Oliver Reed

Born: February 13th, 1938
Where: Wimbledon, London
Died: May 2nd, 1999

Before he became one of the world's best known and best loved classical actors, British Oliver Reed served as a Royal Army Medical Corpsman.

His first big acting break came in 1961 in the children's series The Golden Spur, and in the same year he already secured his first starring role in The Curse of the Werewolf.

Two years later Oliver played a sadistic and lecherous motorcycle gang leader in Joseph Losey's The Damned, and after some more minor TV and film roles, in 1966 he starred in Michael Winner's The Jokers, alongside Michael Crawford.

Again with Winner was Hannibal Brooks, in which he played the title role, and in 1968 he gave his most memorable performance as Bill Sykes in Carol Reed's Oscar-winning musical Oliver!

Two years later Oliver embarked on a fruitful friendship with Richard Lester, with whom he made four movies. The first of which was The Three Musketeers.

For the whole of the 80s Oliver spent his career working in films made for TV and the big screen, none particularly outstanding, but in 1989 he brought himself back into the limelight as Vulcan in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The year 2000 saw Oliver in his final film role - and what a finale!

He played Proximo in Ridley Scott's multi award winning Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe, which put his name back on top of the Hollywood ladder.

Unfortunately soon after the filming of the Roman epic, Oliver died aged 61 of a heart attack.