With a career spanning over seven decades, his presence lit up screens across generations. The man behind one of cinema’s most iconic villains leaves behind a legacy that will echo through film history.

Actor Terence Stamp, who most famously played Superman villain General Zod, has died at the age of 87.

The family of the one-time Oscar-nominated actor shared the news in a statement released this morning (August 17).

In their words: “He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, both as an actor and as a writer that will continue to touch and inspire people for years to come. We ask for privacy at this sad time.”

No cause of death has yet been revealed.

Stamp, originally from Stepney, London, received a Golden Globe in 1963 for ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ following his acclaimed performance in Billy Budd.

Reflecting on his early years, Stamp once remarked: “The great blessing of my life is that I had the really hard bit at the beginning because we were really poor.”

Actor Terence Stamp, pictured back in 2019, has died at the age of 87 (Tim Francis/Getty Images)

In 2019, he appeared as Malcolm Quince in Murder Mystery, a Netflix film starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston — playing a New York officer and his wife, respectively.

Astonishingly, Stamp’s screen career spanned from the 1960s to 2021. Yet, when he first shared his dream of becoming an actor with his parents, it wasn’t welcomed.

In a 2013 conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, he shared: “This was so private this, this desire, this wish — it was like I thought that I would kind of dissipate it if I spoke about it somehow.”

Terence Stamp as General Zod (Warner Bros)

“But when we got our first TV, I started commenting — it was a way of letting my family know. I started saying things like, ‘oh I could do that’, ‘I could do better than that’, and my dad wore it for the first few times and then he said, ‘Son, people like us don’t do things like that’, and I went to protest and he said, ‘Son, I don’t want you to talk about it anymore’.”

“Now in retrospect he was trying to protect me from something that to him seemed beyond impossible, and then that gave me the energy, and of course I had to leave home because I couldn’t really go against my dad — and that’s when I won the scholarship to the Webber Douglas Academy.”

Before becoming a screen actor, Stamp honed his skills in various theatres across London, England. His breakout role came when he was cast in the lead role of Billy Budd.