Articles/Interviews

How does this fierce, blue-eyed, athletic-built, husky-voiced mass of energy succeed where other more mortal men sometimes fail? Jerry Bauer finds out

In The Devils, Oliver Reed's sexual magnetism drives a hunch-backed nun (Vanessa Redgrave) to sadistic madness. In the forthcoming The Hunting Party, Oliver plays a baddie who slaps Candice Bergen, but finally gets her just where he wants her - at his feet. And in The First of January he has both Geraldine Chaplin and Diane Cilento thinking uncensorable thoughts about him. Who else could do that?

"I am constantly surprised by women," he told me, stretched out on a divan in his newly renovated Wimbledon house - or rather mansion. "I do love them so, even if it's not possible to have an intellectual relationship with the fair sex."

"Take most of the actresses I've worked with. At first they're frightened of me, believe it or not. They've heard stories. Then we go through other stages. I tell you, with a woman, everything depends on the sexual relationship. There's no use promising something unless it's fulfilled, either. If it's not fulfilled by the end of the film, they only become suspicious."

He stopped and added: "The only woman I didn't communicate with was Glenda Jackson (Women in Love). We just didn't find each other attractive."

Oliver asked me: "Would you like a drink?"

I nodded as he began to prepare them. He continued: "Coca-cola for me. I'm on the wagon. Haven't touched a drop for months."

This, despite the fact that the plaque on the door, "Portley Society" signified that the premises were the weekly meeting-place of Oliver's drinking club.

He handed me a glass and sat down.

"I firmly believe that if love is not right, everything else goes wrong. Love is - like an old paperback novel that begins: 'He looked across a crowded room and saw her as her eyes met his ...' Well, I find it still happens at cocktail parties. You make your bid, however you do it, with the knowledge that she will catch your gesture."

"I really think that there are moments of absolute love, of complete passion. Love for a woman is completely different from love for granny or love for your country. Men have killed for the love of a woman."

He stood up and lit a cigarette.

"A total sexual relationship is closest to complete happiness. A sexual involvement is bigger than the word 'love' because it can't be abused like 'love'. When you analyse it, sex is only consideration and communication. A meaningful sexual relationship is complete caring."

Oliver took several puffs, then went on:

"Some of my friends have their image of an ideal woman. I say it's rubbish. If you have an ideal woman, you regret it eventually if you ever have to let her go, had you been lucky enough to find her in the first place. On the other hand, it can be very upsetting if you haven't found her."

I noticed he was dressed like an athlete: white tee shirt, jeans and bare feet. He never wore shoes or socks about the house, I was given to understand. Anyway, he looked cool, comfortable and very much the man who knows-his-own-mind.

"I usually end the affair, but I don't like to hurt women. No, it would please me if the woman in question would simply drop me. But it never seems to work out that way. I usually wind up thinking of polite excuses to terminate the relationship. That's when life becomes dangerous. Finding the reason."

Although for all ostensible purposes a bachelor, Oliver was, until a few years ago, a married man with a family. He is divorced. His son Mark is ten, his daughter Sarah is two.

"I was twenty, Catherine was eighteen when we were married. Although we always had a good sense of communication, we grew apart in other ways. At first, we were very close - too close. Then I had to travel a lot for the exigencies of location shooting. Her ideals were home - children. Mine were the values of the travel-hunter."

I glanced about the room with its marble staircase, elegant leather divans and tasteful eighteenth-century paintings.

"I think I've achieved all those status symbols and objects that can make me happy. I've been an actor for thirteen years, and it's the only way I know how to make money."

He rubbed his chin, then took a sip of his drink. "I'm not optimistic enough to believe that I can go on acting forever. I can improve, sure - there's always room for improvement. But there's too much pressure put upon you as an actor. You need to find something that eventually allows you a form of relaxation. "

"I'm not worried about my ego, as some people may think." He laughed: "What's that? Most good actors have overcome their ego. Those who haven't eventually wind up in an unhappy state. Of course, the ego's always there, but under control. The successful actor - myself, if you like, has tasted beautiful women, expensive restaurants, fast cars - the lot - and found it all wanting. It's very sad, but it's a fact of life."

"I would like to do something more constructive with my life. Just recently, I helped write a script. But I'm not going to make the film. Somebody else will. That's how life is. You can't win them all."

He sighed, and looked out to the expansive, back garden. Then he turned to me again:

"I'm looking for peace of mind, just like everybody else. People achieve it in various ways. You can do it quicker than the way I'm going about it. Basically everybody who depends on me financially is preventing me from achieving it: the maid, the gardener, the taxman. I would hate to spend the rest of my life earning all this money and employing a lot of people who are financially dependant on me"

"The thing I want to do in the end is settle down and become involved in an occupation that will make me no money. Like farming or writing."

"I had thought about directing, but I still don't know acting. There are still too many good people directing today who know little enough about the job."

We moved onto the terrace. Oliver showed me the lemon tree, of which he is very proud. As he talked, I realised that in a certain sense he had come full circle.

"I was against society in the fifties because it was richer than me. I was frightened of becoming involved. I had a record as a failed army officer and a successful athlete. I was good at the physical - sexual side of life. It was all I knew. I even tried to convince myself I could become a male model. I was good at it, but it wasn't for me. Then came the Hammer horror films, which served as my schooling from the Winner-Russell College."

"Though I like and respect both Michael and Ken, a schoolboy doesn't always have to hand in hand with his tutors. You know Women In Love couldn't have been financed without my name. I had acted in the television programmes of Debussy and Rossetti for Russell. Women In Love was a sort of thank you film."

"With The Devils, it was a different matter. I thought it should be made. Society is becoming sicker and sicker nowadays. The Devils is merely a mirror to contemporary corruption. No doubt people will criticise it without attempting to understand it in the light of what is going on in the world today and exactly what is going on around them."

"Yet the role which is most closely allied to my own character is the protagonist of I'll Never Forget What's 'Is Name. Not that I go around punching people in the face and busting up desks, as he did. No. I'd like to cause damage to other facets of society like sleeziness, injustice and gangsterism. Alas, the film suffered from being punctuated by too many Winnerisms and not enough directness."

He was showing me about the not-yet-completed house. I noticed the pistol collection in the hallway as we went downstairs. On the ground floor, a maid was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Passing the study, I noticed that some primitive paintings were leaning against the wall on the floor, ready to be hung-up after the room had been put in order.

"I have very little communication in life. Only with my family actually - my parents and my children; perhaps also with the gardener and housekeeper. My father is a racing journalist. He writes about race horses for the Evening Standard. Unfortunately, he has yet to give me a winner. "

"I became interested in horses when I was making The Hunting Party a few months ago in Spain. I didn't ride before that film. I began to love to watch the animals running through empty fields. When I returned to England, I decided that the only thing to do was to buy a horse or to rent one. Like a rented woman, a rented horse doesn't give you a good ride. So I bought one." We were in the garden now. It was a profusion of flowers.

"I love nature and I loathe plastic. Plastic represents everything phoney in life. They're no longer building cars out of steel - all plastic. It doesn't bend like iron. I feel that life is too much like a plastic mold smashing people down into its rigid form. Even old people wandering the earth are put into plastic beds these days."

"I'm glad that today's youth is questioning our so-called established values. In the fifties we couldn't. I became a soldier at eighteen because it was the right thing to do at that time for me. It was an easy way of life. I was adapting my behaviour to my needs. But it was never a question of sticking a bayonet into anyone."

"I wouldn't like my son Mark to become a soldier. Not because I'm protective. I'm not. I'm not an indulgent parent either."

"I'm not implying that children shouldn't question certain established institutions. Otherwise, we'd be living in the Victorian society our grandparents came into. Society builds the structures of the sort of world it chooses to live in. It's changing. Thank God people are recognising, for example, that we can have children without marriage."

"However, I'm passionately against women's liberation. You can't be in love with women and support that sort of movement. They would do better to spend more time making themselves more attractive for men. Maybe they would get one and stop complaining. After all, women are like one's country. They should be defended by men and not by other women. Sure, they should have equal rights. A woman doctor should be paid the same as a male doctor for similar work. Except, let's face it, some women simply aren't equipped physically to do a man's job."

"Mind your head, the ladder," I warned him. It was standing open, over the front door.

Oliver walked under it.

"I always do this." he said, with a smile. "I'm not superstitious just so long as the horoscope in the newspapers are in my favour. Don't you realise, I'm Aquarius - it's my year!"

He could not have been more right.