Articles/Interviews

RUSSELL: I'd like you to meet someone who's said to believe in leprechauns, and who cherishes Winnie the Pooh. He used to be a nightclub bouncer, and it's no secret that there are thousands of girls who would bounce in his direction if only he would give them the word. Ladies and gentlemen, the man once described as the Errol Flynn of Wimbledon Common, Mr Oliver Reed.
(music; applause)
Now, do girls still bounce at you, or towards you?
REED: No, because I breed horses and they're frightened of the horses, which is a shame.
RUSSELL: But does that mean you don't get troubled by them at all?
REED: No. I'm a liar, too.
(audience laughter)
RUSSELL: Thank God. In any kind of woman who crosses your eye vision, do brains attract you more than breasts?
REED: No.
(audience laughter)
No. I did a programme on television a few months ago with a Woman's Liberationist, and I decided then that I didn't...She kept on spitting. (Russell laughs.) And I didn't find that very attractive, and then there were lots of people shouting...
RUSSELL: Wait a minute, spitting in what way?
REED: Spiting at me. Then she kept on calling me a male chauvinist pig, and she said that I couldn't stand up unless there was a woman holding me. And so from that time on I decided that I would go without the brains and go back to the breasts.
(audience laughter)
I don't really like being bludgeoned over the head with some woman's Reader's Digest intellect. I really don't. I think that women are superb. I adore them. But I don't want to know how clever they are - I think it's incidental. I think it should be for any intelligent woman: either her anatomy or her brain should be incidental to the relationship.
RUSSELL: But if her anatomy is attractive to you and is in any way usable by you - after that using, isn't it a further attractive prospect to be able to talk to her pleasurably with her?
REED: Yes, it is. "I say, do you want breakfast?" Or, "Would you like a cup of tea?"
(audience laughter)
And as long as they can say "Yes" or "No", that's o.k.
RUSSELL (laughing): That's all they need to say?
REED: Yes, sure.
RUSSELL: Now, you seem to float across life quite comfortably. You don't seem to have any deep problems that pull you back, or pull you down. You seem to enjoy life. You seem to be a bon viveur. Would that be a reasonably accurate description of you?
REED: I think you'd have to ask the police about that. Yes I enjoy life very much. It's just that sometimes my humour doesn't seem to appeal to the Spanish, the Bulgarians or the Romanians. I think that an Englishman has a different sense of humour. I was arrested in Spain because I was Indian wrestling with a Finn who was 7 foot 2. I thought he seemed like a good fellow to wrestle with. Unfortunately, the table broke and we fell into the ice-cream trolley... The ice-cream went over an American lady's dress, so the husband picked up a bun and threw it at me. So I picked up the glac� cherry and threw it at him.
(audience laughter)
Then all of a sudden fifteen boys came in dressed as policemen, with machine guns, and they dragged me off. And they woke up a judge at half past three in the morning, because the hotel insisted that something should be done about it. I couldn't speak Spanish, so I said "Tres Musketeer...el Musketeer," and they thought I was going to attack them. So five boys jumped on my arm, and I was taken into this great empty courtroom with the judge sitting there, who was very cross at being woken up so early in the morning. In the end, he gave it up and just shook his head and smiled. And he said, "Just tell him to leave your hotel." And so I was thrown out on to the streets with my bags.
RUSSELL: All life seems to be a kind of adventure to you, doesn't it?
REED: I think it should be. I think that everybody would like that. It's just that very few people have the opportunity.
RUSSELL: But thank God there are people like you through whom we can actually live vicariously. Do you know what I mean?
REED: Yeah. What's that mean? (laughs)
RUSSELL: Well it means that we can enjoy the bravado of your life or aura of your life, while you're doing it for us at second hand.
REED: Yeah.
RUSSELL: You get into a lot of fights in the film of The Three Musketeers.
REED: Yup.
RUSSELL: Were they real fight?
REED: Yup.
RUSSELL: Who do you fight with?
REED: I fight with some of the cardinal's guards and I fight with Christopher Lee. In actual fact I got run through for real - fighting Christopher Lee's double. Christopher was asked to throw himself on the floor, and he hurt his leg, and so I fought his double. And the double hadn't rehearsed the fight properly. He was supposed to stab me underneath the left arm, and so I came round to take the blow, and as I came round he stabbed me under the right arm...
RUSSELL: Oh my God!
REED: ...and my hand was in the way and it went through my hand and out the other side.
RUSSELL: What happened then?
REED: I went to hospital, got blood poisoning...
(audience laughter)
...and the hospital food was terrible, as it usually is, and so I got my fat friend Reg Prince to smuggle me in pizzas through the hospital window.
(audience laughter)
And my girl-friend used to climb in through the window as well, so we used to have parties at night.
RUSSELL: There were many film stars on the set of The Three Musketeers, but I presume they were never all there together, were they?
REED: There were a great many of them there at the inauguration, which is the final scene of the first half of the film.
RUSSELL: How easily do you find it is to work with large numbers of stars? Are you a person who works and fits in easily with other people?
REED: I don't think that's for me to say. On the set I don't have a lot of actors as friends, because I believe that our interests are the same, and therefore I'd much rather to talk to people whose interests are different to mine. I have more to learn - or more to say. I can't talk to actors about acting because they know about it and it's boring, but I don't mind talking to a milkman about acting. I gave my hat to my milkman - my musketeer's hat. He collects hats, and has a hundred and fifty of them.
RUSSELL: Did you get on terribly well with Raquel? There was a story filtered back that Raquel was deeply interested - Raquel Welch, that is...
REED: Yeah. I hired a pub, which seems like a good idea, as a thank you to the crew at the end of the film. And is so happened that Raquel was just starting the film and she failed to receive and invitation. So I had to hurriedly send one and she appeared with her hairdresser. I danced with the hairdresser and - it's like one of those terribly Dudley Moore and Peter Cook jokes - I said, "'Course, she sulked all night," and the Press immediately said that - that she was sulking because I didn't dance with her. No, I'm sure she's got many more people she'd like to dance with than me. I want to put that straight, Raquel. She's very fond of me, really.
RUSSELL: Is she?
(audience laughter)
And you of her?
REED: Oh, very deeply.
RUSSELL: Now, you're talking about not wanting to spend much time talking to actors. You also have, in the distant past, proclaimed that you have a disregard for things like drama schools, - that you didn't yourself need any kind of dramatic training in your early days.
REED: I think that drama school is ideal for people that need drama school. I think that in the 'fifties when I started to act, everybody had a particular style, which was fine for the 'fifties. And then came Marlon Brando and Paul Newman, and actors like Finney started to develop a style of their own, which was to do nothing. So that's what I do - I do nothing, and I'm sure that had I gone to drama school people would have tried to make me do something. You take your photographs round to all the agents, but they're not terribly concerned whether or not you've been to drama school - to RADA, or Central School - they are concerned about the fact that you might have done something that they can see. And if you've done nothing, they can't see it - it's the same old story.
RUSSELL: How did you break into it then?
REED: I was an extra - a film extra, and I went round and I lied to everybody. I said I was in a repertory company in South Africa and in Australia - in Wagamoomoo...
(audience laughter)
...hoping that they wouldn't be able to check up - and they didn't. And then I started at Hammer, which was my repertory company. They gave me my first parts.
RUSSELL: In horror?
REED: In horror, yeah.
RUSSELL: Can you spell?
REED: No. That's why I'm an actor.
(audience laughter)
RUSSELL: But is that not an affectation? I mean, supposing you have to write a private note to a girlfriend...?
REED: Yeah.
RUSSELL: Does somebody write it for you, or do you declare your intention phonetically?
REED: No, I telephone her.
(audience laughter)
I'm terrible. And my son - it suddenly dawned on me - my son has gone to boarding school, and the embarrassment is that I have to send him post-cards, and I don't know how to spell! And obviously, the masters, when they're dealing out the mail must read them, and there's your actual Oliver Reed writing to his son and he can't spell. So I've given up writing postcards now.
RUSSELL: Does it not embarrass you son, that?
REED: Well, you should see his spelling.
(audience laughter)
My goodness, it's costing me a fortune. He's the most expensive illiterate I know, God bless him.
RUSSELL: Did you have a good life in the army?
REED: I enjoyed the army. I wasn't a very successful soldier. They thought I was taking the mickey out of them, because they said I sounded like an officer but I spelt like a yob, you see, which I was very proud of. And so they sent me to a psychiatrist who said that my parents were divorced and that's why I couldn't spell, which was why I wasn't an officer. So I ended up cleaning the ablutions!
RUSSELL: What, for the entire time?
REED: No, it was when I was on fatigues. And then they posted me as far away from anywhere as they could get, which was the Far East, and I served over there.
RUSSELL: I can't say "Did you have a good war?", because you weren't in the war, but you know what I mean, - did you have a good National Service?
REED: I though then that National Service was a bit of a waste of time. They could have increased the amount of money they paid the soldiers and enticed a more technically skilled and able man into the army. - They now have a regular Army, and they get paid a great deal of money. I think that it was an experience, but it was two years I could have done without.
RUSSELL: Is there anything deep down that you care passionately about?
REED: I care passionately about Great Britain when I'm abroad. Yes, I get very patriotic. I care about my rugby club, and I care...
RUSSELL: Your local rugby club?
REED: Rosslyn Park. Because they're a good load of lads. And I care about England.
RUSSELL: It's a very grand big claim, that.
REED: You asked me.
RUSSELL: Yes, but I was wondering if you cared about things which are smaller. Like - if you care about animals, apart from your horses. Do you have a private domestic pet?
REED: We have fifteen horses at home and six dogs and six cats and three doves and a tame gardener.
(audience laughter)
RUSSELL: And you stroke them all at one time or another, do you?
(Oliver Reed laughs)
I'd like to ask you finally, or almost finally, about the twenty years which you have predicted for your future life. You say you want six years of total insecurity, followed by six years of sexual abandon, followed by six years of senility followed then, which I don't understand, by two years of understanding.
REED: Yes, the two years of understanding: I don't think that if you understand everything you could survive more than two years, could you? I mean, directly Jesus Christ, they crucified Him.
RUSSELL: Yes, but Oliver, are you pushing any analogy there?
(audience laughter)
REED: I'm just trying to say I'm smart. I just want to see your reaction. I thought it was one of these intelligent shows we were on. No, I don't know. I must have been pissed when I said that....I can't really work it out.
(audience laughter)
I think that for the next twenty years, it depends how life treats me, doesn't it? I mean, how can one plan that? I think I would like to make children's films. I would like to make imagination films, because I have such good ideas when I'm in the pub. Then when I wake up in the morning I find that they're all imagination. But in actual fact one can put them into a reality, build them into a reality - which means film them...
RUSSELL: Mmm.
REED: So I'm going to play a big fat clown that wanders through the stinging nettles talking to imaginary animals (pauses). Because I believe in er, as you said, goblins. Silver ones, anyway. I don't believe in gold ones any more, because they had a war with the - er, with the cobblers.
RUSSELL: When?
REED: Oh, last year. It was terrible. On Trafalgar Day.
(audience laughter)
RUSSELL: Did you witness any of this?
REED: Yes I did. That's why I don't believe in them any more. The gold ones lost, - they ran.
RUSSELL: Are the silver ones bigger than the gold ones?
REED: Much much bigger.
RUSSELL: What kind of hats do the silver ones wear?
REED: Silver.
(audience laughter)
And they run very fast. They leave a great trail of silver behind them. In actual fact I saw that one night. It was snowing and I'm sure it was a dog running very fast, but the way the moon was - no, so I believed in them. And then a journalist came down and talked to me about it and persuaded me that I was going out of my mind, so I gave up goblins (pauses). That's why I breed horses.
RUSSELL (laughing): Oliver Reed, thank you very much indeed.
REED: Thank you.
(applause)