Articles/Interviews

On screen he looks big and rough. You see the scars and an evil gleam in the brooding eyes. But what sort of man is Oliver Reed? Who lurks behind the glowering image? Petticoat finds out

 

It takes a long time to get to Wimbledon, and when I get there it takes even longer to find the obscure road I am looking for. Several wrong turns, puzzled looks from passers-by who have never heard of it, then finally I am on a tree-lined road and I see a silver Rolls parked near a large gate. I know immediately this is the house because a film star always has a Rolls.

I am ushered inside the immense Victorian house by a small very frail woman - the housekeeper. She leads me upstairs and eventually I find myself on a small square balcony. There's a table and chairs on it, and on one of the chairs sits Oliver Reed. I apologize for being so late. He tells me to forget it. everyone is always late.

Oliver Reed is very different from what I expected. On screen, he's the big, tough guy, rough and not exactly good looking. I always notice the scars on his face and I always think he looks evil. But sitting in the chair in the summer sun, flanked by the treetops behind him, he looked positively angelic - certainly not evil, not even unfriendly. He has the beginnings of a tan and the scars are almost unnoticeable. He is wearing casual clothes, an open neck shirt and crumpled trousers. He lives in the house with his wife, an ex-model named Katie, their son named Mark, and an assortment of ever changing guests.

"I like having people around me," he says, in a voice that is naturally pleasant and friendly. "I like having a house with a lot of rooms so that people can stay with me. What's the point of friends if you can't help them out, if they can't be near-by when you want them to be."

His wife is away and because he is often out of the country filming, they don't see each other as often as they might. "I only love one girl passionately," he says about his marriage of 10 years. "I might sleep with the others, but there's only one that I love." He waits to see how I react.

Reed was born in Wimbledon, has lived there off and on all his life but usually in flats, and only moved into his new house about two years ago. "I like being in the country yet still in a city if you see what I mean." He says he doesn't care much at all for 'decor' - and he says the word sarcastically. "We just slapped up some paint - nice, soft colours that don't get in the way - and moved in all our belongings." The house used to belong to a painter who was terrified of fire which is why the whole thing is made almost entirely of stone. "

Now 31, Reed started acting after he got out of the Army. Before that he held down a number of jobs, one of them being that of a bouncer in a Soho strip club. "I guess the real reason I went into acting at all was because I couldn't spell or add up. I went into the Army right out of school. When I got out I did crowd work and all the usual stuff young actors do. There was a certain demand for someone dark and I always cast as either a coon or a teddy boy."

Reed could have taken a small part in one of his uncle's films (Sir Carol Reed), but he said he wouldn't work for his uncle until he had star status. Sir Carol Reed advised him to enrol at RADA but he refused. Instead he made eight films for Hammer. "I never did stage work or rep or had any acting training at all. But I think those films with Hammer - mostly horror pictures - were the best training I could have had. I learned my craft there. I shall always be grateful."

"I don't think I'm cut out to do work in the theatre. I've always been knocked out by the cinema. The theatre is pale by comparison."

Reed has just finished co-starring with Alan Bates in Women in Love and they know each other very well - so well, in fact, that they wrestle nude together in one scene. "I guess I'm supposed to say it's filmed in very good taste and all that, and I guess it is. The scene is dimly lit in front of a log fire. I say I've got to hit something or go crazy. Alan says why not hit me, but not while you're such a stuffed shirt. So we strip off and go at each other. I was worried about it at first, so was Alan, but I had a bottle with me and I finished it before we started shooting. I was feeling groovy when we filmed it."

"Yes, there is a lot of nudity on the screen now but I think most of it is pretty unerotic. All these nipples and bottoms just don't knock me out at all. After all, what's so special about two people making love on film? At exactly 11.00 all over the world millions of people are doing the same thing."

"Personally, I'm all in favour of nudity and sex and I think it's a shame so many people make love in the dark - they miss such a hell of a lot that way. On the screen, I find it all a bit cold -a naked bird standing in a shower doesn't turn me on very much I'm afraid. It's completely natural to be naked but unnatural to be photographed naked. That's the big difference."

"There's no reason to go to a lot of films these days unless you're a voyeur - I'll readily admit that I am. The Harrison Marks films and the Jacey group of cinemas provide a good outlet for this type of thing. A lot of poor blokes can't pull a girl so they go to a dark cinema and watch a sex film."

The hot morning sun is beating down on the two of us. Reed is relaxed and at home here, and he asks the woman who answered the door to get us a drink. "My idea of a good time," says Reed as he pours two whiskies, "is to get a few friends together and get as drunk as we possibly can. I don't have any other great hobbies. When I'm not filming I like to go down to the pub, have a few drinks, play darts - exactly the same thing as hundreds of other people would like to do if they could afford it. I like to drink. It relaxes me, makes me feel good. That's reason enough."

I ask him about other mind benders, pot for instance. Has he tried it? "Of course I've had pot!" he says, incredulous that I could think otherwise. "I don't make a habit of it, but I've smoked it. Now hard drugs, though, they're naughty."

Reed is a firm believer in the power of the body and of nature to take care of itself, and he doesn't take any medicines or drugs - not even aspirin. "If I get a headache I figure that it must be a warning that something is wrong. So I slow down, I don't kill the pain with something artificial. I let my body do it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not fanatical about it. If I were in hospital I'd have post-operative drugs and pain killers, but in daily life I don't touch them. That's a basic Christian Scientist attitude I guess although I don't have any set religion. I believe in nature and in her fantastic power. I look at the trees and the sky and the flowers - and it sounds corny - but I think my problems are insignificant in relation to the sheer vastness of everything around me."

When he isn't filming, he still spends a lot of time around films: he goes to the cinema as often as he can. "I might go three times a week or I might not go but once every two months. I go when I can." His favourite films include The Curse of the Werewolf (in which he starred), The Wizard of Oz and 8�.

He is starting to talk about If... He's seen the film. He himself went to a private school but the situation was much the same. He's not going to send his son, who is almost 9, to a boarding school. "It varies with different kids of course. My son doesn't need that kind of discipline."

"When I was at school I was lucky because I was an athlete and I didn't have to put up with all that crap the other boys did. Mentally I was what's known as a late developer which really just meant that I was thick. I didn't like school. With some kids you can offer them a bicycle and they'll excel like mad, but I wouldn't be bribed."

"Boys don't admire the intellectual at school. When a kid reaches puberty it's physical prowess that's looked up to - not brains. The athletes are a very special elite group at school."

Oliver Reed probably won't be remembered by many people as a pop star, but he was; about eight years ago. No, not really a star, more like a small unknown voice. A couple of records were in the charts but nothing memorable. Now, he's harked back to his musical career, but only slightly. He's written the words to the title song of Women in Love.

"We'll get Tom Jones to sing it," he grins. "And it'll be a smash."