Born 1938 in the East End of London, Terry O’Neill left school in 1952, aged 14, with the firm ambition of becoming a jazz drummer. He was already accomplished, and easily found work with small combos playing on the London scene. However Terry had bigger ideas and had set his sights on studying with the great drummers on America’s East Coast. Becoming an air steward would get him a free ticket to New York, and so he applied.
Advised by BOAC’s personnel department that getting a foot in the door would help his chances of finding such a job, Terry joined the company’s technical photographic unit as a trainee. One day in 1959 he happened upon the sleeping, drained looking figure of the Home Secretary Rab Butler, and photographed him. The picture was snapped up by the ‘Sunday Dispatch’, who put it on their front page the next day, and the Editor offered him a part-time job as their photographer at the airport. Overnight the drummer became a photographer.
At the beginning of the 1960s, Terry began working for the Daily Sketch, which was the principal picture paper at the time. He was a huge success and his work began appearing in Look, Life, Vogue, Paris Match, Rolling Stone, and many others, and becoming one of the most published photographers of the 1960s and 1970s.
During the 1980s, Terry became the photographer of choice for Hollywood. His success continued into the 1990s and with 65 pictures held by London’s National Portrait Gallery, he is today revered as one of the great British photographers.
These glamorous photos that he shot portraits of Hollywood beauties in the 1960s and 1970s.
Jean Shrimpton at her father’s farm in Buckinghamshire, England, 1964Audrey Hepburn at the Studio de Boulogne, during a clothing selection for her wardrobe in ‘How to Steal a Million’, Paris, June 1965Audrey Hepburn photographed for the publicity of the film ‘How to Steal a Million’, Paris, October 1965Audrey Hepburn photographed for the publicity of the film ‘How to Steal a Million’, Paris, October 1965Audrey Hepburn wearing an evening gown of Hubert de Givenchy for his collection of Autumn/Winter 1965/66 during the filming of ‘How to Steal a Million’ for an fashion editorial, Paris, 1965Audrey photographed at the Studio de Boulogne for a fashion editorial, made for the publicity of ‘How to Steal a Million’, Paris, October 1965Britt Ekland, 1965Claudia Cardinale, 1965Ursula Andress as immortal Queen Ayesha in Robert Day’s film ‘She’, 1965Audrey Hepburn in a red bathing suit in a scene from the film ‘Two For the Road’, 1966Ursula Andress poses for a magazine shoot in Richmond Park, London, 1966Audrey Hepburn as Joanna Wallace photographed for the publicity of ‘Two for the Road’, 1967Audrey Hepburn as Joanna Wallace photographed for the publicity of ‘Two for the Road’, 1967Audrey Hepburn during filming of ‘Two For the Road’, St. Tropez, 1967Audrey Hepburn takes a break during filming of ‘Two for the Road’, 1967Britt Ekland in a yellow dress and matching tights, 1967Britt Ekland in brunette wig, 1967Britt Ekland, 1967Candice Bergen on the European set of Guy Green’s ‘The Magus’, adapted from the book by John Fowles, October 1967Jacqueline Bisset at her home in Malibu, 1967Raquel Welch, 1967Stella Stevens, 1967Catherine Deneuve as Baroness Maria Vetsera in a scene from ‘Mayerling’, a historical romance directed by Terence Young, 1968Mia Farrow on the set of Anthony Mann’s 1968 espionage film ‘A Dandy In Aspic’Pregnant Sharon Tate, 1968Sharon Tate, circa 1968Raquel Welch with permed curly hair, 1970Raquel Welch, 1970Raquel Welch, 1970
(Photos Taken by Terry O’Neill)
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