Articles/Interviews

Oliver Reed sits in the pub contemplating his beer. The rigours of his daughter's fifth birthday party, complete with magician in constant attendance, is ahead of him. Oliver takes refuge in the pub from the organised chaos which reigns at his country home where the entire population is engaged making fairy cakes, jellies and the other accoutrements of small people's bun fights.

The headline-making Oliver Reed is surely not the man sitting with me this morning, ploughing steadily through a giant box of postcard size pictures autographing each one with a scrawly signature.

He is currently re-establishing the tempestuous professional relationship with Ken Russell: a partnership which has arguably produced his best acting. They are making Pete Townshend and the Who's rock opera, Tommy, and Reed is obviously deeply involved in it all - he plays Tommy's step-father. Russell, the enfant terrible of the British cinema, is a visionary whom Oliver regards with affection, admiration and a little sarcasm. "Tommy has been a challenge because I don't sing so I have to act-sing. Russell has an enormous talent, there's no disputing that. Sometimes he's a little too pictorial, in The Devils, for instance. There was so much going on that it was difficult to make a performance live. The performances got lost in the tirade of masturbation, flagellation and kissing God's feet. Tommy is going to be an amazingly visual film and the music is astonishing. At the beginning Ken used to worry about the way I was playing it and one day he came up to me and said he thought perhaps I was going over the top. I said, 'Me, over the top. Have you ever seen any of your films?'," Reed enunciates in that cultured voice. Perhaps it goes some way to explaining his fascination - he has the physique of a labourer and the accent of an Oxford Don.

"Actually there's no way you can go over the top with this. The music suits Ken's style, although it's so loud that he puts cotton wool in his ears!"

Oliver Reed at thirty-six is among a mere handful of British actors who are top money earners, instantly recognisable and internationally established. For many years he has been accessible to the press, and always quotable. Now the shutters are coming down because Oliver, in his canny way, reckons he has probably been too accessible. The image of a beer-swilling trouble maker is false, but it sticks. Possibly because wherever he goes, whatever he does, makes news. When a pier burns down during location shooting for Tommy it is reported that Oliver Reed and Ken Russell spoke to the police - never mind the hundreds of extras who gave their opinions too.

In the beginning the image building was a conscious thing. "You can do it for a bit, but it doesn't work. You can't fake it indefinitely. I accept that because I am an actor, the press cares about what I do. The kind of publicity I attract doesn't bother me unless journalists publish my address. If I'm misquoted, I'm misquoted. Quite honestly, I can say 'good morning' and it can be misconstrued."

"I refuse to put my head in a bucket of cold water every morning to keep the bloom on my face. In the sense of what I am, people must accept the way I am."

"Of course you have to change, to adapt. When the front money started to fall away a lot of people decided they wouldn't work for a percentage. On Women in Love Alan Bates and I were among the first people to take a percentage on a film. Then when I was offered a lot of work in Europe I decided I would rather do that than sit around not working."

Success for Reed was a long time in the making: he worked as an extra and bit player for, some years but the dramatic change occurred when Michael Winner gave him the lead in The System. (Winner had wanted to use Reed and Julie Christie in West 11 but at the time he didn't have the muscle to insist and at that stage Julie Christie was categorised a 'B' actress).

"Naturally you assume from the outset that one day you are going to be successful. I couldn't have survived my days as an extra if I hadn't believed that. At the beginning I wanted to be rich and a bloody good actor but the two got married together. Now? I just want the money! But it's only your experience that determines whether you are going to be successful."

"Nobody really wanted a twenty year-old ex-soldier so it was an amazing achievement to get into a studio. Once I was in, I learned a lot because I was always by the cameras watching and asking questions. I didn't go to drama school - anyway drama school doesn't really run a department that is adequate in my opinion for making films and understanding studio technique."

The advice of his uncle, director Sir Carol Reed, was that he go into rep; advice Oliver rejected since he had no interest in the theatre. As it turned out Reed was right to follow his instinct.

Hammer submerged him under mountains of make-up for a number of horror films and Ken Russell starred him in his television documentary "Debussy". But Reed says that his personal feeling that success was his came with The System.

"That went over really big. One review said I was as 'cool as a cocktail cabinet' which I thought was rather trendy so I went around with twelve copies of the newspaper and a cocktail shaker."

"Ken has always laid claim to discovering me but I suppose in a sense it was Winner. It was Winner and The System and The Jokers which finally pushed me towards being noticed. Winner influenced my bank balance and Russell influenced the way the public viewed me. Until I worked with Russell people thought I was really the refugee from Hammer, the ageing Ted who usually walked around in a werewolf costume."

At that time the people who make a habit of handing out advice offered some to Oliver: go to America.

"They said I was appealing to a domestic market if I stayed in England but I didn't want to leave and decided to stay. Perhaps they were right, after all I do only work here or in Europe, although I'm usually paid in dollars and my films are shown in America. But Hollywood is dying and films are made all over the world."

The inconsistencies of filming irritate him: the fact that the critics will praise a performance like the sergeant in The Triple Echo, which Oliver says was easy for him, and yet undervalue the performance he gave in The Devils, which he is convinced took four years off his life. A couple of years ago he frequently discussed phasing out his acting and venturing into production. Then he bought this mammoth house in the country (a former monastery with forty-five bedrooms) with acres and acres of land and suddenly found his thoughts of retiring had to be shelved.

In true Reed style he plunged himself into, an orgy of film making - Fury, Dirty Weekend, Revolver, Blue Blood, The Three Musketeers, Death in Persepolis. The punishing schedule he sets himself allows precious little time for following the life he enjoys most gentleman landowner, breeder of horses, grower of roses, conservationist fiend.

And still he pushes himself. When Tommy is over he will do The Plumed Serpent for Christopher Miles; then probably Bertolucci's new film, then The Sell-Out for Peter Collinson, then The Offering, a project he has been trying to get off the ground for three years. It is the story of the four knights who came to murder Thomas a' Becket. Ken Russell has now become interested in the project and with the success of big productions like The Three Musketeers, it looks as though finally it will be made.

Oliver still has unfulfilled ambitions. "I'm going to write one day, I'm going to direct one day, and I'm going to produce one day. And because of the very words 'one day' that's unfulfilled."

"My track record as a director is non-existent so it will be difficult for me to get the first film going. People are very suspicious when you say it. I don't even know if I'm sure that is what I want to do. I think I will write and produce before I direct."

"You've seen my horses and my house there's enough unfulfilled ambition there to last at least my lifetime."

Reed has significantly matured and developed since he bought the house and stimulated his interest in rural pursuits. "It's a complete change for me. The problems here are whether or not the weeds are going to come up, or if the roses will grow." He believes that his acting is being taken more seriously. "But an actor is always subject to his producers, his directors and the kind of material with which he works. It just so happens that I've either taken my trousers off and shocked people, or hung on a cross and shocked people and I have been associated with directors like Ken Russell who is a bit arty. But, my God I have improved - I saw one of my Hammer films on television ... I think one matures and I find I don't take myself as seriously as I did when I was young. I used to think it was a big deal to be an actor, but in terms of people and travel and situations, acting seems relatively unimportant. In order to support my life-style I have to work. There's no money in doing the things I want to do. I have a staff here and, much as they love me, they wouldn't work for me unless they were being paid, so I've got to carry on acting."

It is difficult to pin down the elusive nature of the man: he will talk with equal enthusiasm about sport, about the local marrow-growing competition (in Wimbledon, when he lived there, it was a tomato-growing competition which had his fervent support), about his children's relative obsession with horses (his daughter is very keen; his son, who he says used to be excellent, has lost interest). He also explains for me the mysteries of gambling and betting shops. He talks about growing old and being in a bath chair, terrorising his grandchildren with the threat of cutting them out of his Will.

But he is a working actor - this just happens to be a day off - and a working actor cannot, he believes, make too many films. He talks warmly of Ann-Margret, his co-star in Tommy. "She is the most uninhibited, sweet actress that I have ever met. She is quite unspoiled by success. Whenever she sees me she says, 'Oliver, you're so funny.' She's the only person who's ever said that to me in my life. I'll sit there spilling my beer and she'll say, 'You're so funny'." The idea tickles him hugely.

With his ferocious work output he still manages to remain fresh and alert, the business brain ticking. He is analytical about his acting without becoming boring ("My maxim has always been, if in doubt do nothing.") His ego is tempered by his wit.

He looks forward to the second half of The Three Musketeers being shown. "In my opinion it's a better film, not only because I'm in it more, but because you get more into the characters. I think if we had known two films would result originally it was intended as one film, or so we thought - the continuity of performance would be slightly different. The second film is much more the relationship between Athos and Milady. I think that Athos is probably the nearest to myself that I've ever played. Richard Lester was very good to work with, very easy, very sarcastic." Apparently there is talk of doing a third. Would he do it? "It depends on the money, I'm a professional actor."

Reed has an instinct about films: he agrees he's made some he'd sooner not discuss, but he knows when something is working. "I think I've worked with enough directors to know the formulae that can be successful. I don't necessarily know the lenses but then neither does Russell necessarily. Russell has an enormous talent and he surrounds himself with people who know how to translate that talent." The same could apply to Oliver Reed - except that he does the translating himself.