Oliver Reed "Drop Down Dead" in a pub during the filming "Gladiator", says Ridley Scott
The British actor and Infamous Imbiber played Proximo in the best winner of the film.
To quote Maximus, the protagonist of Gladiator , "What we do in life resonates in eternity." The work of one of the stars of the winner of the best film also echoes eternity, because Oliver Reed , who played Proximo, died before the shooting could be completed 2000 Ridley Scott epic . According to the director, the British actor hard drinking "fell dead" in a local pub after promising not consuming alcohol during the shooting. Read more to find out exactly how the 61 -year -old man has passed and how Gladiator managed to give his character an appropriate shipment despite everything.
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Reed was a legendary actor and legendary drinker.
Reed, born in 1938, first succeeded in success as an actor in several hammer horror films in the 1960s, including The curse of the werewolf And The damned . His star is higher when he played Bill Sikes, one of the antagonists of Oliver! , which won the best Oscar in 1968.
Unfortunately, the name of Reed was like synonymous with alcoholism As it was with his work - by NPR, he said one day that he had not lived "in the world of sobriety". The actor's alcohol consumption exploits were legendary and sadly famous; A rumor wants it once BU more than 100 pints in two days. AE0FCC31AE342FD3A1346EBB1F342FCB
A friend of Keith Moon (the drummer for the WHO and another famous drinker), Reed sometimes had trouble Due to his affinity for alcohol. He was sentenced to a fine for His role in a drunk fight In Vermont in 1981, and although there are many anecdotes about it to remain sober if necessary and not to let its alcohol consumption have an impact on its projects, it certainly gave it a reputation. When Reed appeared in talk shows, his alcohol consumption was as much a subject of conversation as his filmography.
"He only drank at night. He was like Jekyll and Hyde," Robert sellers , the author of the book Hellraisers (which tells the exploits of Reed, Richard Burton ,, Richard Harris , And Peter O'Toole ), said NPR.
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He was thrown like proximo in Gladiator .
Reed acted in a coherent way throughout his life, but his career slowed down after the 1970s. When he was thrown into Gladiator , it was considered by industry as The start of a career return .
Gladiator follows Russell Crowe Maximus, a Roman general who becomes a slave then rises in the ranks of the Colosseum as a gladiator to take revenge on the merchant of the depraved emperor ( Joaquin Phoenix ) Who betrayed him and killed his family. Reed played Proximo, an old gladiator who bought Maximus as a slave and finally becomes his mentor.
According to a 20th anniversary Oral history of Gladiator published by Variety In 2020, Scott knew in which he entered the actor and made Reed promise that he would not drink during the shooting. To get around the rule, he only participated on weekends.
"" Ollie was very disciplined For us, when we started filming in Morocco, "Crowe told Sunday email in 2000, as quoted by the New York Post . "But when we arrived in Malta, he was relaxed enough to come back to what he had to do."
"It was a force of nature, and nothing stopped it," added the star.
He died in a Malta pub after challenging the sailors for a drinking match.
On May 2, 1999, Reed was in a bar called the ad on the Archbishop in Valletta, Malta, where the gladiator turned.
"One Sunday morning, he fell dead in the floor of an ad," said Scott Variety . "He probably had a few pints and said," I don't feel good, "said the carpet and died."
"He is in this bar in Valletta and this British destroyer [Hms Cumberland] is anchored in the bay and the crew between", screenwriter David Franzoni said in the same oral history. "He defies the crew to a kind of debauchery to drink. He drinks, faints and dies. I still have his bar tab, by the way."
Scott added that David Hemmings , the actor who played the advertiser of the Colisée Cassius, had "promised to take care of him and said to me:" I'm really sorry, old boy "."
A police spokesman said The Guardian at the time that although A friend tried to resuscitate Reed After collapsing, he died in an ambulance en route to the hospital.
"Everyone said he was going as he wanted, but that's not true. It was very tragic ," wrote Omid Djalili , which had a minor part in Gladiator , For The Guardian . "He was in an Irish bar in Malta and was subjected to an alcohol consumption competition. He should have left, but he did not do it."
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The advanced CGI was used to complete the Reed scenes.
Reed had almost finished filming all his scenes Gladiator , which was to be his 100th film. However, his death left Scott and his colleagues in an obligation. According to New York Post , rather than making expensive re-shoots with a new player, production spent $ 3 million to digitally superimpose Reed's face on the body of a replacement.
"We managed to finish what was required by Oliver, stealing digital images from his face and attaching them to an appropriate body," said Scott Variety .
However, the filmmaker had to rewrite the Proximo final scene. Originally, he was supposed to have survived the film, but it was much easier to kill him in a heroic sacrifice - and it is not a bad end either.
