Articles/Interviews

asks Ken Johns

"ALL women react violently to me. They all have preconceived ideas. We're all herd animals you know, looking for a leader." The words of Oliver Reed.

Mr. Reed, who literally sizzled in The Devils, who smouldered in Women In Love as well as revealing more of Mr. Reed than in another film he has made, is surely the number one contender for the hottest screen lover stakes on our British movie scene.

He has shown his bedside manner in a number of films, which have helped establish him as a leading international star. His movie bed companions have included a number of fair beauties. His latest is the delectable Claudia Cardinale who stars with him in his new picture The Man in which a mysterious young man, played by John McEnery, interrupts an idyllic affair between a wealthy landowner named Palizyhn (Oliver Reed) and Anya, his lover (Claudia Cardinale). The young man has a personal vendetta against Palizyhn, believing that it was he who murdered his parents. The setting is Russia.

It is yet another role for Reed to prove himself one of the great British screen lovers of all time. No doubt he believes he's already earned that distinction , for 'Ollie', as his friends call him, isn't the shy, retiring type.

He once said in an interview: "There's no such thing as a humble actor. I'm English and successful and good. Don't tell me I'm a liar. All you've got to do is look at the box-office receipts. I'm Mr. England."

And only in September, taunted by a Yugoslavian who reckons he is the world's most able lover. Mr. Reed quickly took up the gauntlet and said that he'd prove that Englishmen were the best lovers. He offered to captain a team of five men ... and will keep a record of their conquests.

Said Reed: "An Englishman takes his time and women like that. We can keep the tally on a board in my local boozer."

Seeing him in that nude wrestling scene with Alan Bates in Women In Love, one might have thought he would have made a good contender for the Mr. Universe title as well.

His baptism of fire in the movie business came with a series of Hammer horror movies which he now regards as his apprenticeship. Recalling those early movies, he says, "For the first time I learnt the techniques of filming and learnt how to sustain a performance shot out of sequence."

Graduation for Oliver Reed came with a movie titled The System, his first important and major romantic lead role. Michael Winner's film was acclaimed. Reed emerged not only a star, but an actor with enormous appeal to women. For the next eight-and-half years he and Winner went on to more success together through films such as The Jokers, I'll Never Forget What's 'Is Name and Hannibal Brooks

Reed was something new and different on the British movie scene - a rugged charmer with enormous sex appeal. That face - sullen, intense, scarred by a bar fight, became the face of British movies. Yet, as an actor, he was struggling to prove himself to critics. This critical acceptance came via a television role, that of Debussy in a documentary directed by Ken Russell. "It was my intellectual breakthrough," said Reed.

Later, again with Ken Russell, he went to make Women In Love and The Devils.

With the talent and the looks to match, Oliver Reed has become big business. His next movie stars him opposite Marcello Mastroianni. This is Carlo Ponti's The Hostage being filmed in Italy, which is about the gradual breakdown of a wealthy industrialist captured by a gang of bank robbers.