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Oliver Reed (1938 - 1999) was an English actor best known for his edgy screen performances, ‘hellraiser’ lifestyle, and ‘orange juice’-fuelled chat show inebriation. Towards the end of his life, the British Film Institute pronounced him the UK’s ‘thirstiest actor’.
Reed’s breakthrough role came as Bill Sikes in Oliver! – the 1968 musical version of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Directed by his uncle, Reed later claimed to have landed the role because the two men had “come out of the same c*ck”.
Reed’s Bill Sikes caught the eye of director Ken Russell, who cast him in Women in Love (1969), the first mainstream movie to show full-frontal male nudity. In it, Reed famously has a naked fireside wrestle with Alan Bates. In I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname (1967), Reed became the first lead actor to use the f-word on film; and in Sitting Target (1972), he starred in the first British film to be given an X-rating just because of the violence in it.
Reed spent much of his adult life being thrown out of pubs and hotels after marathon drinking sessions he designated ‘tests of strength’. These would typically be followed by him revealing a very intimate bird claw tattoo to any crowd that might have assembled.
One quiet Saturday afternoon trip to a country pub apparently culminated in Reed inviting 36 rugby players over to his house – and between Saturday night and Sunday lunchtime, between them, they famously consumed 60 gallons of beer, 32 bottles of whiskey, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of wine, and one bottle of Babysham. Before throwing them out the next morning, at Reed’s insistence, the entire party engaged in a nude dawn run through the Surrey countryside.
Reed died in 1999, whilst filming Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. A man who feared dying peacefully, he no doubt would have been comfortable with the circumstances of his death. Reed suffered a fatal heart attack on the floor of a Maltese barroom whilst arm wrestling a local sailor – having consumed three bottles of rum.
Reed’s Last Will and Testament instructed that his wake should take place at his local pub and that £10,000 must be spent buying drinks – but just on ‘those who are crying’.
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