Oliver Reed trivia...from REEDing the web

First things first

Oliver Reed starred in the first English -speaking commerical film to feature full frontal male nudity (Women in Love).
Oliver Reed starred in the first film (I'll Never Forget What's 'Is Name) to say "fuck".
Oliver Reed starred in the first British film to be rated X just for the violent content (Sitting Target).

Co-starts
Years before Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar co-starred in The Brood and Lady in the Car with Sunglasses and a Gun, they played together as children since they were friends growing up.

100% celluloid
Oliver Reed remains the only British film star who never had any stage work of any kind. A 1980s National Portrait Gallery show noted this, saying he was their only pure film actor.

Twice in a blue moon
Ollie never forgot his Hammer roots. After hitting the big time, he went back to pay homage to his horror beginnings to narrate the full Hammer retrospective, reminding one that his voice was the one quality the English critics admired about him.

A howling success
At age 22, Reed was paid £90 per week for his first starring role in Curse of the Werewolf. But the film would not be seen in Spain for many years. It was banned because it was thought the film portrayed Spain as a backward nation.

A man for all reasons
Before Oliver Reed broke into show business with small parts in Hammer films (The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll & Sword of Sherwood Forest), as well as Beat Girl (where the credits list him as "plaid shirt") and The League of Gentlemen (in which he plays a gay ballet dancer), he worked as a nightclub bouncer, a boxer and a hospital porter.

A Reed by any other name
In early versions of Cat People in 1942 and Curse of the Cat People in 1944, the hero's name is Oliver Reed. But when Cat People was remade in 1982, the same character (played by John Heard) was renamed Oliver Yates.

A cense of drama
According to director Ken Russell, the original script for Women in Love did not include the famous nude wrestling scene because he felt it wouldn't pass the censors and would be difficult to shoot. It wasn't until Oliver Reed talked him into it by literally throwing his weight around. Yes, he wrestled with Russell in his kitchen, pinned him down, and wouldn't let him up unless he agreed to shoot it. The rest is cinematic history.

Stop making cense
In the original Curse of the Werewolf script, the beggar was also the werewolf, but the censors forbade mixing sex with the supernatural. Censors also told the beggar not to wear fangs, as "You can't have fangs in a relationship with a girl"!

What goes around, comes around
As Bill Sikes, Oliver Reed was cruel to Mark Lester's Oliver Twist in the 1968 musical Oliver!. But the tides turned in 1977 with The Prince and the Pauper/Crossed Swords, when dashing Miles Hendon (Reed) had to protect Lester's pathetically weak prince.

All for one, and one for two
Initially intended and shot as one film, The Three Musketeers was made into two separate movies when it became apparent during the editing stages that the film was too long. Releasing the cost-effective sequel The Four Musketeers sent audiences back to the cinema and the cast to court. Fighting for a second paycheck, the actors won their case.

Ollie, can you hear me?
In The Who's original rock opera, Tommy's father murders his mother's lover. However, once Ken Russell adapted Tommy to film, he flopped the roles. The switch was thought to be more traumatic for the title character, and since the father gets killed in the beginning of the film, the decision enabled Reed (as the lover Frank Hobbs) to have more screen time.

Food for thought
The actress who played one of the victims in Curse of the Werewolf spat out egg whites instead of true slobber. And Reed, while in werewolf make up, could not move his face, nor eat food. The only thing he could drink was milk through a straw.