Articles/Interviews

Most people picture Oliver Reed as a sullen, scowling man, inclined to flesh, who looks as if he might lose his temper any moment and break every bone in your body. At the very least, you expect him to say something nasty.

And when he started in films, seventeen years ago, that's the sort of role he played. He was a teenage punk, a bouncer, a smuggler, a murder, even a werewolf.

But along the way he built up his acting talent. He did a superb job as Bill Sikes in Oliver, a film directed by his uncle, Carol Reed. But it was in The Trap, where he played the part of an ignorant, brutal French Canadian, that Reed proved he could really act. He went on to D.H. Lawrence's Women In Love, which is best known for the scene in which Oliver and Alan Bates wrestle nude.

Some of his other credits include the title role in Debussy, the hard-drinking Athos in The Three Musketeers, the priest Grandier in The Devils, and the lecherous stepfather in Tommy.

His film image in general has been that of a violent, selfish man with blue eyes and black hair, who would be handsome if he could only lose that sullen, murderous look.

To find out whether Oliver Reed is really such a swine, Penthouse sent Linda Merinoff to Broome Hall, Surrey, the sixty-room gothic mansion which is Reed's newly acquired home. The estate contains fifty acres of land and a huge lake, and here Reed, an animal lover, breeds thoroughbreds with Clydesdales to create a new line of huge, fast horses. Since Linda Merinoff returned alive, we have to conclude that Reed is not all he appears to be.

He admits that in his early days he was, indeed, sublimely selfish, a macho character who used women uncaringly, picked fights, and acted like a child. But now at thirty-seven - gentled down, even dignified. He says, "I think about it now - I think about whether I'm going to hurt people before I do something."

His son, by his former wife, is a away at boarding school. His five-year-old daughter, by another woman, lives with him and obviously rules him. Broome Hall is open to friends and acquaintances, mostly actors, although he admits, "I can't take more than two actors at a time. They bore me." From time to time he takes in struggling artists and gives them shelter. Keith Moon of the Who became a great friend of Oliver's during the filming of Tommy and is a frequent visitor, invariably bringing chaos along with him.

Reed disclaims any interest in the stage and says that his film acting is just a way to make money. He say's that he'd retire now if he could afford it. But the truth is that, because he loves the atmosphere in which the actor moves, he'll probably work until he drops. He loves the applause and the acclaim and all the crazy people who gravitate towards the business.

Reed was born in Wimbledon, the London suburb made famous by Tennis. His father, Peter, was a sportswriter. He has an older brother, David, who serves as his business manager and a younger brother, Simon, who is his public-relations man. He says that he had a perfectly normal, middle-class upbringing, but he found himself in constant combat with his schoolmasters. As a result he had a checkered academic career, attending a total of fourteen schools before finally abandoning education to become a bouncer at the age of seventeen.

After spending two years in the Royal Army Medical Corps, part of it in Malaya and Hong Kong, he came out of the service and asked uncle carol how to become an actor. The great director told him to join a repertory company. Oliver ignored the advice and got a job in TV as a swashbuckler on a BBC show. He went on to do more films, some Ken Russell made-for-television movies, and never went near the stage.

Reed says he will soon produce some films, but he has no plans for being a director. "I've no talent for it." At press time, Reed was hoping to produce a Ken Russell film, The Offering, about the four knights who killed Thomas � Becket. He was also acting in Burnt Offerings, a thriller with Bette Davis and Karen Black, and had just finished Sell Out, another thriller that had just been shot on location in Israel.

He likes to drink, likes to eat, likes to make love, likes to show off his strength, and occasionally he likes to fight. He battles fat, but finds excuses for it ("You can't drive a nail with a tack hammer").

Reed seems somehow different from other men - as witness the fact that this interview starts off with him asking the first question.

Reed: Do you sometimes get the feeling that we're all just playing at being grown-ups? Do you ever get that feeling? I got it now when I was walking down the corridor with the gin. Playing at grown-ups saying "Would you like a drink?" It's amazing. I feel like a big kid really. We're only copying what daddy and mommy used to do. It was very funny visiting my son, because I bought him some new suits. We went to Douggie Hayward to get them, which is, you know, quite a thing for a thirteen-and-a-half-year-old boy. He's very tall and very good-looking. He was acting very grown-up. I give him some wine now and then, or a toke. I'm trying to be progressive.
Penthouse: I understand you took him to Wales.
Reed: I fell over in Wales. I'd never fallen over before. I thought I was sitting on a chair in this restaurant, and I went down very, very slowly straight into the table next to me. The table went over and all the wine and soup went over and I said, "I'm terribly sorry." The wife said, "Don't be sorry. Just pay for the cleaning bills." So I took out some money, put it on the table, then stood on the table and clapped my hands so the whole restaurant would hear. I said "Excuse me. Not only would I like to apologize to this man but, seemingly" - and I picked up the bottle and looked at the label - "if he doesn't facilitate himself of the opportunity of having his clothes cleaned at least he'll be able to afford a better bottle of wine. Good night, sir," and I walked out. A note came across saying, "Thank you for the show. It's very good, but it's not as good as Richard's. Kindest regards. Mrs Rex Harrison". As you know Richard Harris's wife married Rex Harrison.
Penthouse: Why did you get married?
Reed: I was twenty-one, and I liked screwing the girl I was with. Typical middle-class attitude. She was Irish, typical working-class girl, and she said, "Right, you've got to marry me if you want to go on doing that, baby!" And I said, "Yeah, yeah." She was a little spitfire, who wanted me to sign a contract saying I wasn't going to fuck anybody else.
Penthouse: Would you get married again?
Reed: I think I would if I ever felt dopey in love again and it seemed the only way out, the only way to get what I wanted.
Penthouse: That has a cynical overtone.
Reed: Well yeah, I am a bit cynical because of the enormous alimonies. Really it's very destructive. I don't see why - in these days of equality when women can go out and work - why a man should pay so much toward a relationship which was, after all, a failure or a success because of both persons' attitudes. I think it should be 50 percent and that's a fair relationship. Why the hell should a man pay 100 percent?
Penthouse: Would you marry to legitimize a child?
Reed: I have an illegitimate child. The girl.
Penthouse: Does she look like you?
Reed: Just look at the picture.
Penthouse: How does it feel to have little "you's" running around?
Reed: Extraordinary! She's got an enormous great nose, very good ears, ears like shells - like mine. Very bright. At the moment she's going through a very smart period and she doesn't speak to me at all. I say, "Why don't you speak to me? Don't you want to speak to me? Why don't you say 'hello'? Say 'hello'!" So then I get cross and she thinks, "I've got him! I've got him just where I want him!" Then you're suddenly drawn down to their level, and you really get into it. "If you won't speak to me then I won't speak to you - so there. And you're not coming to my party either." And she says, "I don't care," or, rather, "Oi don't care," because there are so many builders around here that speak with a London accent. She really does sound extraordinary. I've never even really shouted at my daughter. I used to do a lot of shouting and pointing at my son, but I don't do that with here. I just try to out-psych her. She's turning me into a neurotic.
Penthouse: She sounds like she's going to come out of this better than you. Do you have theories about child-raising?
Reed: I think one naturally does. The usual thing is to just get on with it. You start reading Spock and Kinsey and all that bullshit and it makes you crazy, and if you go crazy the child's going to be affected by it. But you've got to be a bit crazy. You start joking with children and you think you're very funny and they laugh - when they're three. You're just making noises and faces, and then you find that years and years have gone by and they're think "Christ, not the same old shit," and you've suddenly got to change your style.
Penthouse: Start reading her about Lolita instead of Pooh?
Reed: Oh, she's right into that, oh boy! Amazing. She said to me once, "Why do you have a straight weewee?" And I tried to explain and she thinks that's absolutely fascinating.
Penthouse: Is your daughter especially precocious?
Reed: No, I don't think she's especially precocious. She just likes to get her own way. You know, she's been brought up by nannies the whole time, and so we are inclined to spoil her. The nanny left the other day - she's gone off to make love to a Greek or something and so we're without one. We had a really sexy nanny once. I was making a movie and all the actors promised to make here a movie star and take her back to California. After the location, of course, they did go back to California, but they didn't take her.
Penthouse: You once bumped, literally, into a friend of mine in a pub in Wimbledon, and as she backed away you scowled at here and demanded, "How dare you be frightened of me!" Left quite an impression.
Reed: It's quite difficult to talk about the effect one has on somebody, but I think that either women are really frightened of me or they're delighted to be a little bit frightened. They're probably hostile because they're a bit frightened, but the more educated ones - the liberationists for instance - try to do their own thing. But really, they're just as frail and frightened and beautiful as the rest underneath their battle dress.
Penthouse: Do they come to you and verbally attack you?
Reed: Yeah. I probably say "Oh shut up, fuck off!" which I never would have done in the past, but if that's the kind of thing they want to come out with, then they'll get that kind of talk back. If we're all going to be equal, well then let's all go off to war together, but at the moment, simply because of the physical realities of life, I don't find that we're sufficiently equal to warrant the police or army being manned by women. Men are physically stronger. Until such times as that changes, until such times as the Amazons come along with their right breasts knocked off so they can shoot a bow and arrow better, I can't see the balance of power changing.
Penthouse: But you're not hostile because you're frightened?
Reed: I don't think so. I think that most of the women who are hostile are very young. They're young and intelligent, but they haven't any experience of life, and therefore it's just based on itellectualism rather than what they've really learned through living. I've know some intelligent, posh girls who have gone out, and then come back a few years later and told me they've realized what it is to be a marvellous thing it is to be a mother or a lover or a wife - and to be soft, to be looked after.
Penthouse: What is this list of fourteen schools that you went to?
Reed: Some of them I left of my own free will. At other, I was asked to leave. Either that or my father didn't pay the bill. So in one way or another I found myself in fourteen different schools with desperate little teachers writing to my father to say, "I can't teach him." I just wasn't interested.
Penthouse: What were they trying to teach you?
Reed: Latin and mathematics. I think the only reason I'm an actor is that I can't add. I'm sure if I could add I would have chosen a career which is far more conducive to a peaceful life - putting on a smart suit and adding all day long, and going to lunch with people and either lending them money or asking for it back? Certainly, it's a far more reasonable way of making a living than jumping on top of Glenda Jackson - much as I love her!
Penthouse: Some of your friends are quite eccentric. Keith Moon of the Who, for one example.
Reed: God, yes. The most crazy thing I ever saw him do was while we were staying in this hotel while we were filming Tommy. We probably had finished a bottle of brandy and he was trying to order up another, but the porter wouldn't answer the phone - so Moon picked up the television and threw it out the window. It landed outside the main door of the hotel, and the porter came running out. He thought a bomb had exploded. Moon yelled, "Answer the fucking phone or my bed's coming next!" He's amazing.
Penthouse: How did you feel about being involved in the pop world?
Reed: It was all right except for weekends. I had this suit and I used to fill it with booze; then I'd come back after the weekend to find that Moon, who knew how to get the key, had had a party in there and there was no booze left. You should have seen my bill. Moon doesn't think of paying for anything...any more than he'd ask you to pay. When he first came here he arrived by helicopter on the front lawn and he had his chauffeur drive along beneath on the road. So the car was coming down the road and he was hovering above the car in the helicopter shouting for it to go faster. He almost came in through the bedroom window. I'd been playing soldiers in the wood before he arrived, and he suggested halfway through dinner that we should play a game with me running round the fields while he chased me in the car to see if he could hit me. We also had a sword fight with those big double-edged swords and I drilled him up and down the hall. The next night he came in and asked me to see a dirty film with him and his girl friend. I didn't know what to say. Well, what are you supposed to say about this delightful girl with no clothes on? I just said, "Yes, that's pretty, Keith. Artistic - very artistic. Good night."
Penthouse: You're a great sports spectator, aren't you?
Reed: I sometimes go to the big fights because I'm really interested. I enjoy rugby, which is more like your American football, because I used to play myself. And I still have a vested interest because a part of rugby is a drink at the bar afterwards. The Australians play lots of rugby. An Australian's idea of a good night out is to put on his serge suit, drink twenty-five schooners of beer, have a bag of prawns, then a chunder in the Pacific, go home, beat up the wife, and finally fuck her.
Penthouse: What's your idea of a good night out?
Reed: Just leave out the chunder in the Pacific. Actually I'm getting too old and fat to involve myself in sports now, so I've become an expert, a professional television athlete. I think I could beat Richard Harris in the ring.
Penthouse: Do you have anything else to say about Richard Harris?
Reed: I think Richard Harris knows how I feel about him. You know we sort of have this slanging match that takes place all the time...and I'm preparing a draft letter which I shall send to somebody, because he sent me a draft letter the last time he was rude about me. I'm going to word it very carefully so I won't land up in court.
Penthouse: How did it start?
Reed: I don't know. I think he was rude to me, so I was rude back. I think it started because I was talking to some journalist once and tried to explain that I represented quite a substantial part of the British box office. But they hadn't been to see me before so I said, "Where's your Dickie Harris and his Mayfair punch-ups now?" That's how it started. He retaliated and we got more and more into it. I'm the only public scholl actor there is. Harris is very uneducated. He's Irish. He's supposed to be very good in Juggernaut - I haven't seen it, have you? Well it's about time he gave a good performance. I read that he said Brando has hidden talents and he keeps them well hidden. I thought Brando was superb. He was always very down and low key. I saw an old movie of mine on television last night and thought God almighty I didn't realize how bad I was.
Penthouse: Have you ever done any made-for-television films?
Reed: Not since the early Ken Russell ones. They don't pay enough. There's only big money in America. I suppose if there was a series, very interesting and not too many of them and it was done in a big way, I might be interested. But some of our British things, they're not too bright. I'd have to be on a percentage. An actor can't make commercials here - it's just not done in this country. But a lot of people in this country do make commercials for Japan.
Penthouse: Orson Welles made a sherry commercial.
Reed: Ah, but have you seen that smile? I may be working with Orson again. I worked with once a couple of years ago. He's an amazing actor. He earns money just to make his obscure films.
Penthouse: Do you dance?
Reed: I did when I made a film called I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name. It was made during the swinging London period - you know, the red buses and Carnaby Street. I had to dance like that like I did in The System. I said, "I can't dance," and they said, "Do the same as you did in The System."
Penthouse: How are you as a singer?
Reed: Go see me in Tommy. I went down to the Who's studio - where they did all the music in quadraphonic sound. I believe in America you have fifty cinemas for quadraphonic sound. It was quite extraordinary as I simply can't sing, you see. But Ken Russell said, "Do you want to make the movie?" I'd just come back from Iran and said, "Yeah!" So we went down to the studio and Ken said, "Get out there and sing!" I said, "But I don't know any of the songs - I'll sing 'Wild Colonial Boy,'" But Ken said, "No, I don't want you to do that. I want you to sing one of the songs." I didn't know the music. I didn't know anything - but there I was and poor Pete Townsend, who wrote all the music, was drinking half tumblers of brandy and eating chips all the time while Ken was eating nuts... And the next day I came in with some currants and we just spent the whole time eating. The only time I was to dance in Tommy was with Ann-Margret, but then the pier caught on fire. She said, "Oliver and I were dancing a very smoochy number and the whole pier started to burn." I love her! She's sweet. She's nice, jelly and ice cream are nice and she's nice. She cut her hand very badly in Tommy. They had this thing where she had to dance in two and a half tons of chocolate sauce and bubbles and offal - all this garbage coming out of a television set. She was dancing and she cut her hand.
Penthouse: Did anything happen to you?
Reed: Not on Tommy. I survived that one. Musketeers was the last film in which I got run through with a sword.
Penthouse: How much research do you do for a film part?
Reed: None. I don't need to work on a part. I didn't even read Women In Love before I played Crich. Had I done so I would have been distressed by the fact that I am dark and Crich was blond. You know, he used to swim around with colored scarves on and things like that. He was really the epitome of everything D. H. Lawrence wasn't. He was a combination of two characters Lawrence knew.
Penthouse: Do you think if you do another film of a Lawrence novel people will begin to classify you as the actor who does all his things?
Reed: Well, it's about time I was involved in something artistic.
Penthouse: When was the last time?
Reed: I think in The Devils. I call that arty. I think it was misconstrued. A lot of people didn't understand that we were being serious. Lester turned Musketeers into a comedy, but it's very close to the book. I mean I'd say it's about equally as comic as the Douglas Fairbanks version. If you know anything at all about swordfighting, you know that nobody could fight like that. They didn't use big heavy swords. If you think about it, it's set in the same period as The Devils - a lot of plague, a lot of infection, the filth, the squalor, and the dirt which weren't necessarily there in The Three Musketeers. Of course, Musketeers is Dick Lester having a heyday with his mates. We actually made it all as one film; then they cut it into two and when we looked at our contract it said "film project" not "film" or "films" so we had a bit of a legal problem there.
Penthouse: Are all Englishwomen as awful as Lorna in The System?. The one who kept saying, "Do you love me? I know you love me, don't you?"
Reed: No, they're not all like that, but I believe they were. We made it, I think, in 1963 and I suppose twelve years ago that's really how we were and how that kind of working-class girl still is. You go up to the Midlands, and they're not nearly as sophisticated as they are in the south. In that kind of industrial environment they used to just think about going to bed with somebody, having fish and chips, and then you get married and have lots of children. The husband goes off to the pub and she stays at home dusting.
Penthouse: Was there ever a time in your own life when that's what you looked forward to?
Reed: No, but that kind of life still goes on everywhere. If you've got the weather you can sit out on the patio and bullshit and drink wine in the sun, but in England it's freezing cold and the beer is warm. Which leaves me no alternative but to drink warm beer in cold weather in pubs. I'm looking forward, actually, to getting quite old and playing the sage. I want to be wheeled around in a wheelchair, carrying a whip, pushed by a Negro in a white uniform - whipping people if they get in my way. There was a man who used to live here who was trundled around in a wheelchair whipping people with his crucifix.
Penthouse: All that pain and torture in The Devils - was that simulated?
Reed: No, it was quite painful. I had a little buzzer thing to use when I couldn't take any more. They used to have a quick release thing which used to snap up the wedges and things, and when they burned me they had a bonfire with this chute coming down in the middle. They had these flames all around, gas flames, which could be turned up and again I had a buzzer. They shaved off my hair, but that scene they saved until last in case I died. It's true! The built Loudon, the city, but they didn't account for the wind - and on this particular day, every time the flames went up high Ken would go completely mad and run up with buckets of paraffin and throw them on the fire. He went a bit strange. It got very, very tense, but I think the violence was quite effective. The trouble is I think sometimes one couldn't see the wood for the trees - there was so much calculation and abuse that Grandier, my character, got lost.
Penthouse: You've said that Debussy was your intellectual breakthrough.
Reed: Yeah. That was the beginning of my relationship with Ken Russell. Up to that time I'd been playing teddy boys, wild men, pirates, or werewolves, going around with a mouth full of false teeth.
Penthouse: How did Debussy affect you?
Reed: Well, I had to read a lot of poetry - and things like "the Fall of the House of Usher." Everybody was calling me up from the commercial world, asking me to speak into a microphone and say, "In my Maidenform bra..." Also cosmetic commercials. So I did a few of those and then I made The Tramp and then it went on. You know I only did it for bread. I didn't actually appear on them
Penthouse: Do you read much now?
Reed: I want to catch up on a lot of stuff I missed out on myself. One can only do that by reading to one's children. I never get tired of Water Babes, of Winnie the Pooh, or Black Beauty.
Penthouse: Was that what you meant when you said you wanted to go back to family-type films?
Reed: Yeah. I've had this idea I've been playing around with for some time. I wrote a script once about four knights who killed Thomas � Becket that Ken wants to direct, and I think we'll get that off the ground at last. But I also have this idea about two clowns which - providing you can harness Keith Moon's energy - he'll be able to do as well. It's just about two clowns who wander around a garden, looking at butterflies and stroking horses and pushing each other in the water. When I eventually get this together, you're only going to hear the sounds, you'll never actually see the characters. It'll be like an Invisible Man thing - all around the grounds, big trees and flowers. And it'll be cheap! No, really, it's just going to be two and a half hours of Moon and me wandering around stoned talking to dandelions - dressed in those jester things with bells, unshaven...
Penthouse: Were you often in school plays?
Reed: No, I wasn't. I played a shepherd once in a Nativity play. I understudied all the other parts and then tried to give them a cold or chicken pox.
Penthouse: Even the Virgin Mary?
Reed: Oh yeah, sure. My older brother played a bird once.
Penthouse: How old was he at the time?
Reed: Ten.
Penthouse: Did it give him a complex for life?
Reed: You'll have to ask his wife.
Penthouse: How does it affect you, being in a world where so many people are gay?
Reed: I don't mix with them - I don't mix with theater people or film people. The only time I do is when I work. The only thing I didn't want to do was in a film called Triple Echo. I was in the Caribbean and they sent me this script. It seemed alright until I came to this place where I was supposed to be groping this fellow - think he's a girl - and I had to give him a kiss. I said, "The kiss is out. Unless the kiss is out I'm not doing the movie." So they sent back a cable saying, "Kiss out. Come in."
Penthouse: Why did you have that kind of reaction?
Reed: I just don't fancy kissing a fellow... whom I don't love.
Penthouse: I am glad you qualified that. But isn't that all part of acting?
Reed: No, I don't think so. Not for me, anyway. I don't know why it is.... I just don't fancy the idea. I don't mind kissing birds, and didn't particularly mind taking my trousers off for Women In Love. But for the first two years after making Women In Love I never received a script without a naked scene in it. I always said no and it was always taken out.
Penthouse: After Women In Love did you get letters from women fans saying, "Oh, please?"
Reed: No. I thought that there would be a lot of strange remarks, but in actual fact the only women who seemed to be interested - which really shows a great deal about my anatomy - were some rather old, spotty waitresses at fish restaurants who used to say, "Oh you naughty boy." And once when I was walking down the Kings Road past a show shop a fellow went [kiss sound]. I'm still not convinced, though, he wasn't whistling at my shoes.
Penthouse: Have you worked on this macho image or does it come naturally?
Reed: "Macho"? What does that mean?
Penthouse: Super masculine
Reed: I think I might have done in the past, but not anymore.
Penthouse: Do you have young fans?
Reed: Girls come up to me and say "My mum wants your autograpgh," so I know I've arrived. It's true. So I say, "What about you?" And they say "Well-l-l-l-l-l, all right then."
Penthouse: Like they're doing you a favor?
Reed: Yeah. "I don't know what my mum sees in you," they'll say.
Penthouse: Well maybe they haven't seen Women In Love.
Reed: Right! I don't suppose they have - they're too young. But they'll write to me, thinking I still look like I did in the film last night on television. Then suddenly they'll see this fat old man.
Penthouse: You seem obsessed with all that.
Reed: Yes, I am. I'm obsessed with age. I don't like it very much simply because it doesn't offer one as much opportunity to do the things one likes to do. For instance, I find it great fun to jump about the place and play soldiers in the woods and do physical things, and I haven't yet reached the age where my brain says that all that shit simply doesn't matter. I had an anvil-lifting competition here and I wrecked my back. Anvils are quite important to me. I have this anvil in the yard, and every now and then we get juiced up and all the fellows slap each other on the back and try and lift the anvil.
Penthouse: Do you have many male fans?
Reed: No, except a few who write in, the larger-than-life sort of thing from factory workers. They think I've had all those birds - the image sort of comes across to them.
Penthouse: Sad letters?
Reed: Not so much. They're more the "Good on ya - hope you have a good bunk-up [fuck] tonight" sort of thing.
Penthouse: Do you think of yourself as an actor first or a sex symbol?
Reed: I just don't think of myself as a sex symbol anymore. I think in the second part of Musketeers Athos is very much how I feel about myself - slightly disillusioned. I don't think Crich was like that in Women In Love, because he was so destroyed he couldn't understand why Gudrun went off with that fellow... And down here in Surrey there's very little opportunity to be a sex symbol, locked away in this house all day. I go down to the pub every day. Actually you'd be surprised - there are some very pretty girls who come down over the weekend, but there's nothing you can because they're all married. Then again, in the old days I wouldn't have cared, but now I care about hurting someone.
Penthouse: I understand you're starting a production company.
Reed: I have a production company. I probably have several of them locked away in bank vaults somewhere. It's simply a name under which one trades, and I trade under my company rather than as an individual. I think that helps the tax problems in some way.
Penthouse: Have you been affected by the whole big tax mess?
Reed: Sure. That's why Keith Moon's in California. Everyone lives in France, Europe, California... somewhere else. Never England. I've been told by my advisers that you can live anywhere in the world and get a better tax deal than you do here. They're chasing us out. I mean the Chancellor of the Exchequer - the last thing he said was, "We will make the rich scream until their pips pop." So it's no good being a rich man in England anymore. In America you're allowed to keep 50 percent of your earned income. I don't think there's anything there like the English wealth tax, which means you're taxed on anything you have already, let alone your income tax. At the higher end of the scale, they can charge you 89 percent - so that's a hell of a lot of money you've got to earn if you employ people.
Penthouse: Tell us about the theatrical production that you and Moon want to create.
Reed: We just want to have dinner on stage with our friends and invite an audience. That's all.
Penthouse: Do you really think people would be interested in watching you have dinner?
Reed: I think so, the way we have dinner. We would just send out invitations saying, "Have you been to the dinner party yet?" You must understand we have quite talented friends. If John Lennon were in town, he'd come. Also sportsmen, athletes.... We'd have a table tennis and a pool table, and people would have throat mikes and just do their thing. We'd have it catered by the best restaurants in London in exchange for a credit on the program.
Penthouse: How close is it to actually happening?
Reed: Well, it will be fairly difficult to do if Moon keeps on living in California.
Penthouse: You have no control over getting old, but why are you getting fat?
Reed: I go up and down. It depends on the quantity of beer one drinks, and at the moment my body is inclined to retain liquid. I think young kids nowadays are very much into dieting. They must be - otherwise they couldn't get into all the shirts and trousers they sell in the shops now. You've got to be built like a beanpole. The kids have money and the shops pander to them. A lot of them are dying... aren't they?... because they're dieting so much. I think if you don't eat, in the end you don't want to eat.
Penthouse: They certainly look unhealthy, the trendies. But do you want to be heavy?
Reed: No, but I do think that a carpenter needs a good hammer to bang in the nail. I think it's the same with life. If you're going to live a strenuous life, then the best thing to do is feed yourself. I'm not really into dieting. At the New York Athletic Club they serve amazing food. People go there, get healthy, and then eat themselves to death - which is, I suppose, the right way to do it.
Penthouse: What about health spas?
Reed: I've been to a couple of them. I went to one at Buckstead Park. I spent seven days playing Ping-Pong, which was quire frustrating because I'm not a very good Ping-Pong player - but it was certainly very good for the weight because you have to keep getting down to get the ball out from under the table. You get so weak from eating pears that you fall down, and they come and take you away on a stretcher. Then they feed you and let you out into the world again.
Penthouse: Were there any temptations?
Reed: There was a pub nearby that sold crab and lobster and white wine. It was quite tempting. And they put a television in your room - Jesus Christ! All those Kitacat and Lassie commercials! I'd never really been into dog food before but.... And Graham Kerr cooking! He was actually at Buckstead Park when I was there - nobody could turn on their television because people were always eating and drinking. When you odn't feed yourself your brain goes and you can't read. You can't concentrate. It really is very frightening. Women go down there and after about four days burst into tears and phone up their husbands. Certain people are allowed to eat and they had these separate rooms. We would go to bed at about nine o'clock after we had a footbath which was the big social event of the day - everyone gets in a big line to walk through hot water first and then on pebbles in cold water. You get chilblains and then you go to bed. Well, I was saying good night to some people and outside their room there was a tray with a little piece of cheese rind on it. So we said, "Good night, good night," and I went in my room thinking about that cheese rind. I was only in there about three seconds when I burst out, but it had gone.
Penthouse: Do people go there to gain weight also?
Reed: They do. Some people come there to put on weight, so they have eating rooms and sometimes they don't quite close the door and all these marvellous food scents come out and you see the people eating.
Penthouse: I take it you just like eating.
Reed: Yeah. I'm not too fussy.
Penthouse: Do you hunt?
Reed: I like keeping things alive, not killing them. I'm not saying that I'm more sensitive than other people. I believe in eating meat as much as anybody else, but I believe animals should have a chance. They breed them, you see, and then they let them go and shoot them. I'm trying to get the creatures to come over here. There are the most amazing pheasants around here, and they're not frightened because they know they're safe. But if the deer came they'd go after the roses - they can clear three hundred rose trees like that by morning. So I keep the horses down here in the big paddock to keep the deer from coming across. Also, I fill the ponds with goldfish and the heron come and get the lot of them. Then I net the goldfish ponds and the dragonflies get caught in the nets. It's just all a big cycle. You try and help one and you're screwing up another's life.
Penthouse: So where do you get your food?
Reed: I don't know. It comes from the kitchen.
Penthouse: Do you live surrounded by a bevy of females?
Reed: No. I wish I were. I'm not allowed that by my bird.
Penthouse: What does your older brother, David, do?
Reed: He's my manager.
Penthouse: The whole family's together?
Reed: Yes. I know where to find them if they abscond. I used to have an agent. An agent does everything, but they also know everything about you - who you're kipping with, how much you spend in a restaurant, how much you spend on your staff. It's very personal, and I'd much rather that it was kept in the family. Plus why should I pay 10 per cent to somebody I don't know instead of to one of the family? I can trust my brother. He's bright and he's got my interests at heart. That's true of very few people in the business.
Penthouse: Do you listen much to music?
Reed: No, but my son's into that, so I sometimes get roped into listening. When I was young music was for holding women to. Now you don't seem to need the excuse. You can hold them anyway, so half the joy of listening to music and dancing is gone. Now everybody's doing their own thing, which doesn't seem to be connected with sex or with any of the old tribal rites that seem to me to be important in listening to music.
Penthouse: What did you used to listen to?
Reed: Oh, when I was a kid I used to listen to really old records that I found in the attic that belonged to my father. "Begin the Beguine," "Hutch," "Cute, sweet, and tall and you can't love them all, but you can marry one little girl." Things like that. And "Winnie the Pooh" and songs from Dumbo like "Did You Ever See An Elephant Fly?" But once I'd got into girls and the music for holding them, I was in the army. I spent most of my time in the jungle or in huts somewhere where they didn't have music, but there was one place with a jukebox that Nat King Cole on it. We used to put money in and play all the Nat King Cole records - sitting in front of it in our chairs and threatening anybody who even tried to play "Tammy" or something like that with extreme violence.
Penthouse: How did you fell about army life?
Reed: I hated it. But I tried to get through it with the minimum of trouble.
Penthouse: You went in for cross-country and boxing.
Reed: yeah. If you were on the boxing team, you didn't have to go and work in the cookhouse peeling potatoes. It was an easy life if you were an athlete - the nearest thing to being a professional athlete that I've encountered in this country. In Russia, usually, their athletes are in the army. They're professional soldiers or, in other words, professional athletes.
Penthouse: Do you play tennis?
Reed: No, I've got binocular vision, which means that one eye focuses at a different length from the other - so sometimes I squint and I don't see small moving objects in three dimensions. Since I'm a show-off when birds are watching, I like to either play well or I'd rather not play. In fact, I don't like doing most things unless I can do them quire well.
Penthouse: Do you gamble?
Reed: No. Oh, of course, I gamble on the odd race or the Derby or the Grand National or sometimes a football team, but I don't gamble on the horses every day. Simon does far more than I. Our father was a racing journalist and we grew up with horses and jockeys and working the system. But it honestly doesn't interest me.
Penthouse: Did you vote in the last election?
Reed: Yeah. And that's a sort of a gamble isn't it? It's the first time I'd ever voted. I believe that there's a very dangerous element in this country right now - mainly the Communists - in the unions, and I think they ought to be looked into very seriously. I've been in Communist countries and I don't believe it works. I don't like what I've seen. I think that if the Communist in the unions get too much power they well start welding political force rather than looking for financial betterment. But I believe in a democracy where one can be whatever one likes and one doesn't have to be terrified of the government. I was in Czechoslovakia two days before the tanks rolled in - when we were making Assassination Bureau. I was in Bulgaria when Fidel Castro, that "Man of the People" came and they closed off all the streets. They held all of the men in the hotel at gunpoint. I worked with a Spanish crew and if any of them had Bulgarian girlfriends the hotel would be raided in the middle of the night and the girls taken away for fraternizing.
Penthouse: Are you interested in politics generally?
Reed: No, as I said, that's the first time I voted, but I saw a heavy danger involved. I suppose I would see a far greater reason for being a socialist if I lived in the Midlands or worked in a factory. A man can be what the hell he wants to be providing he believes in democracy.
Penthouse: If you weren't an actor, what would you do?
Reed: I think I'd be a doctor in the Caribbean - preferably with a lot of pretty nurses and nobody to bandage. I act as an investment. You don't think I do it because I like it, do you? I always thought I'd like to be a pubkeeper. I've spent quite a lot of time in pubs and I've seen quite a few of the kind of people who come in.
Penthouse: Isn't there a whole art of pubs?
Reed: Yeah, there is. There are lots of pubs, and pubs in the country are very different from pubs in town. I suppose a whole important part of our society in England is built around pubs. For instance, English people go to pubs to socialize, as they went to coffeehouses in the old days. I think that this is only common to this country. In America, they seem to go to get drunk. I think they go to cocktail bars, but people don't stand around or move about like they do in this country. Here it's a political forum, and a forum for the amateur expert on athletics too. The first thing that Simon talks to me about is boxing, and if he was in a pub he'd probably be showing me. He's too polite to do that in my own home. Sometimes.
Penthouse: Do you want someday to be regarded as an old-time glamorous star by girls looking at glossy photographs and singing, "You Made Me Love You?"
Reed: No! Oh no! I want to disappear just a little quicker than I came. I don't want to hang around as nostalgia. I was thinking of retiring at thirty-five, but I had all that alimony to pay and responsibilities.
Penthouse: Why did you want to retire?
Reed: Because I'm getting more and more bored. The older I get, the fewer pretty girls I get to kiss, so the parts become a little depressing. I've started playing bank managers, and they talk a lot which means I've got a lot more to learn. And now I've suddenly got to start to talk about building kingdoms - I mean I'm playing Bismarck in Dick Lester's Royal Flash, and all I do is set the plot, talking about lots of German cities with long German names. There's a hell of a lot to learn. I mean, I have a fight with Henry Cooper which isn't bad - he used to be the heavyweight champion of Europe. And another sword fight, which isn't bad either. But all the talking in between is quite boring. In the old days all I had to do was kiss Glenda Jackson's boobs and look moody.