“Life is for living - that's all there is to it.” Oliver Reed 1938 - 1999
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Born in Wimbledon, London as Robert Oliver Reed, the son of sports journalist Peter Reed and his wife Marcia, he was the nephew of film director Sir Carol Reed, and grandson of the actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree by his mistress May Pinney Reed. Dyslexic, Reed was expelled from many different private schools. He was also a direct descendant of King William IV and his long-time mistress, Dorothy Jordan.
Oliver Reed was better known as a hellraiser than an actor. Acting came a poor third to his main pursuits of arm-wrestling and consuming prodigious quantities of alcohol. The two were often combined in any convenient hostelry, where he would cause the drink to flow and then challenge anyone in the house to take him on.
He was famous for his excessive drinking, and was once forced to leave the set of the Channel 4 television discussion programme After Dark after arriving drunk and attempting to kiss feminist writer Kate Millett. On another occasion he removed his trousers during an interview.
Reed's drinking bouts were legendary and there are numerous anecdotes such as Reed and 36 friends drinking, in an evening, 60 gallons of beer, 32 bottles of Scotch, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of wine and one bottle of Babycham.
He minimised the story that he drank 106 pints of beer on a 2-day binge before marrying Josephine; "The event that was reported actually took place during an arm-wrestling competition in Guernsey about 15 years ago, it was highly exaggerated."
Reed was often irritated that his appearances on TV chat shows concentrated on his drinking feats, rather than his latest film, and sadly he was never given the recognition he deserved as one of Britains finest actors.
His most familiar role for modern audiences was also his last. The actor appeared in Oscar-winner Gladiator (2000) as Proximo, the amoral merchant who trains the enslaved fighters to kill and be killed. When he died midway through production, Reed unwittingly became part of a groundbreaking three-million-dollar endeavor by director Ridley Scott to digitally re-create his likeness in order to film Proximo's death scene. A three-dimensional image of Reed's face was scanned into computers so it could smile and talk, then digitally grafted onto a body double.
He died in Malta, where Gladiator was being filmed, on May 2, 1999, the result of a heart attack brought on by one last night of hard drinking in a bar called simply "The Pub". The night reportedly included three bottles of downed rum and arm wrestling victories over five sailors.
The owners have since added "Ollie's Last Pub" to the sign.
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His funeral was held in Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland, where they played "Consider Yourself" at his funeral.
He was survived by his third wife, Josephine Burge, as well as a son (Mark) and a daughter (Sarah), one each from his previous two marriages.
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Ollie Read - King of the Hellraisers
Lost in Action May 2nd 1999
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