OLIVER REED – THE WHISPERING GIANT by John A. A. Logan
As a child in the 1970s, I remember that those cheap hardback editions “for children”, of classics like The Three Musketeers, The Prince and the Pauper, or Oliver Twist, were in circulation, so that this was how I first came across those wonderful stories. At the same time, remakes of these stories were being made for British cinema and, perhaps because, as he later said of himself, he was born too late and would have been happier in an earlier time, it was Oliver Reed that UK directors turned to when they wanted to cast a powerful character in these films: Athos in The Three Musketeers, Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist, Miles Hendon in The Prince and the Pauper… As a child watching these films on a black-and-white portable TV, I noticed Reed right away. His energy seemed different from other “actors”. This is probably because he was doing less “acting”. And yet, there can be sensed within him a fierce, but sensitive, commitment to whichever part he is playing at any given time. ...