Terence Stamp, the Oscar-nominated British actor who starred in The Limey, Billy Budd, and as General Zod in Superman, has died at the age of 87.
Stamp’s death was announced Sunday by his family, who said in a statement, “He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, both as an actor and a writer that will continue to touch people for years to come,” the BBC reports. No cause of death was provided.
The actor’s six-decade film career began in 1962 with the titular role in Billy Budd, which earned the then-24-year-old an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Stamp would next star in Sixties films like The Collector, Far From the Maddening Crowd, Modesty Blaise, Poor Cow, Teorama, and the horror anthology Spirits of the Dead.
In the Seventies, Stamp stepped back from acting to become a swami in India, but he experienced a career resurgence in 1978 when he was cast as the villainous General Zod in the big screen adaptation of Superman; he would reprise the role in the 1980 sequel Superman II.
Notable films in the decade that followed include supporting roles in Wall Street, The Hit, Young Guns, and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, where Stamp’s turn as a transgender woman earned him both a Golden Globe and BAFTA nomination for Best Actor.
In 1999, Stamp starred in director Steven Soderbergh’s nonlinear revenge film The Limey. “I would play this game with Terence, because he literally has no fixed address — but he’s seen everything, done everything, lived everywhere,” Soderbergh told Rolling Stone in a 20th anniversary interview about the acclaimed film. “So I’d just turn to him and go, ‘The best necktie shop?’ And he’d pause and go, ‘Oh, there’s this place in London . . .’ I mean, whatever you asked him — the best French restaurant, the best this, the best that — he knew it. He had an answer immediately.
Over the past two decades, Stamp also appeared in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Soderbergh’s Full Frontal, Wanted, Get Smart, Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, the Adam Sandler comedy Murder Mystery, and his last big screen credit, Edgar Wright’s 2021 horror film Last Night in Soho. Stamp would also return to the Superman universe, albeit on the small screen, to portray the hero’s father Jor-El on the series Smallville.
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