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Biography
Oliver Reed (February 13, 1938 – May 2, 1999) was an English actor known for his macho image on and off screen.
He was born in Wimbledon, London, England. The nephew of film director Sir Carol Reed, the young Oliver was dyslexic and was expelled from many different private schools.
Reed never had any acting training and had very minimal theatrical experience. His films included Women In Love, The Assassination Bureau, The Devils, I'll Never Forget What's 'Isname, Oliver!, Tommy, The Three Musketeers, Zero Population Growth, The Brood, Castaway, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Lion of the Desert, and Gladiator.
A major international star in the late 1960s and 1970s, Reed's career declined in the 1980s. Some of his contemporaries have ascribed his frequent appearances in films which wasted his talent to his desire for financial security: when the UK government raised taxes on personal income, Reed initially declined to join the exodus of major British film stars to Hollywood and other more tax-friendly locales, although his Daily Telegraph obituary noted that in the late seventies he was obliged to relocate to the Channel Islands as a "tax exile".
Reed married three times. In 1959 he wed Kate Byrne, they had one son, Mark, before their divorce in 1969. He then lived with the dancer Jackie Daryl from 1969, but they later parted, after having a daughter, Sarah. His widow was his second wife Josephine Burge, whom he married in 1985.
Burly and with a 48 inch chest, he began his career playing romantic leads, but gradually acquired a tougher image. He was famous for his excessive drinking, and was once forced to leave the set of a television discussion programme after arriving drunk and attempting to kiss feminist writer Kate Millett.
Reed's drinking bouts fitted in with the "social" attitude of many rugby teams in the sixties and seventies, and there are numerous anecdotes such as Reed and 36 friends drinking, in an evening, 60 gallons of beer, 32 bottles of Scotch, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of wine and one bottle of Babycham. He minimised the story that he drank 106 pints of beer on a 2-day binge before marrying Josephine; "The event that was reported actually took place during an arm-wrestling competition in Guernsey about 15 years ago, it was highly exaggerated." Despite occasional reports in publications such as The Sydney Morning Herald, Reed never played for the Sunday rugby team the Entertainers.
An oft-repeated, yet unverified anecdote holds that Reed could have been James Bond. In 1969, Bond franchise producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were looking for a replacement for Sean Connery. Reed, 31 at the time, was a prime candidate but ultimately not selected because the producers felt his rowdy demeanour was too much of a liability. In a posthumous biography, the Guardian Unlimited called passing over Reed "one of the great missed opportunities of post-war British movie history."
Reed was often irritated that his appearances on TV chat shows concentrated on his drinking feats, rather than his latest film.
He died suddenly from a heart attack in Valletta, Malta reportedly after drinking three bottles of rum and after beating five sailors at arm wrestling at a bar called simply, "the Pub". The owners have since added "ollie's last order" to the pubs sign as a mark of respect. His death came while he was in the middle of filming Gladiator, his remaining scenes were completed using a body double and digitally manipulating previously shot footage. Alex Higgins, himself suffering from throat cancer, was one of a number of celebrities including Michael Winner, the film director, and one of Oliver's closest friends who attended the funeral in Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland. "Consider Yourself", a song from the hugely successful Oliver!, was played at the funeral.
References
(Friday May 7, 1999). "Devil of an actor". Retrieved Feb. 24, 2006.
