Few People Understand It and Live When It Comes: Terence Stamp, 1938-2025

They considered real drag queens for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but it was decided they needed to have name stars. They were allowed one non-Australian actor. For the role of Bernadette, the first thought was David Bowie, who was unavailable. After that, the thought was Tim Curry, apparently ditto. (It’s hard to imagine Tim Curry’s having been doing a better film, given his output, but anyway.) Finally, they settled on Terence Stamp, who would become absolutely iconic in the role. A lot of people think of him first as Zod, and it’s true that I saw him first in the role when I was a child, but to me, he’ll always be Bernadette.

This is probably because I don’t remember Swinging London. He was one of the most-photographed men of the era; I’d say it’s because there was something about his eyes. There were doubtless more conventionally handsome men of the time. There were doubtless more flamboyant and flashy men. But when Terence Stamp looked at you, you knew you were being looked at.

Apparently his former roommate Michael Caine believes his own career stems in no small part from Stamp’s having turned down the title role in Alfie, which went to Caine and made him a star. I would say that Caine, Stamp, and Ian McShane could have in many ways had one another’s careers—so okay, it’s hard to picture Caine as Zod or Al Swearengen, I grant you, but still. And I’m not sure either of the other two could possibly have done Bernadette.

He was one of those people who worked for and with everyone. The list of actors who have appeared in films directed by both Federico Fellini and Frank Oz is probably not a long one. Add in Ken Loach and Oliver Stone, and we’re probably down to one. He was in the original Alien Nation movie and Young Guns. It’s not hard to believe that he found the making of Phantom Menace to be boring; compared to a lot of the rest of the movies he’d made, it probably was. How could it possibly have compared with working with Pasolini?

And, yes, I’ve seen a lot of these and plan to see others and will still always remember him as Bernadette. He didn’t make her a laughingstock. She was a trans woman at a time when there were very few trans women in film, and if she was played by a man, well, we’re still working on that. But while she was allowed to be funny, we weren’t laughing at her. We were on her side, both in her grief and in her determination to live a new and different life. There were moments when she was incredibly well dressed, and Stamp seemed to accept that with the dignity he gave everything else she did. There are worse legacies.