Articles/Interviews

OLIVER REED

Boozer. Brawler. Womaniser. Arrogant male chauvinist. Terror of TV interviewers wondering if he's about to take his trousers off on camera or start making amorous advances to a pretty fellow guest on the show.

Is that how you see Oliver Reed?

It wouldn't surprise me. Ollie's larger than life image as a roistering buccaneer, makes good material for gossip columnists when they're short of a story. And his irrepressible sense of humour - coupled with his down to earth awareness that any publicity is good publicity so long as they spell your name right - ensures that the picture of Oliver Reed as a hell-raising bully boy is always getting another daub of garish paint.

But this isn't the Oliver Reed I've known, admired - and had a very soft spot for - ever since our first meeting back in 1969 when, as a timorous and not too experienced radio interviewer, I was faced with the embarrassment of being the umpteenth person to ask him how he felt about the nude wrestling scene with Alan Bates in Women in Love.

I must've stumbled my way through the ordeal with sufficient tact because we've had a lot of good laughs together since then. And I've never again felt the chill of the cold stare Ollie reserves for anyone who doesn't understand that, no matter how much he may play the gossip columnist's game off the set, he treats his work with the dedication of a true professional.

And very hard he works, too. Going from one film to another.

Early in July we'll be seeing him as head of the KGB in Condor Man, a comedy spy thriller which Oliver made for Disney, with Michael Crawford. August 27 is the opening night of Lion of the Desert, in which he co-stars with Anthony Quinn.

Then comes Venom, scheduled for the autumn, a suspense thriller which he made in this country with Klaus 'Nosferatu' Kinski (father of Tess star Nastassia), Sarah Miles, Susan George, Nicol Williamson, Sterling Hay den - and a deadly mamba.

Also on the stocks are Dr Heckyll and Mr Hype, a spoof on Jekyll and Hyde, and Touch of the Sun co-starring Keenan Wynn and Peter Cushing.

"I try not to stop working. I'm not happy sitting about doing nothing. If I had to, I think I'd start writing or get involved in something else; but since - touch wood - I get offered quite a lot of work I keep going."

"After all, Lester Piggott doesn't stop riding horses. You ride some good ones and you ride some bad ones ... hopefully I ride more good ones than bad but it's inevitable they won't all be."

"Like Piggott, I take the best mount that gets offered. If a film is obviously bad - obviously bad for me - I throw it out. But one is governed by the desire to work and by economics."

We were talking in Ollie's dressing room at Elstree Studios during the shooting of Venom. A production beset by dramas and holdups not unconnected with the "I am a big movie star" attitude of Klaus Kinski, who did not endear himself to the rest of the cast or the film crew.

My admiration for Oliver Reed has never been greater than when I watched him keep his cool and speak courteously to the unfortunate young man whose job it was to keep coming to the door to warn him of a further delay. And the patience with which he endured the long hours of waiting in the stuffy little room which he described to me as "nothing more than a prison cell except I don't have to slop out and don't have to use a potty."

I suggested that anyone who believed everything written about him would imagine him to be rolling around on the floor with a couple of bottles of booze close to hand.

His eyes twinkled. "I'm not going to deny myself the opportunity of rolling around on the floor with a couple of bottles of booze when I want to. But not when I'm working."

"I'm paid quite well for the job I do, and no matter what opinions I might register against some of the puppeteers (Ollie's term for directors who don't know how to handle actors properly) I work hard to the best of my ability. So I don't think it's right to fool around in the studios unless I need it to give me a lift so I can give a better performance."

A keen filmgoer when he was a schoolboy, Oliver Reed can still get a big thrill out of working with one of the great stars of his youth. Although, with 60-plus films behind him, his knees don't knock when he meets a legendary personality like Bette Davis who co-starred with him and Karen Black in Burnt Offerings.

"Bette can be difficult, but she's a marvellous, marvellous lady, and very much a woman. I've known people who've tried to play the movie star with me far more than she ever did."

"Mind you, she can be two-faced. She can be as charming as a Cheshire Cat on the set all morning, then have a couple of gin and tonics at lunchtime and be a bitch afterwards."

"I remember her coming over here and saying on television that Karen Black was pregnant and slept all the time and that I used to go out drinking at night and come in next morning with a hangover. I don't know how she knew that, since she was never on the set as early as I was. And Karen was certainly pregnant, but never used it as an excuse to waste time."

"Bette can be an absolute cow at times, but I adore her just the same. She's getting on a bit and wants her own way, and one has to accept that. She just needs to be treated carefully. With respect, but no trepidation."

Like so many British film stars, Oliver Reed has to work out of this country most of the time. Partly because abroad is where the work is. Partly for tax reasons. But his roots are here, his home is here, and he keeps coming back to us.

"Yes, I do. In fact, I've just spent three years away and missed this country so much I jumped at the chance to make Venom in England when the Screen Actors strike in America delayed the start of Tarzan in which I was to have played Bo Derek's father ... needless to say, I wasn't cast in the title role!"

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I'm quite sure that Ollie was once a Cavalier because he's very much a Royalist. I reminded him that the last time we'd had a get together was at the time of the Queen's Silver Jubilee when he delighted in showing me the flagpole he'd had erected in the garden of his home so that he could hoist a Union Jack.

He smiled at the memory, but there was a sadness in his smile. For he has had to give up the huge one-time priory in Surrey that he was restoring with such loving care. The enormous tax bills he had to pay made it impossible for him to continue to afford "a small fortune" on preserving the mansion with its forty-seven bedrooms, fifty acres of land and stables for his horses. Now he owns a smaller farm with fewer horses - and employs fewer staff.

"It seems ridiculous to me," he remarked with some bitterness. "I would've thought it was better for the country to have one person wealthy enough to employ fifteen people than to hound that one and put a lot of those people out of work."

"I still will hang on here. If I can. Michael Caine was the last to leave because of the stupidly heavy tax levied against actors who can do well one year and earn next to nothing the next. He purports to be very happy over in California, and I'm very very pleased for him."

"Sure, I keep coming back ... but I can't afford to live here all the time because I must be abroad earning enough to keep the place going. So I can't see myself staying for ever if the tax gets enormously heavy again."

"I'm too old to start again (Oliver was 42 in February) and have all the hassle of bureaucrats nosing around and inspecting all the bloody time and asking questions, questions, questions. I'm not going to put up with it anymore ... I don't know just how deep my love for crocuses and daffodils and bluebells lies ... I don't know, Marjorie, I just don't know ..."

Ollie Reed is a great leg-puller, much given to teasing po-faced reporters with outrageous statements that get written up for real. But he'll always give a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. A lesser man would make all the right patriotic noises while turning his back on the British film industry.

Not Ollie. He puts his money where his mouth is by starring in movies like The Triple Echo and The Class of Miss MacMichael (both with Glenda Jackson) which he describes as "home grown for home grown audiences".

"They're very intimate, very English stories that aren't really understood by the Italians, Germans, French and Americans so they don't get world distribution."

"We don't get paid a lot of money for these films, but we make them because we want to make them."

"Contrary to some of my women's beliefs, I don't desert my loves that easily. My love is still with this country and the cinema - and there I stick." *