In the private wedding of Terence Stamp with ex-wife

But behind the screen character, Stamp lived a quieter, unconventional domestic life, including a six years and much forgotten marriage to Elizabeth O’Rourke, a pharmacist he met in Australia in the 1990s.

Friends of the couple now say the unconventional lifestyle and fixation of stamp with alternative therapies, eventually drove them apart.

One source said: “Elizabeth wanted normality – a stable house and a family routine – but Terence would never be that man.

“He was too ready for life according to his own rules.”

Another added: “His health practices and constant experiments with alternative healings were a big point of discussion. For Elizabeth, a trained pharmacist, it felt like a collision of worlds.”

The pair met in a Bondi pharmacy where O’Rourke worked after he moved from Singapore to study pharmacology.

They married on New Year’s Eve in 2002, when Stamp was 64 and O’Rourke was 29.

Their relationship remained largely hidden from the public until their divorce six years later. Court Papers called the “unreasonable behavior” of Stamp as the reason for the split. In 2013, Stamp admitted that he had not stayed in contact with O’Rourke after the divorce.

He said: “One of the things I have learned in life is that it is very easy to make a lover of a friend, but it is very difficult to make a friend of a lover.”

Stamp added: “We had an incredible amount of pleasure. She went back to Australia and that’s why I don’t see her, but when I go there, I am sure I will do that. Much that can happen with the passage of time.”

The actor later explained that his dependence on alternative medicine during marriage had been a constant source of friction.

In an interview with TimeHe said: “When I was married, my wife was very minus.

“But if we both had a cold, mine was over on a day, while her weeks lasted. That p ——

Stamp also admitted that he was not suitable for a conventional life.

He said: “I have not had a permanent house for 15 years. I have been flit from friends to hotels. I don’t work for money, so I learn to live alone with what I need. A house and stability have never been to me.”

Away from his marriage, stamp was associated for a long time with some of the great screen icons of the sixties and known as a charmer – but a Playboy.

He went out with Julie Christie after he had seen her on the cover of a magazine, and the couple later reunited on the screen Far from the madding – (1967). Stamp was also in a controversial relationship with Jean Shrimpton, the model that had previously dated with photographer David Bailey.

He was briefly connected to Brigitte Bardot during his years in Paris, but it was his relationships with Christie and Shrimpton who came to define his outdoor screen as one of the most eligible leading men of the cinema.