Oscar-Nominated ‘Superman’ Star Terence Stamp Dies at 87

Oscar-nominated actor Terence Stamp has died. He was 87.

In a statement to Reuters, his family shared that Stamp passed on Sunday, saying, “He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, both as an actor and as a writer, that will continue to touch and inspire people for years to come.”

The London-born star broke into film in 1960, despite his father’s fear that “people like [them]” couldn’t “do things like that.”

“It wasn’t until we got our first TV — I would’ve been about 17, I think, and I was already at work — that I started saying things like, ‘Oh, I could do that,’” he told BFI. “My dad just turned me off it,” he told BFI during a 2013 interview. “He was probably trying to save me a lot of aggro.”

Stamp, whose father was a tugboat driver in the Merchant Navy, never stopped dreaming of stardom, and eventually he won a scholarship to study at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where he became friends with a young Michael Caine and Peter O’Toole. From there, his path was clear.

In his early 20s, the actor made his film debut in the TV series Spy-Catcher. Shortly after, he played the title role in the 1962 film Billy Budd, which earned him his Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for Most Promising Male Newcomer.

“When I started the movie, a kind of amazing thing happened because I just discovered that — it was like I knew it,” he told NPR in 2002. “It was as though it was absolutely second nature to me. Everything I saw that was new, I understood almost instantaneously.”

During his career, Terence Stamp went on to star in other major films, such as Superman, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and A Season in Hell. More recently, he had roles in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, The Adjustment Bureau and Valkyrie.