Articles/Interviews

OLIVER REED has always had something of an epic quality. With his often demonic presence and sullen demeanour, he brought an heroic swagger to his roles in Women In Love, The Damned, The Devils, even Castaway. And through all the brawling, the boozing, and the tabloid acclaim, he preserved a certain innocence and rogue charm. Now his life is on the turn. Fiona Russell Powell corners him in his Guernsey den and asks him about drink, death, and the art of playing the fool

I lay in bed with Oliver Reed on my mind; this was natural enough as I was being flown to Guernsey to meet him the next day. Apart from a clutch of Sixties Hammer horrors usually co-starring Susan George, I could name only three Reed films: The Three Musketeers, Women In Love and Castaway. He has infiltrated my consciousness not as an actor but as a celebrity boozer and small-screen boor. Picture his face: bull-like, must be a Taurus. A bull in a china shop - with life, of course, being the china shop.

On After Dark - the famous edition of the late, lamented Channel 4 chat show, I watched gobsmacked as this lovable buffoon alternately insulted and dismissed the women on the sofa and rudely shouted down every other guest. Puffed up with a drinker's self-righteous conviction that only he has suffered, he was asked to leave before he inevitably grew maudlin.

I can't claim to dislike Reed entirely, though I had substantial doubts about meeting such a patent chauvinist and aggressive drinker. However, having an excessive and addictive personality which I suspect may parallel his own, I can also feel an affinity with this rebellious, wilful man who was expelled from over a dozen schools and shunned by RADA and the like, breaking into film as an extra. It isn't difficult to be nauseated by the hypocritical disapproval trumpeted by the tabloid press for whom he is a godsend.

To paraphrase Bachelard; alcohol, and wine in particular, is "a converting substance, capable of reversing situations and states, and of extracting from objects their opposites - for instance, making a weak man strong or a silent one talkative." Taking this premise as a truth it must be assumed that Oliver Reed pure and unadulterated is charming, gentle, kind and tolerant. So, it was with an optimistic heart that I headed off to Guernsey.

I have an announcement to make: Ollie Reed, that big bad bully boy of the silver screen and legendary boozer is no more. The man led into the Four Seasons restaurant in St Peter's Port by his wife (n�e Josephine Burge and exactly half his age) is a shadow of his former self. Dramatically deteriorated, Reed is showing his age; his once handsome features and long-lashed cow-like eyes now swollen and bulged. Gardeners' cords were hoisted over a sizeable paunch, and no-one would dream that this man once had a body to envy, a lithe sinewy torso filmed in it's full naked glory cavorting in flickering firelight with Alan Bates in Ken Russell's Women In Love.

Introductions were made (Reed brisk but polite) before the five of us (myself, Reed, Josephine, and ARENA'S photographer Kevin Davies plus his assistant) sat down at the front of the near-empty restaurant to order our aperitifs. Reed immediately took the floor and launched into an amusing monologue, beginning with a potted history of Guernsey and the reason for its proliferation of Italian restaurants. For a while, he cracked on like the Guernsey Tourist Board, until I began to wonder if he was on some sort of commission. It was the practised patter and easy charm of the entertaining dinner-part guest running on auto-pilot. An anecdotalist par excellence, he must be a hostess's dream - at least for the duration of the first course. One thing is for sure: Oliver Reed loves to talk, loves the sound of his own voice and does not like any competition.

But while his colourful past provides a vast repertoire of stories to pay for his many rounds to come, Ollie doesn't look or act like Ollie any more - he now has the demeanour and figure of a 54-year-old man settled into and enjoying semi-retirement. Throughout the pre-prandial chat, Josephine sat slightly to one side, on her guard, observing the conversation - one had the feeling that she'd heard it all before, many many times.

Reed expressed surprise that a men's magazine should send a woman to interview him. Meanwhile, the menu arrived along with a large plate of fish and shellfish freshly plucked from the sea for us to nod our approval at. Next to me, Reed could barely conceal his impatience as I hesitated over my choice. Suddenly, unprompted and unasked, he launched into an extraordinarily vigorous and defensive account of his appearance on After Dark. Scornfully dismissing the ensuing brouhaha as "a bunch of bloody idiots making a lot of fuss just because I kissed and ugly old bat" (the feminist author Kate Millet), he chuckled smugly, obviously expecting us to join in. I couldn't let it ride. The look of sheer horror on Millet's face when reed grabbed her was painful to watch. His behaviour was offensive and I said so, as diplomatically as possible. But not diplomatically enough. Reed was furious and threatened to leave.

While I wrestled with the problem of how to mollify this aggressive chauvinist and retain my self-respect, Toby, the photographer's assistant, jumped to the rescue by distracting Reed, who then simmered down as quickly as he'd flared up. Evidently, it was all water off a duck's back for him. But his reaction served me with a warning: the man can be hypersensitive.

Soon he was off and running on another subject, the only one that seems to get his juices flowing these days: his hatred of the press. Currently involved in two lawsuits against the Sun, Reed moaned and whined and railed against the "bastards, the absolute bastards", who pick on him, never leave him alone, write nothing but lies. He says he won't do press or TV any more - "I only agreed to do this because I heard it was an intelligent magazine." The same can be said for Reed, who is clearly intelligent and quick-witted, but it's equally evident that he thinks everyone else is a fool. (last year, he listed his most unappealing habit as "intolerance"; the trait he deplores most in others "their intolerance of me"; and the trait he deplores most in himself, "My inability to forgive stupidity.")

Abruptly, he switched the topic of conversation again, this time to his son Mark (Mar Reed, 30, "in advertising somewhere in the West Country"). As dispassionately as a news reader, he announced his son had been acquitted the previous day on an assault charge: "he'd already served 11 out of the 12 weeks in jail before the fools finally quashed the conviction - he was accused of drunken assault outside a pub and breaking a man's leg."

Mrs Reed was not what I expected, and there is something enigmatic about her. She had begun to relax, leaning forward from her seat in the wings to chip in with a comment or two, and smile wrily at Reed's jokes. Snatches of anecdotes from a bygone age era tumbled past my ears. We heard about when he first met Keith Moon hovering in a helicopter outside Reed's bathroom, and of the occasion when he was having his dining room decorated and Moon came round, stood in a tin of red paint then walked all over the walls, getting his chauffeur Dougal to hold him up so he could cover the ceiling too.

We heard of his brief singing career in the early Sixties before he turned to acting, how Decca released him from his contract when he went on tour and it was realised he couldn't sing in time with the music. We heard of his latest musical plans - to record a version of "Wild Thing" with Alex "Hurricane" Higgins, a close friend and drinking partner.

I paired off with Reed to a dark corner of the dining room, our meal progressing at a leaden pace. The look in his eyes betrayed his inner thoughts: already he had dismissed me along with the women on After Dark. His tones were courteous and well-modulated, yet I felt intimidated from the start. (I am reminded of a TV programme, on of the Have-a-Go series when former That's Life presenter Chris Searle would take on challenges to participate in unusual activities at a moment's notice. One week he had to play the part of a gangster and Reed was called upon to advise on acting procedure. His tip to Searle, delivered with a sinisterly knowing smile: "Remember - real violence always speaks with a whisper.")

Our conversation was criminally dull, Reed acting the awkward old bugger and refusing to answer most questions of interest. From the top, the subject of "booze" was banned - a disappointment as I'd been hoping to kick around a few Penguin pocket-book theories about the nature of alcohol, excess and the addictive personality. Several times, in reference to various TV appearances, Reed categorically denied being polluted: "I wasn't drunk, I was just acting. I just like winding people up" (a favourite Reed activity). And of his After Dark performance: "If you'd smelled my breath afterwards you'd have known I wasn't drunk - I knew what I was doing."

Well, you're a bloody good actor, then. Deadpan, Reed acknowledged my remark as if it were the praise that is his due: "Thank you, I try."

In a way I understand his refutations; it must be galling to being one's career as one of Britain's most exciting and promising young actors and to end up better known as a drinker. Meanwhile, he drank moderately, ostentatiously modestly. The ravishing food arrived; Reed dipped a spoon into his lentil soup then laid it to one side, a fork was raked over the crust of his fish but not a flake passed his lips.

He continued to be abrasively obtuse. It took me a while but eventually the light dawned: he was being deliberately dull. This is because he feels such a martyr to the press that, by providing very little material from which to construct a story, I, the hated journalist, would be forced to employ my creative powers and make the whole thin up. If I were to carve Oliver Reed into a thousand tiny pieces, I suspect he would be a happy man, having proved his point nicely.

I looked down at my list of questions: "Given your attitude, there's not a lot here I can ask you. We might as well join the others..." The change in Reed was swift. In spite of his avowed abhorrence of the press and giving interviews, he was not prepared to budge from the corner table yet. "Try again. Go on, fire away," he suggested sweetly, donning a new avuncular mantle. Persuading Reed to talk about the substance which fuels his notoriety is like getting beer out of a stone. I squeezed, he sighed: "If I drank as much as they say I'd be dead. I wouldn't be able to learn my lines."

I wondered if all actors see the end of their working lives as death, though their mortal shell lingers on. Does Reed fear death?

"When I was younger, people used to ask me if I believed in God, and I would say no as I was usually propping up the bar at The Dog And Fox in Wimbledon. But I dare say I'm a Christian... if my body started to decay around me, maybe I wouldn't have the strength to cope with it myself and would say, 'Oh God, get me out of this', in the same way as sailors who've been sunk at sea scream to God. It doesn't mean they necessarily believe in Him, it's just a last resort... you'll try anything if it works. I see God in the wonder of nature, in the fact that my dog's nose is wet and cold and he's always after my toast. I think there's a sign there that the creator has put something near us of such sufficient beauty to make us want to cry."

There is no doubting the genuine emotion in his voice; people at odds with the world often prefer the company of animals. He continued with a long meandering story about his three dos, involving a walk on the golf course the previous day when one of the terriers got stuck beneath the ground in a rabbit warren: "...so I was expecting two huge firemen or policemen to come down with pickaxes, and two tiny little ladies came along with a spade and a torch. I had to dig the dog out with the spade and I was absolutely exhausted and trying to hold my tummy in and make myself look butch."

Reed finished his anecdote with an unexpectant smile, but I had missed the point. I asked him to elucidate, and he looked at me as though I were a complete idiot while slowly spelling it out: "Because they were women."

Which led nicely to my next question: his response to the many charges of sexism and misogyny levelled at him over the years. But Reed isn't concerned with such trifles: "Oh, that's lived with me for years. I used to do that for effect because it was regarded as butch to say that women should be in the kitchens on their hands and knees, and that we should all be out in the fields and fighting."

 

"The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs. Never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything, because you always feel too much..." - Marlon Brando to Truman Capote, 1956

"All actors are damaged goods" - Anthony Hopkins to Dr Anthony Clare, 1991

 

OLIVER REED WAS SEVEN when World War II ended but already he was a fierce little boy, fighting many playground battles to defend his family's honour. His father, Peter Reed, a racing correspondent, had been a conscientious objector. Reed jnr described to me the treatment meted out to the COS - how they were spat on upon leaving court, sent white feathers in the post. For one so young, he carried a heavy burden of shame and anger, his resentment of his father was deeply entrenched. It is a pain he feel to this day.

Talking about his father on After Dark, he said he never forgave him for being "a fucking conchie"; talking about his father to me, in answer to the question, does he still think it's one's duty to fight for one's country? (Reed is very gung-ho): "I'm beginning to get more and more suspicious about that... but I would go off and fight because my father was a conscientious objector, and I thought it was cowardice until I grew up. Then I realised he was probably very brave... it was easier to go into the army than not - being a conchie in the society that I grew up in, it wasn't regarded as something you should wear with pride."

Had he ever tried purging himself of his pain, perhaps through psychotherapy?

"They sent me to see a psychiatrist when I was in the army because, when they put me up for a commission, I couldn't spell or add up [Reed is dyslexic], and they thought I was deliberately trying not to get a commission. SO after they sent me to see this jock they failed me because they couldn't understand why I couldn't spell. So I was made a corporal." And denied my chance to really prove myself, wipe the stain from my family name, seemed to be the subtext of the last sentence.

I returned to the subject of boozing (to use Reed's parlance) as more wine was poured. Because of his reluctance to open up and to let him know I was on his side, sympathetic, I began to tell him of some of my own trails and tribulations with the grain and grape. He was not interested. "I thought we were here to talk about me," he snapped. I sighed and rolled my eyes backward. "Don't do that," he chided, but seemed to soften again, pursing his lips to kill a smile.

"Listen. I remember years ago I used to invite journalists to my home, I don't think one of them ever went home sober. And then they come out with a whole load of... that's why I don't talk to the press any more, in fact I don't know why I'm talking to you."

Has Reed's reputation as a hell-raiser lost him work?

"Oh hell, yes. Especially in America. You can get a reputation because wire agencies pick up stories from one country to another and exaggerate them." There is no getting through to this man. He refuses to accept that when a public figure misbehaves in public it is news and the press is liable to come down on them like a ton of bricks. That is the price of celebrity.

Having milked dry the question of inebriation, I asked the actor about cinema and his profession. Why, for instance, have we never seen him on the stage, is he likely to ever tread the boards?

"No, don't want to. Can't be bothered. You say the same thing every bloody night, twice on matin�es, twice on Wednesdays and Thursdays... The one great thing about cinema is its spontaneity. I don't like rehearsal."

He explained why he chose acting as his career. "My uncle was a very well-known film director [Carol Reed, The Third Man] and my grandfather was [the actor] Herbert Beerbohm, so it was genetic really. It seemed to me to be the only alternative to being a bus conductor... I like pretending... I just see it as a job." Which must be why he shuns the company of his workmen, never socializing with actors. "Yes, I just go in there, do my bit, turn around and go home and forget all about it."

With perfect timing, the photographer approached us to "borrow" Reed to shoot his portrait before the light faded. I transferred to Josephine's table for the traditional after-dinner single-sex t�te-�-t�te.

Four months shy of being jailbait material, Jo Burge met Oliver Reed in a Surrey pub. When he whisked the schoolgirl off to Barbados, the tabloid press had a field day and the affair became as cause c�l�bre overnight. They married in 1985; all told, this odd couple have been together for over ten years. She struck me as a woman of substance, there is something Steep-like in her appearance and manner: the serious thoughtful expression, her slightly pinched nose and clean scrubbed face. She has a calming presence, a sense of dignity and one feels that she probably won't put up with too much nonsense from her husband. There is no doubting the high level of affection the pair have for each other, particularly Reed, who frequently glanced fondly at her during the meal.

When I asked him if he planned to have children with his young wife, a look of regret crossed his face:" We don't seem to be able to have them... I think she's got enough trouble looking after me, let alone little ones. I would like them, to play conkers again, and to see the world through young eyes. I live in a fantasy world, I still have a room full of teddies and clowns and things, I even have plastic ducks in the bath which float through all the Badedas icebergs."

I asked Josephine how her parents had reacted to the whirlwind romance: "Well, Dad died when I was seven so what he thought wasn't an issue. My mother didn't like it at first - bringing a 41-year-old man home saying 'Hi Mum - meet my new boyfriend,' but she got used to it. The worst bit was when I went back to school after Barbados and everyone kept shouting things like 'We love Ollie' every time they saw me. But I left soon after that... My friends have always been a lot older than me. I get on with older people, they're more interesting."

As is Josephine herself - one senses an awful lot is going on beneath that serene exterior.

Could it be that the most interesting thing about Oliver Reed these days is his wife?