Remembering Actor Terence Stamp

Fresh Air

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Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

We remember British actor Terence Stamp, who died last week at age 87. He starred in the film The Limey, as an ex-con out for revenge, and in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert as a transgender performer on the road with a lip-synch club act. Stamp got his start in the ’60s, starring in the films Billy Budd, Far From the Madding Crowd and The Collector. Stamp grew up in a working class cockney neighborhood and as a teenager, when he let it be known he wanted to be an actor, his father told him, "People like us don't do things like that." He spoke with Terry Gross in 2002.
Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews the new hit horror film Weapons.

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0:00.0	Life is a mystery for those of faith or no faith.
0:03.6	Ye gods with Scott Carter is the podcast that makes sense of how we make sense of life.
0:09.2	Each week we talk to celebrities, scholars, and mere mortals to unearth what on earth we believe and what we don't.
0:15.3	Listen to Ye gods with Scott Carter, part of the NPR network wherever you get your podcasts.
0:21.9	This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David B. and Cooley.
0:25.4	Terence Stamp, the British actor whose diverse portfolio of roles included supervillain
0:30.9	General Zod in the original Superman films, a psychopathic kidnapper in the collector,
0:36.2	and a transgender woman in the adventures of Priscilla
0:39.6	Queen of the Desert, died Sunday at age 87.
0:43.6	Today, we'll listen back to a conversation Terry Gross had with Terence Stamp in 2002.
0:49.3	But first, we'll start with this appreciation.
0:52.9	Terence Stamp was born in London in 1938, just before World War II.
0:58.2	His working-class upbringing during tough times didn't make him a likely prospect as a young actor,
1:03.6	but he followed his passion and struck gold early.
1:07.6	He first made it to the big screen in 1962 in the starring role of Billy Budd, based on the
1:13.5	story by Moby Dick author Herman Melville. Stamp played the title role, a childishly innocent sailor
1:20.9	recruited onto a British warship in 1797. The officers were tyrants, and Billy, after watching a fellow sailor get whipped, complained to his new mates.
1:32.5	But the more agitated he got, the more he's stuck.
1:36.5	It's wrong with flogger man.
1:40.8	I...
2:03.6	Damn. I... ...it is against his being a man. It's against he's being a man. I.
2:05.6	Hi, lad, it is that.
	...

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