You will find, young man, that the future looks rosiest through the bottom of a glass – Athos, Three Musketeers (1973)

Saw this today; it’s a link to one of the people in my Hall Of Fame - Oliver Reed

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/in_praise_of_oliver_reed/

I recommend you read his biography Evil Spirits detailing his career and problems with the bottle. It’s a shame people remember him more for his drinking than his acting.

However I suppose they do make better anecdotes such as smashing up a restaurant and then giving a large cheque for the damages next day, building a pub on an island in his lake so he could row over to it and removing all the doors in his house as he kept walking in to them.

But we should remember the controversy in his career with daring roles such as The Devils and of course Castaway. A head of there time and rarely shown on TV (Compared to the Musketeer trilogy) these were not easy roles for a man who could have been a main stream actor. Then there was his iconic role as Bill Sykes in Oliver!

Oliver Reeds acting career started in 1958 and worked until his death in Cyprus in 2000 (allegedly in a drinking competition) while filming Gladiator. I’d like to think after such a performance as Proximo his career would have reignited to his glory days in the 60’s and seventies rather than the drunken image on The Word he seems to be more famous for. But we’ll never know.

Further detailed biography can be found at the following links

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001657/bio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Reed

http://www.oliverreed.net/

All Hail Oliver Reed !!!