'Unfinished Song' Star Terence Stamp on Becoming 'the Kind of Performer I Wanted to Be' (Video)

The 74-year-old talks to THR about his long and winding journey from icon of the sixties to has-been of the seventies to go-to character actor ever since.

It has been 50 years since Terence Stamp, the strikingly handsome British actor, earned a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for his big screen debut, at the age of 24, in Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd. In the years since, he has morphed from an icon of the sixties to a has-been of the seventies to one of the premier character actors of the eighties and ever since. Today, Paul Andrew Williams' Unfinished Song (aka A Song for Marion), in which Stamp stars opposite Oscar winner and fellow septuagenarian Vanessa Redgrave, opens in New York and Los Angeles. Last week, I sat down with the actor at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles to discuss the long and winding road that led up to this latest project. (You can watch highlights at the top of this post.)

Stamp was born to working-class parents in East London, and was discouraged from pursuing acting by his father, so, while still a teenager, he left home and set out on his own. He won a scholarship to a prestigious drama school in the area, and, before long, was a working actor in the theater, and then the enigmatic star of Billy Budd. After that film was released to widespread acclaim, he began a run of parts in important films: Peter Glenville's Term of Trial (1962) opposite Laurence Olivier, who offered him invaluable acting advice; William Wyler's The Collector (1965), his first American film, opposite Samantha Eggar (who received an Oscar nomination for her performance); Joseph Losey's Modesty Blaise (1966), which paired him with Monica Vitti; John Schlesinger's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), with Julie Christie, who would become one of his many girlfriends; and Spirits of the Dead (1968), in the section of the film directed by the legendary Federico Fellini. Once he and supermodel Jean Shrimpton began dating, they became something of the Brad and Angelina of their era.

But just as suddenly as success came to Stamp, it went away. "When the sixties ended, I ended with it," he says today. His opportunities as a leading man dried up; his relationship with Shrimpton came to an end; and he decided he had to get away from it all. He bought a first-class, one-way plane ticket around the world, and wound up spending the better part of the next nine years living as a swami at an ashram in India, donning long hair, a beard and an orange robe, and seeking and, to a great extent, finding spiritual enlightenment. He returned to the Western world to make films only sporadically -- that is, until he received a telegram from his agent notifying him that Richard Donner wanted him to star opposite Marlon Brando in Superman 1 and 2, as the villainous General Zod (the part played by Michael Shannon in the reboot that's now in theaters), and he knew that it was time to return for good. "My lull -- the thing that was preparing me for a long career -- were those years in exile. That was the root of my acting from then on."
Now a character actor, as opposed to a leading man, Stamp began to make a mark of a different kind, as a terrific scene-stealer. He was the corporate raider competing with Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987); the cattle rancher whose murder is avenged by Emilio Estevez's Billy the Kid in Young Guns (1988); a grieving father seeking vengeance in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey (1999); and a comic force or foil in films such as Bowfinger (1999), Get Smart (2008) and Yes Man (2008).

And now, Stamp says, Unfinished Song -- the story of a hardened man losing his beloved wife and then finding his voice and humanity through the choir that she so loved -- represents his life and career coming "full-circle." He based his performance on his father, and in so doing came to better understand a man who had long confounded him; he sings on screen, overcoming a fear that caused him to turn down the part he now most regrets not doing, the one played by Richard Harris in Joshua Logan's Camelot (1967); and he accessed emotions in a way that he always longed to but rarely could. In short, he tells me, just a month shy of his 75th birthday

Telluride Film Festival Organizers Come to Hollywood to Tease Upcoming 40th Edition

Alexander Payne, James Gray and Matthew Weiner were among the boldfaced names who came out to support the small-town fest, which kicks off the Oscar season.

Getty Images

The Telluride Film Festival, which marks the unofficial start of Oscar season, doesn't get underway until the end of August, but its organizers want members of the film community to keep it on their radar throughout the summer, and therefore gathered many of them for a cocktail party in its honor Tuesday evening at the London West Hollywood hotel.

The festival's 40th edition will take place in the remote Colorado skiing community from which it derives its name between Aug. 29 to Sept. 2. In commemoration of its milestone anniversary, a fifth day has been added to what has historically been a four-day affair (and always falls over the Labor Day weekend), and a new 650-seat venue, the Werner Herzog Theatre, has been built in the Town Park Pavilion to provide festivalgoers with additional screenings of the 30 or so features that screen at the fest each year.

Festival directors Tom Luddy, Julie Huntsinger and Gary Meyer flew into town for the soiree, and were joined by a number of festival regulars -- among them writer/director Alexander Payne, writer/director James Gray and producer/former Academy president Sid Ganis -- as well as Mad Men showrunner Matthew Weiner, The King's Speech screenwriter David Seidler and 98-year-old veteran actor Norman Lloyd.
One festival rep suggested that much of the lineup of films and special guests has already been determined, but, as is Telluride custom, will not be officially revealed until the fest's first day. Still, speculation has already begun about which 2013 Oscar hopefuls will show up this year, hoping to follow in the footsteps of four of the last five best picture Oscar winners -- Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The King's Speech (2010), The Artist (2011) and Argo (2012).

A strong contingent of Academy officials were in attendance on Tuesday evening. The Academy is one of Telluride's biggest financial supporters -- it has underwritten the fest's guest director program each of the last five years -- and held an exclusive party at last year's fest, since a considerable number of its members always attend the fest to showcase their films or attend those of others.
The popularity of Telluride is primarily attributable to its remote, idyllic setting -- it is all centered around a single main street that looks like something out of an old Western, and it is so out-of-the-way that autograph hounds and paparazzi usually don't make the trip -- as well as its programmers' famously discerning tastes.
Indeed, no less a star than George Clooney -- who attended the 2011 fest as the star of Payne's The Descendants, and then encouraged Ben Affleck to attend the 2012 edition with Argo, which Clooney produced -- told me that he was largely unbothered during his visit and hopes to return in the future, when he doesn't have a film to promote, just to watch movies.

Crystal+Lucy Awards Toast 'Mad Men's' Women … and George Lucas

From left: Jessica Pare, Elisabeth Moss, Christina Hendricks and January Jones give "Mad Men" a woman’s touch.

Laura Linney and Sofia Coppola are also on deck for the June 12 ceremony.

WOMEN OF MAD MEN
"Thanks to this quintet of fabulous actresses," says WIF president Cathy Schulman, "it's a show about women who won't take no for an answer. There's nothing they won't do individually, with each other or against each other to get what they want." Their spirit reminds Schulman of feminist forebears Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore. "It's the epitome of representations of women we like to celebrate -- where the characters are full of spunk and have voices and aren't just there to be pretty girls in the background." And so, all five actresses have been awarded the Lucy Award for Excellence in Television.
GEORGE LUCAS
"Obviously, we could wax lyrical about all the Lucas films we all grew up on," says Schulman. "But we're honoring his philanthropy." Lucas will be the first man to receive the Norma Zarky Humanitarian Award since Jeffrey Katzenberg received the honor in 2008. Lucas is being recognized for creating such enterprises as the George Lucas Education Foundation, benefiting men and women alike. Notes Schulman, "He pledged to donate 50 percent of his wealth to charitable causes."

SOFIA COPPOLA
Coppola isn't being given the Dorothy Arzner Directors Award because she has directed four films that have grossed more than $200 million worldwide and has won a writing Oscar. "We gave her the award because she tells stories that capture the female spirit," says Schulman. "And lots of people don't remember she was the first American female nominated for the best director Oscar."
RACHEL MORRISON
Kodak Vision Award recipient Morrison was the director of photography on Fruitvale Station, which won the grand jury prize at Sundance. "I first noticed how great she was when she shot Lady Gaga's Inside the Outside in 2011," says Schulman. "What makes her unique is her ability to put you inside the action, as if her camera was never there." Morrison told Cinematography.com, "It baffles me how women remain such a minority in an industry whose primary currency is visualizing human emotion."
LAURA LINNEY
Perhaps because Linney is a triple Oscar nominee (for The Savages, Kinsey and You Can Count on Me), a sextuple Golden Globe nominee (with two wins), a triple Emmy winner (with four noms), a quadruple Screen Actors Guild Award nominee (with one win) and the winner of the top acting prizes from the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle, she is such an obvious choice for the Crystal Award for Excellence in Film that when her name came up at a WIF board meeting, the board members at first assumed she'd already won the honor. Says Schulman, "In discussing Laura as a recipient, we were shocked to find that we hadn't already given it to her three times."

Emmys: Michael Douglas on His Road to Recovery, Hot Tub Time With Matt Damon

Michael Douglas in "Behind the Candelabra"

Having beaten cancer, HBO's Liberace tells THR about his return to acting and letting go of inhibitions with his co-star: "I so tip my hat to Matt. I know in my prime, I don't know if I could have done what he does here."

Michael Douglas, 68, is sitting in the backseat of a town car whisking him to Hotel du Cap on the French Riviera. He has just finished a Cannes Film Festival press conference where he and co-star Matt Damon were greeted with applause for their performances in Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra, the HBO film that charts the rocky five-year relationship between Liberace, the flamboyant pianist, and Scott Thorson, a young man he invited into his life then banished amid a whirlwind of sex, drugs and recrimination. For Douglas, an Oscar winner for 1987's Wall Street, it's his first starring role since he was diagnosed with and successfully treated for throat cancer in 2010. And he's savoring the moment.
The Hollywood Reporter: When Steven Soderbergh first asked you -- back in 2000 when you were filming Traffic -- if you thought you could play Liberace, did the question seem totally off the wall?
Michael Douglas: Having had the experience of working with Oliver Stone, who would throw things at you for performance reasons, I had no idea where Steven was coming from. There was that moment of paranoia. I'm wondering: What is he saying? Am I mincing? Then I realized, as I should have, since Steven is such a lovely man, that he was serious. So I tried an imitation of Liberace, but then I forgot about it. I still don't know what Steven's thing about Liberace is; I have no idea.

THR: Were you finished with your cancer treatment when the project finally came together?
Douglas: I'd had my treatment. When [this project] came back to me, it was this beautiful gift. We were getting ready for the film, and all of a sudden Steven and Matt said they had other projects they were going to do. I was scared that this was drifting away. They never fessed up to it -- and they did have other projects -- but I also think they took a look at me and knew I wasn't there yet, and they were absolutely right. I was just so happy to have gotten a clean checkup. But, still, strengthwise, weightwise, I was another year away. There was a moment of anxiety there, but then a year went by, and I was stronger and ready to do it.
THR: You actually had a very emotional moment at the press conference as you remembered it all.
Douglas: It totally kind of came over me. It was weird. But it was such an important moment for me. To have this come along when you're wondering if you have a career -- you've taken this big hiatus break and don't know what repercussions cancer has for being hired. When you come out on the other side of that, you attack it with a vengeance, with a new appreciation. So I really worked hard on this part, getting the technical parts down. It gave me something to focus on, much more than in any other time in my life.
THR: Liberace had such an exaggerated way of speaking. Did you have to experiment a lot to decide how far to go with it in the film?
Douglas: Yeah. He camps it up more onstage, but yeah, I did. It's hard listening to yourself, but I worked on it a lot. I found you couldn't go too far, but there are levels. When he gets upset, he would drop it a little bit. But looking back at his TV show, which I remember watching as a kid, he was the first person to look into the camera. He had so much fun. It was so contagious. I think that's why his gayness never entered the picture. People just enjoyed watching how much fun he was having.

THR: You and Matt really show a lot of skin. Did you find you had to drop any inhibitions?
Douglas: Yeah, as Matt says, we both read the script, and we knew, with Steven, this was not going to be about winking at the audience. It was not going to be La Cage aux Folles. This was a relationship between two people who loved each other a lot. I swear after a few minutes of watching it, I forget it's Matt and myself, and then I literally forget it's two guys. In their arguments in Richard LaGravenese's screenplay, you can hear a married couple having at it. We did have a lot of pages in the hot tub. But Steven is very tasteful, and we had a couple of sections choreographed so as not to embarrass anyone. We just got it on. Look, I so tip my hat to Matt. I know in my prime, I don't know if I could have done what he does here.
THR: You and Matt also had to spend a lot of time in the makeup chair. Did that affect your working rhythms?
Douglas: I'm usually in and out of the chair as quickly as I can be. But we had days when we had six or seven hours in the chair. Fortunately, we all had a similar kind of rhythm. We are first-take guys if we can. If we have to, we do a couple more. But it wasn't often when either of us asked for another one.

How Socrates Buenger Built His Studio Business in Maui

Courtesy of the Maui Film Festival

Maui festgoers attend an outdoor screening as part of the event's Celestial Cinema program.

Buenger, the owner and CEO of the 21,000-square-foot facility, got his project up and running ahead of Ryan Kavanaugh's $200 million dream studio.

Socrates Buenger is the first to admit he's not a Hollywood mogul. A production assistant on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in his youth, he has only a handful of producing credits to his name. But what he does have, as of mid-May, is ownership of the largest film studio on the Hawaiian Islands.
Buenger is owner and CEO of the new 21,000-square-foot Maui Film Studios, the only soundstage in Maui located in the Kahului industrial region. With the facility ready for full productions by September, Buenger hopes to increase shooting in a region that has hosted everything from Ang Lee's The Hulk to ABC's Modern Family.
Maui Film Studios' emergence as a regional player took nearly everyone by surprise. "I suspect Buenger kept things under the radar to prevent competing projects from interfering," says Hawaii Film Office manager Donne Dawson.
She's referring to Relativity Media's billionaire CEO Ryan Kavanaugh, who for years has been lobbying to build a $200 million studio on Maui.

Since 2011, Kavanaugh has been negotiating with state legislators to grant generous tax breaks for construction of his facility and to more than double Hawaii's production incentives. His plans encountered opposition, though, and in the interim Buenger built his studio without public support.
"It was met with a lot of resistance," says Buenger. "I was told [by local politicians] in no uncertain terms that I was going to single-handedly kill the film industry in Maui" by pushing away Kavanaugh.
The idea originated three years ago, when Buenger tried to find a soundstage to produce a traditional broadcast pilot for his political web series Mad Libs. When he called state-owned Diamond Head Studios on Oahu, "They basically said: 'Sorry, call back in two years.' And that was just for my Podunk production."
Sensing an opportunity, Buenger, with the backing of a single local silent partner, did two years of "under-the-radar planning" so as not to arouse the political heft of Kavanaugh and his local allies. This past year, with Kavanaugh's plans stalled and his in line, he went public. His timing couldn't have been better: Aside from beating Kavanaugh to the punch, Buenger likely will be able to tout enhanced tax incentives to prospective productions.

Hawaii's legislature recently approved a 5 percent bump for the state's film incentive program (Maui now offers a 25 percent tax credit on production dollars spent). The measure also would raise the per-project incentive cap from $8 million to $15 million. "The new incentives, if approved, stand to make Maui Film Studios very competitive," says Dawson.
While negotiations are still under way, Buenger says Hollywood's response to his facility has been overwhelming. "We have four major features and one network pilot vying for space in the next 12 months," he says. "Scheduling is getting tricky."
Relativity declined comment, but a source close to the company says, "Buenger has approached Relativity several times about a partnership and the studio declined." The source added: “Buenger’s studio is in fact a repurposed warehouse that is unsuitable for feature film production. Mayor Arakawa of Maui has consistently been supportive of Relativity, and we look forward to moving forward with our plans."
Indeed, Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa told THR, "We support all efforts to try and expand our film industry here in Maui County, because we have always felt that this could be a new economic engine for us. Ryan Kavanaugh in particular has always supported this community, and we appreciate his efforts to help push towards getting better tax incentives for film and television production in our islands."
Dawson says a more modest soundstage and digital studio are planned for the Big Island. He says: "Maui Film Studios is something real. It's something on the ground, and it's something the community can see. I think that's what people are looking for at this point -- something tangible."

Shanghai Film Fest: 5 Things Not to Miss

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

With heavyweights like Tom Hooper and Oliver Stone on hand and Beijing film execs choosing it over Cannes, the 16th edition of the festival is the biggest yet.

When the Shanghai International Film Festival launched its film market in June 2008, critics questioned the wisdom of hosting an industry event so close to Cannes' Marche du Film. Today, the skepticism largely has dissipated, thanks to domestic companies that previously clamored for the glamour of the French Riviera now coming home to cultivate their own rapidly maturing film industry -- meaning Shanghai's significance within the Chinese film industry is not to be underestimated. Highlights of the event:
1. CHINA'S LATEST FILM SLATE
The festival will host announcements and premieres from China's biggest film companies, including Huayi Brothers, which canceled its Cannes plans and now will unveil its slate and host its annual bash June 16. Its closest rival, Bona Film Group, has the action blockbuster Unbeatable from Dante Lam in the festival's Golden Goblet competition. Le Vision Pictures, which recently recruited Zhang Yimou as its artistic director, will announce new ventures dedicated to cultivating talent in the industry. "The festival ends just as students finish their school term," says Shen Yang, deputy program director. "Now that Chinese producers are more savvy about scheduling, they know that the festival is an important platform for publicity before blockbuster season begins."

2. THE RACE FOR THE GOLDEN GOBLET
Though Shanghai is still a junior partner to its more established A-list festival peers, this year's competition slate offers more diversity than past editions. Local titles vying for the Golden Goblet include Sherwood Hu's basketball drama Amazing, which like Unbeatable is making its world premiere, and art house fare from around the world like the Michael Caine starrer Mr. Morgan's Last Love from Canada, the mixed martial arts drama Fists of Legend from Korea and the historical epic I Am You from Bulgaria.
3. A HOOPER AND A STONE
Les Miserables director Tom Hooper will serve as president of the Golden Goblet jury, and Oliver Stone will fly in to receive an Outstanding Achievement award and host a master class. "I was on the jury for the first Shanghai festival in 1993, and I have an apartment in Beijing," Stone tells THR. The director spent years developing films in China, though he only shot one, a short for the Beijing Olympics. "One of the highlights of going back to Shanghai will be showing my new 3-hour, 20-minute cut of Alexander and one hour of my Untold History of the United States, about the bomb." Stone says he may still direct a film in China: "Listen, I never give up."
4. SOME SILENT HITCH
A major boost to the festival's A-list cred is the showcase of nine Alfred Hitchcock silent films made between 1925 and 1929. Part of the festival's Tribute to Masters event -- which has featured the work of Akira Kurosawa and Krzysztof Kieslowski -- this showcase precedes the one scheduled for the prestigious restored-classics festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, in early July.

5. THE PROJECT MARKET
It's a consensus that it's not the lack of capital that worries Chinese film execs, it's the dearth of talent. That makes project markets like Shanghai's an ideal forum for networking among aspiring filmmakers and producers and financiers. The project has yielded results: Young filmmakers whose work has gone on to festival acclaim include Han Jie (the Locarno entry Hello! Mr Tree) and Quan Ling (Forgetting to Know You, which screened in Berlin this year). Says Shen: "Through the forums and the project markets and the co-production market, which pushes for cross-cultural partnerships, it's all about the whole market serving as an incubator for the industry."

Sorrentino, Tornatore Dominate Nominees at Europe's Oldest Film Awards

Giuseppe Tornatore

Italy's 67-year-old Nastri d'Argento Awards, to be held in July at Sicily's 2,400-year-old Teatro Antico venue, will take place with the Cannes regular and the Oscar winner in pole position.

ROME – The latest films from five-time Cannes Palme d’Or nominee Paolo Sorrentino and Oscar winner Gabrielle Tornatore were the top nominees for the 67th edition of the Nastri d'Argento (Silver Ribbons), Europe’s oldest film honors.

Sorrentino’s La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty), an elegant commentary on contemporary Rome, and La migiore offerta (The Best Offer), Tornatore’s drama centered on an art auctioneer’s obsession with a wealthy art collector, earned nine nominations each.
La grande bellezza was Sorrentino’s fifth Palme d’Or-nominated feature film this month, while La Migliore Offerta earned four David di Donatello nominations for Tornatore, who directed the Best Foreign Film Oscar winner Nuovo Cinema Paradiso in 1989.
Both films were nominated in the Best Director category, along with Bella addormentata (Sleeping Beauty), a powerful euthanasia drama from Marco Bellocchio; Roberto Ando’s tense political drama Viva la liberta (Live Freedom); and Claudio Giovannesi’s Ali ha gli occhi azzurri (Ali Has Blue Eyes), a coming of age crime drama.
Sorrentino won top honors at the Nastri d'Argento a year ago for This Must be the Right Place, which starred Sean Penn as an ageing rocker.
Italian acting maestro Toni Servillo, who played a starring role in three of the five films nominated in the top category -- La grande bellezza, Bella addormentata, and Viva la liberta -- but he will not have the opportunity to add to his previous tally of six Nastri d’Argento Best Actor nominations and three victories: he was not nominated in any of the acting categories this year.
La grande bellezza, La migiore offerta, Bella addormentata, and Viva la liberta were all nominated in the Best Screenplay category, along with Il rosso e il blu (The Red and the Blue), a high school drama directed by Giusepe Piccioni and co-written by Piccioni and Umberto Contarello.
Organizers previously announced they would honor Io e te (Me and You), a coming-of-age drama from Oscar winner Bernardo Bertolucci as film of the year and that stage star Roberto Herlitzka, who plays a supporting role in La grande bellezza, would receive a lifetime achievement honor.
Founded in 1946, the Nastri d’Argento -- voted on each year by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists -- are the second oldest film awards in the world, behind only the Oscars. They will be presented in July in the famous Teatro Antico venue in Taormina, the site of the upcoming Taormina Film Festival.
The full list of nominees is available starting from the syndicate's web site.