ego. Because you wanted to look like a beautiful woman. Yeah, I was really, that's what I was, exactly, I was choosing hearing. Oh, I see. Michelle Pfeiffer wear those, I can wear those. You know what I mean?

I was like, I was really into it. And I said to Stefan earlier, you know, why did you do that to me? You know, why did you? I don't, I really don't understand, you know. And he said, um, he said, well, that's the point, you know, that I want, what I wanted was a creature who believed that she was beautiful. And the reality was, she was an old dog, you know. So in other words, he was.

wanted a kind of, he thought that the character would be more touching if that element was there. He just didn't want me looking, you know, like Lauren Bacourne. Did that work for you when you started to see it that way? No, no, I always hated it. I always thought it was a lost opportunity to be a babe. Terrence Stamp speaking with Terry Gross in 2002. More after a break, this is fresh air. Now, Warring Dowd had a New York Times Magazine article with you after Priscilla was released. And in that article, you say that you used to have this fear of looking stupid on screen and that that used to hold you back. But after Priscilla, you stopped worrying about that.

Accurate? Well, I hate to contradict the lovely Maureen Dowd. The way in which I, what I felt about that was that I didn't know that I had this fear of looking stupid. It was a kind of, I was tethered by it, but I didn't know. And during Priscilla, it came up and I had to confront it. And I had to confront it. what I was doing was absolutely ridiculous and there was no way of doing it

without risk of looking an absolute idiot and when I'd gone through it in other words when it had happened then I saw it and then I saw the extent to which I'd been limited by it so in other words the movie was a growth experience on that level

I want to say I might that's basically what she says you see And if I misrepresented what she said, you said, I apologize for that. But I think she represented what you said very accurately. So can you put your finger on what you did differently after that? No, not really. Well, I can explain to you. I can't really give you examples.

But after it, after the take, it actually, the first, freeing the breakthrough happened during um uh during the um the performance of shake that groove thing you know and i'm i'm i'm in this town called broken hill and um which is a lot of like sort of a mining town where most of the guys were out of work you know and they and they'd got all these miners in to be extras and the way they'd kept them there was by giving them lots of beers and stuff and i came out of the trailer and i've got these kind of like muddy colored queenies tights which I've put my force nail through so they're laddered and I've got these sort of pink knickers with like little stars stuck on them and I've got a red wig with detachable pigtails and we're all standing on a bar in our high heels waiting to do this number in front of this very raucous audience of mine and in fact as I was standing there

like the thoughts that were going through my head were like what are you doing here you know you're the best trust man in Britain you know you're a middle age man you were the great Iago of your drama school you know you're a scholar and a philosopher

you know and then suddenly there was like playback da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da and you do it And you do it. And we did it. And I was, I had done it.

I had done the lip sync. I had done the dancing. I had made an absolute ass of myself. And I was kind of in the stratosphere. And I think that after that. So in other words, it was a kind of, it was like an inner dimension, you know. It was something, it was like a sort of reservoir of energy that had never been released before. And after Priscilla, I never had to really consciously draw on that.

I mean, I haven't done anything that's sort of extended my fear barrier. But there is that kind of understanding within me that I'm fearless, you know. I mean, I would never really turn down another movie from fear. And I was able to look back and see that I had turned down. wonderful roles. Like what? Because I was frightened. I turned down a camelot with the wonderful Josh Logan, you know. You would have had a singing role on that? Yeah, I would have been the king. If ever I would leave you, is it? Yeah, it would have been Terran Stam singing that? Yeah, and that was the fear, you know, and it wasn't, I didn't really know it until I had that

breakthrough and I thought, yeah, I turned that down for the wrong reason. You know, I turned it down because I was frightened that my singing voice wouldn't have been good enough. And there were lots of things like that that I've rose that I've turned down because, you know, later on in life I saw, yeah, I could have, of course, I could have done that. You know, I could have gone through that fear very earlier. Well, you know, you haven't had the most prolific career. You've been making a fair number of movies lately. But there was a period in, I guess, the 70s and part of the 80s when you weren't doing that much

Part of what you were doing was international productions. Was that a conscious choice? No, no, no. On the contrary, you know, the 60s ended, and I ended with them. I was sort of out of work for 10 years, really. And, you know, that was like a tragedy for me. But it was just one of those things. It wasn't anything that I could... If I had wanted to continue working during the 70s, then I would have had to have done real crap.

You know, and I'd already, I'd been spoiled, you know, I'd work with Ustanoff, Waila, Fellini, Pasolini, Lossi. I didn't want to do Cockney-Lorry drivers, you know, and gangsters and stuff. So I just, I was out of work. I was out of work from about 69 until I got the Superman movies. How would you describe the phase of your career you're in now? How would I describe? Oh, I think I'm a golden oldie now, you know. I think I'm an old master with wisdom.

And vestiges of sex appeal. I think one of your greatest performances, and this is, my humble opinion, is in the Limey. I think you're just so wonderful in that film. It's funny with the Limey because it was something that, it's to do, I think, with resignation. You know, when you resign yourself to the fact that, you know, you're never going to get another great role, then something happens.

And when it happened, it was just so wonderful, I mean, to work with a guy like Soderberg, you know, who's, in my book, you know, is the greatest American director since Willie Wiler, you know, He's just so extraordinarily talented. But a funny thing happened. They had a cast and crew screening at the Directors Guild right here on Sunset Boulevard. And he asked me to come and look at it. And a friend of mine, a great friend of my called Richard LaPont,

was actually in California. And I said, come with me. You know, I need a bit of backup, you know, because none of us really knew what Stephen had been doing. Like, we didn't actually know that he was, you know, making a film that was sort of outside the time-space concept, you know. We didn't realize that it was going to be like a non-linear movie. And anyway, I go along to this, and there was only supposed to be sort of, you know,

40 or 50 people, their place was packed. There were hundreds of people. And it was just extraordinary. It was just an extraordinary event for me. And you could tell from the audience that everybody was locked into it from the first frame, which is the way you can tell a great master director. You know, they pick you up

and you're confident that they're going to take you somewhere and put you down, you know. And everybody in that movie was like totally attentive. And on the way home, I said to my friend, like, what do you think of it? He said, my God, I think it's like the best thing you've ever done. And I was a bit taken aback, you know, because that seemed, I thought, well, I've done lots of terrific things. But when I was going to sleep that night, I thought to myself, you know something, if it had to end here, like if this had to be the last one, really from Billy Bard to the Limey was like more than any young act could hope to do, really. Well, Terran Stamp, a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.

Not at all. Actor Terran Stamp, speaking with Terry Gross in 2002. He died Sunday at the age of 87. For a time in the 1960s, he and actress Julie Christie were a couple. And earlier in the interview, he confirmed that they were the Terry and Julie mentioned in the famous kink song, Waterloo Sunset. Let's listen. Terry meets you leave Waterloo Station

every Friday night But I am so lazy No one to wonder I stay at home and die But I don't Feel afraid As long as I gaze on, Waterloo Sunset, I am in paradise. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new horror film Weapons.

This is fresh air. Our film critic, Justin Chang, recently caught up with weapons. The hit horror movie set in a small American town where 17 school children suddenly vanish without explanation. It's the latest film from the writer-director Zach Craig. who previously made the 2022 thriller Barbarian. It features an ensemble cast that includes Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. The movie currently is playing in theaters everywhere. Here is Justin's review.

As I emerged from a showing of weapons at my local multiplex on Saturday night, I saw a teenager running around the lobby. His arms extended downward and outward to the great amusement of his friends. You're going to see a lot of kids running like that on Halloween, I heard someone say, and I think he was right. Weapons has been in theaters for just two weeks, and it's already given us an unshakably memorable image, of children quietly running through a neighborhood, their arms stretched out in that same unsettling way. Zach Crager's ingenious and exultant new horror film is like a Stephen King riff on the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and it has a wonderful campfire tale spookiness.

It begins with an unseen, unidentified young girl telling us about strange events that happened in the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania. One Wednesday, at exactly 2.17 a.m., 17 children get out of their beds, walk out their front doors, and disappear into the night. All 17 children are students in the same third-grade class. The only classmate who doesn't vanish,

is a shy boy named Alex, played by a very good Carrie Christopher. Julia Garner is their teacher, Justine, who soon comes under suspicion from furious parents. At a school meeting, Justine insists she had nothing to do with what happened, but no one seems to believe her. I just want to say how very sorry I am for all of what's happened. I know there's nothing. I can say to make this better.

The truth is that I want an answer just as bad as all of you. I love those kids. And I know. I know, I know it's not. You can be locked up until she tells us what happened. That scene jogged my memory of a very different school meeting from field. of dreams, in which Amy Madigan stands up to an angry mob of book banners. I'm guessing this was very much by design, since Madigan herself has a late-breaking but

memorable role in weapons. Crager has a knack for springing outrageous surprises, and here he's made a chiller that's as fiendishly unpredictable as his previous one, Barbarian. Like that film, but on an even more ambitious scale, weapons is about the dark underbelly of American suburbia, and unfolds from the perspectives of multiple characters, sometimes replaying the same events from new angles. We spend a lot of time with the teacher, Justine, whom Garner makes an appealingly flinty heroine, devastated for her students,

but also unwilling to take the blame that others have heaped upon her. Josh Brolin plays a dad so obsessed with finding out what happened to his son that he descends into what might seem like conspiracy-mongering parents. The strong cast also includes Benedict Wong as the school's by the book principal, Austin Abrams as a drifter and petty thief, and Alden Aaron Reich as a nun too competent cop. There's something schematic about the movie's episodic structure, but I was pulled along by the sheer craft and momentum of it all. Crager stages action with exuberant flair, and he's good at making you cackle in between jolts and screams. He shows how horror manifests not just in dark hallways and creaky basements, but out in public in the bright light of day.

During its past two weeks of box office dominance, weapons has inspired a lot of jokey memes, and also a lot of think pieces about what, if anything, it's about. It's clear enough by the end what's happened, plot-wise, but the movie is full of rich ideas that invite deeper interpretation. Maybrook is in many ways the quintessential American Anytown, pretty and idyllic on the surface, but riven by issues of addiction, poverty, and police brutality. The children's disappearance evokes both the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s and the continual tragedy of school shootings, something the film makes explicit with a hallucin,

hallucinatory image of a semi-automatic weapon, looming over someone's house like a ghost. The most haunting plot point involves the ring cameras that proliferate in the neighborhood, speaking to our moment of heightened surveillance, but not necessarily greater security. The cameras here are a silent witness to horror, capturing footage of the kids running away on that terrible night. In a subtler, less condescending way than the current COVID-themed horror world, Western Eddington. Weapons shows us a town that has lost any sense of community. Here, in a state of crisis, no one can agree on what to do, or even on what is actually happening. But Weapons also passes what has become my own personal test for a horror movie. I returned home from the theater

shivering, satisfied, and more grateful than usual that my wife had left the porch light on. Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed the new horror movie, Weapons. Well, it's one for the money, two for the show. On Monday show, we begin R&B, rockabilly, and early rock and roll week, featuring interviews with influential performers and songwriters. We hear from Elvis Presley's guitarist, Scotty Moore, and from Carl Perkins, one of the early rockabilly musicians.

He wrote and first performed Blue Suede Shoes. Later, it was one of Elvis's early hits. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shura. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez.

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