Terence Stamp, one reviewer said recently, is always a pleasure in a movie, never a chore. Casting the ageing cockney gangster in The Limey was a done deal - the man who his one-time girlfriend Jean Shrimpton used to affectionately call "Stamp" has it all sewn up. That Stamp has become the icon of British 60s cinema has a lot more to do with his ability to spin a yarn on Parkie than his patchy track record. He was most sinister as The Collector, yes, and a very bad kid in the underrated schoolroom drama Term Of Trial. But, the odd arthouse moment aside, it's been steady dross since Poor Cow in 1968. Superman. Superman 2. Ouch.
Many of his peers who could be ripe for rediscovery seem happy to perpetuate a dead art form by treading the boards. Tom Courtenay has long perfected a plummy accent, but he still has the undernourished look of a cheeky loser that was used to crisp perfection in Billy Liar and Otley. In any case, theatre is the actor's equivalent of being an NME band and selling 500 records. Give Tom a shot at Top Of The Pops and he'd jump. Heading a list of actresses to cherish is saucer-eyed Rita Tushingham. She wasn't really sexy or even conventionally pretty, but she could be beguilingly innocent, kittenish, and catty, usually in the same picture (A Taste Of Honey, Girl With Green Eyes, A Place To Go, The Knack). Always, you wished she was your mate.
The 70s was a long, dark tunnel for Rita, as it was for most British film stars of the previous decade, and when she re-emerged in the 80s it was with an unpleasant tan and in Carla Lane's nauseating Bread. Now her infrequent appearances see her typecast as a mum, usually Scouse or Irish, in bad British films you've never heard of - apart from the one with Lisa Stansfield. Still she's an icon. Rescue Rita, someone.
Gillian Hills was an all-out sexpot. She first appeared in Beat Girl in 1960, playing a very stroppy teenager who hates her architect dad (too obsessed with his amazing City 2000 to pay her much attention) and her stepmum (young and French, you see). Beat Girl is the best British rock'n'roll movie - Adam Faith and Carol White lurk unsmiling in coffee bars, there's a John Barry soundtrack, and Gillian has the most outrageous post-Bardot bouffant you ever did see.
Not surprisingly, it was well received in France, where super-precocious Gillian became a pop star with some excellent self-penned "ye-ye" 45s. In 65 she came back to England and released her only English-language single (the sublime, breathy-folk Look At Them) and was seen soon after romping naked with Jane Birkin and David Hemmings in Blow Up. Small parts followed in John Osborne's fabulous Inadmissible Evidence and A Clockwork Orange, then a touch more nudity in 1972's Demons Of The Mind, at which point the trail runs cold. There was a rumour a few years back that she now runs a flower shop - Bouffant Bouquets, perhaps.
It may have only been a bit-part for Gillian Hills, but Blow Up made an international star of David Hemmings. His bloater-paste appearance in an episode of Northern Exposure, however, tends to rule him out of the comeback stakes. Apparently David enjoys a drink, and doesn't mind who knows it.
Hywel Bennett - the nervous newly-wed in The Family Way - also admired his sauce a little too often. Handsome in a hangdog way, and no mean actor, his career went into a slump after Percy (1971), a sub-Carry On travesty about a penis transplant. Shelley made him a TV star at the end of the 70s but he's done little of note since, um, The Return Of Shelley 10 years ago. Cathy McGowan had the good taste to marry him, but by the early 80s she was ready steady gone and off into the arms of that star of Eurovision and light opera, Michael Ball.
Alcohol also hampered the career of one of the 60s' brightest stars, Malcolm McDowell. No question, he had the look. He also had the parts - ironically he was in Poor Cow with Terence Stamp (though for my money it's Carol White's film and nobody else's) but never made the final edit. Later in 68 came Lindsay Anderson's If, and immortality. The problem was that Malcolm was so enamoured of the director that he turned down roles, waiting for calls that all-too infrequently came from the temperamental Anderson. A couple of years ago he turned up at the NFT at a Lindsay Anderson tribute. He looked old and rich, weathered but fantastic in a leather jacket that gave him an old rocker image. He's kept himself busy in Hollywood - a part in Tank Girl, the narrator on Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy - but, bloody hell, he could do a lot better.
A really brave director could dig a little deeper and pull out someone who never even made it beyond their first big shot. The film that started the British New Wave, Look Back In Anger, saw Richard Burton at his bitter best ("What do you really want, Jimmy?" Edith Evans asks him. "Everything nothing.") but also featured a chiselled Welshman called Gary Raymond who looked for all the world like Scott Tracy in a polo-neck. He glowered magnificently in Picturegoer and Film Review for a few months, but never got another decent role. He was apparently the only person in Wales not to feature on Tom Jones' recent comeback album.
Colin Campbell's starring role in The Leather Boys largely comprised him winking and grinning and generally playing the loveable cockney geezer - "cahm awwwn!" and "cor ber-limey!" are his memorable catchphrases. Playing opposite tarty fiancée Rita Tushingham he has a real vulnerability and is clearly star material. Then he tutted and blimeyed his way through Saturday Night Out, serenaded by The Searchers as a sailor on the pull, but that was just about it. He at least became the equal of Il Stampo, via immortality on a Smiths sleeve.
Another chirpy cockney, Adrienne Posta swung between pop and the pictures. She was lucky enough to have Jagger and Richard pen her a single (Shang A Doo Lang - a terrific din) which sold nothing but got her cheeky, chubby face in the papers. In Up The Junction she had a voice like an electric toothbrush and new bottle-blonde hair, but stole the show. The inevitable rot set in circa 1970, reaching the nadir of regular Give Us A Clue appearances. Ade had been at school with Twinkle, the natural blonde pop sensation of 65 who'd had a hit with Terry. A few months after leaving, both in the first flush of fame, they donned their uniforms, sneaked back into school and sat at the back of the classroom, causing a situationist rumpus. Mr Stamp would never be seen doing anything as crude as poking his tongue out.
Julie Christie is, of course, Julie Christie, and therefore beyond the confines of this article. But Judy Geeson was only almost Julie Christie and therefore qualifies. She was great at playing saucy but cold-hearted girls (Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, To Sir With Love, Prudence And The Pill) but somehow fell into soft-porn horror in the 70s and disappeared. Still, she fared better than her sister Sally, who willingly fell into the arms of pervy old Norman Wisdom in What's Good For The Goose, the poor love.
Maybe the finest lost actor of his generation is Barry Foster. He looked like Jon Pertwee's evil younger brother, he pushed Hywel Bennett about and manhandled Hayley Mills in The Family Way, he was even one of the all-time creepiest Hitchcock villains in Frenzy. So what happened next? He played a Dutch TV detective, Van Der Valk, for an eternity and scuppered his film career. Oh Barry, you could have been Britain's own Robert Walker. For Barry, Adrienne, Colin and Gillian, the sad truth is that casting agents play too safe by far. Terence Stamp has a job for life. More's the pity.
The Limey is released on Friday
