Photographer who captured the zeitgeist
Terry O’Neill, who has died aged 81, was a photographer who made his name capturing the youthful swagger of Sixties singers and sinners, yet was equally adept at focusing on a lifetime’s experience in his portraits of international statesmen; it was a talent that saw him immortalise Keith Richards’ hangovers and the last days of Winston Churchill.
For O’Neill the Sixties were a flashpoint of opportunity and creativity. ‘‘I was having the time of my life,’’ he said. ‘‘Every young person had a chance, it didn’t matter, you were all the same, and we all helped each other.’’
He was responsible for many of the most famous, and infamous, images of the decade: Brigitte Bardot smoking a cheroot; Raquel Welch on a cross; Rex Harrison at the races; Marianne Faithfull in suspenders; Audrey Hepburn with a white dove on her shoulder; and Frank
Sinatra on a
Miami boardwalk with his heavies.
For the following half-century O’Neill joined a small group of photographers born out of that heady period – including David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Annie Leibovitz – who became ancillary features to the international celebrity circuit. For O’Neill it was to be a complicated professional relationship: while he married the actress Faye Dunaway, he abhorred Hollywood’s coke-and-dope party lifestyle. ‘‘I never wanted attention,’’ he asserted, ‘‘I wouldn’t want to be famous. I’m happy being anonymous.’’
It was while on a three-week shoot with Sinatra that he realised the dangers of becoming the subject. ‘‘There was a time when I pulled back. He wanted to go drinking, for us to hang out, and I realised if I was sitting there drinking, somebody else would be taking the photographs.’’
Terence Patrick O’Neill was born to Irish immigrants in the suburbs of London where Heathrow Airport now sits. His career began at the airport, in an airline’s photographic unit. His big scoop came in 1959 when he photographed a figure sleeping in a waiting room – it turned out to be Rab Butler, then home secretary in Harold Macmillan’s government. The picture drew the attention of editors on the Daily Sketch – then a hugely popular paper – who offered him a place in their stable of in-house photographers. His first job was a portrait of Laurence Olivier, and ‘‘within two weeks I had photographed the Beatles and the Stones. Nobody ever fazed me after that.’’
He became a workaholic, in the office every day of the week whenever possible. While preparing to photograph Raquel Welch, she complained that she was going to ‘‘get crucified’’ for wearing a bikini in One Million
Years BC. ‘‘So I went to 20th Century Fox,’’ he recalled, ‘‘and I said if you can build me a crucifix, I got this idea for a picture.’’
‘‘I got this idea for a picture’’ was to be O’Neill’s illuminating catchphrase. Photographing David Bowie for the singer’s
Diamond Dogs album cover, he paired him off
‘‘I wouldn’t want to be famous. I’m happy being anonymous.’’
with a monstrous hound, who reared up on to its hind legs with a howl. ‘‘He didn’t turn a bloody hair,’’ said O’Neill. ‘‘Mind you he was zonked out at the time, all the time.’’
Perhaps his most famous staged shot was of Dunaway lounging by the pool the morning after her 1977 Oscar win for Network: newspapers litter the tiles, the statuette sits among the teapots and Dunaway sports an expression that asks: ‘‘What now?’’
‘‘I wanted to capture the look of dazed confusion,’’ he recalled, ‘‘where they go to bed thrilled, then overnight, it dawns on them that they’ve changed, that they’ve just become a star. And not just a star, a millionaire.’’
One of his strengths was in making his subjects forget they were having their picture taken, a skill that saw him create a series of late elegiac portraits of Nelson Mandela.
‘‘I wouldn’t know how to succeed in today’s world if I was starting again,’’ he said in 2014. ‘‘I don’t know where I’d get the inspiration. Back then film stars were film stars, they had personalities, the secret to their success was
hard work, resilience. Now it’s 15 minutes of fame. I don’t want to do people in X Factor and
Get Me Out of Here. I’ve got no interest in it
whatsoever.’’
His one regret was not photographing Marilyn Monroe. When he got the opportunity he had, rather inconveniently, fallen in love with Monroe’s PR girl. ‘‘I’m not going to let you shoot Marilyn,’’ she told O’Neill, ‘‘because she always takes the photographers to bed.’’ O’Neill relented: ‘‘Of course, I said, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ What a mug.’’
O’Neill, who was appointed CBE this year, was married three times, to Vera Day, Faye Dunaway, and Laraine Ashton, who survives him along with his and Dunaway’s adopted son. –