People
Oliver Reed
Acting · follow into films and chains
Biography
Robert Oliver Reed (February 13, 1938 – May 2, 1999) was an English actor known for his "hellraiser" lifestyle. After making his first significant screen appearances in Hammer Horror films in the early 1960s, his notable films include The Trap (1966), playing Bill Sikes in the 1968 Best Picture Oscar winner Oliver! (a film directed by his uncle Carol Reed), Women in Love (1969), Hannibal Brooks (1969), The Devils (1971), portraying Athos in The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974); the lover and stepfather in Tommy (1975), Funny Bones (1995) and Gladiator (2000). For playing Antonius Proximo, the old, gruff gladiator trainer in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, in what was his final film, Reed was posthumously nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 2000. At the peak of his career, in 1971, British exhibitors voted Reed fifth most popular star at the box office. The British Film Institute (BFI) stated that "partnerships with Michael Winner and Ken Russell in the mid-60s saw Reed become an emblematic Brit-flick icon", but from the mid-1970s his alcoholism began affecting his career, with the BFI adding "Reed had assumed Robert Newton's mantle as Britain's thirstiest thespian".
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
Gladiator
As Proximo
The League of Gentlemen
Appears in a KinoChain journey
The Curse of the Werewolf
Appears in a KinoChain journey
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
As Vulcan
The Three Musketeers
As Athos
The Pit and the Pendulum
As Cardinal
The Assassination Bureau
As Ivan Dragomiloff
And Then There Were None
As Hugh Lombard
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
The Quiet Art of the British Character Actor
Eight films that celebrate the scene-stealers, the scene-setters, and the soul of British cinema: the character actors who make every frame richer.
8 films
Ghosts in the Machine
From a stuntman's final role to a star's digital encore, these eight films trace cinema's long affair with performing from beyond the grave.
8 films
The Heist Film Slips Its Own Cuffs
Seven robberies that treat the job as a pretext: for politics, for grief, for a formal joke. The loot matters less than what the filmmakers smuggle out alongsid...
7 films
Fur and Fangs
From the eerie moors of England to the neon streets of Tokyo, this chain of eight films reveals the werewolf as a creature of endless reinvention, embodying hor...
8 films
The DVDs That Changed Everything
In the late 1990s, home video underwent a seismic shift driven by a double revolution: an unprecedented jump in technical quality, and an unprecedented access t...
10 films
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Related people
Collaborators & neighbours
Acted
Gladiator
2000 · Proximo
Jeremiah
1998 · General Safan
The Pit and the Pendulum
1991 · Cardinal
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
1988 · Vulcan
The Four Musketeers
1974 · Athos
And Then There Were None
1974 · Hugh Lombard
The Three Musketeers
1973 · Athos
Take a Girl Like You
1970 · Patrick Standish
The Assassination Bureau
1969 · Ivan Dragomiloff
The Curse of the Werewolf
1961 · Leon Corledo
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll
1960 · Nightclub Bouncer (uncredited)
The League of Gentlemen
1960 · Chorus Boy (uncredited)