Claude Debussy. Reed said this was crucial to his career because "That was the first time I met Ken Russell and it was the first part I had after I'd had my face cut in a fight and no one would employ me. Everybody thought I was a cripple." It was also the first time he broke away from villainous roles. "Until that time they thought I was a neolithic dustbin," said Reed. Reed later said "Hammer films had given me my start and Michael Winner my bread then Ken Russell came on the screen and gave me my art." He narrated Russell's TV movie Always on Sunday (1965). Reed returned to Hammer for The Brigand of Kandahar (1965), playing a villainous Indian in an imperial action film for Gilling. He later called it the worst film he ever made for Hammer. He guest-starred in episodes of It's Cold Outside and Court Martial, the latter directed by Seth Holt. He had a regular role in the TV series R3 (1965). Reed was the lead in a Canadian-British co-production, The Trap (1966), co-starring with Rita Tushingham. Reed's career stepped up another level when he starred in the popular comedy film The Jokers (1966), his second film with Winner, alongside Michael Crawford. After playing a villain in a horror movie, The Shuttered Room (1967), he did a third with Winner, I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967), co-starring with Orson Welles. Reed was reunited with Russell for another TV movie, Dante's Inferno (1967), playing Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Oliver! and stardom Reed's star rose further as a result of playing Bill Sikes in Oliver! (1968), alongside Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Mark Lester, Jack Wild and Harry Secombe, in his uncle Carol Reed's screen version of the successful stage musical. It was a huge hit, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Reed receiving praise for his villainous performance. He was in the black comedy The Assassination Bureau (1969) with Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas, directed by Basil Dearden; and a war film for Winner, Hannibal Brooks (1969). More successful than either was his fourth film with Russell, a film version of Women in Love (1969), in which he wrestled naked with Alan Bates in front of a log fire. In 1969, Interstate Theatres awarded him their International Star of the Year Award. Take a Girl Like You (1970) was a sex comedy with Hayley