SFIFF54 Presents: An Evening with Terence Stamp April 29, 2011

The Film Society is proud to present the 2011 Peter J. Owens Award to an iconic actor that has created memorable onscreen characters with a remarkable blend of élan, intensity and charisma for nearly fifty years. Terence Stamp will be honored with an onstage interview about his extensive acting career, and a selection of clips from his films will be followed by a screening of one of his signature works: Federico Fellini's phantasmagoric masterpiece Toby Dammit.

The Peter J. Owens award will be presented at Film Society Awards Night. Named for the longtime San Francisco benefactor of arts and charitable organizations Peter J. Owens (1936–1991), this award honors an actor whose work exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity.

Boyfriend of Julie Christie, friend of Federico Fellini, hit man, limey ninja, queen of the desert, star of 74 individual productions over a career that has spanned over 50 years, few leading men have reinvented themselves as often, and as successfully, as the one and only Terence Stamp. Born in a working-class neighborhood in London in 1938, and having worked in advertising as a young man, he decided to become an actor. His motion picture debut was the title role in Peter Ustinov’s 1962 film adaptation of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, which brought him an Academy Award nomination.

After this precocious success, Stamp collaborated with some of the cinema’s most respected filmmakers: William Wyler (The Collector, 1965), Joseph Losey (Modesty Blaise, 1966), John Schlesinger (Far from the Madding Crowd, 1967 starring Julie Christie), and as a shy, lovestruck youth in Ken Loach’s first feature Poor Cow (1967). Federico Fellini cast him in Toby Dammit (1968), and Stamp made Italy his home for several years, during which time his film work included Pier Palo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968).

Displaying an exceptional range, Stamp began to gravitate toward powerful, often malevolent characters, in contrast to much of his earlier work. In the 1980s he starred in Richard Donner’s Superman and Richard Lester’s Superman II (as Kryptonian supervillain General Zod), Peter Brook’s Meetings with Remarkable Men, Stephen Frears’s The Hit, Ivan Reitman’s Legal Eagles, Michael Cimino’s The Sicilian and Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Even after his success in international blockbusters, Stamp has continued taking challenging roles in smaller film like Beltenebros (1991), in which the actor starred for Spanish director Pilar Miró, and the French thriller Tiré à Part (1996).

Stamp began his fourth decade as an actor with the comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and attended the world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival. In 1999 it was his lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey—which debuted that year to widespread critical acclaim—that once again made him popular to a new generation of moviegoers.

Not having lost any momentum in the 21st century, in 2008, he starred opposite Tom Cruise in the historical thriller Valkyrie. He can currently be seen opposite Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in Universal’s The Adjustment Bureau.

Official Website: http://fest11.sffs.org/awards/terence_stamp.php