Peter O'Toole Retiring - Edit - Legend Dies at 81

[Ace]

One of my all time favorite actors - so so so brilliant with tremendous range and charm - and one of film's best raconteurs. Sigh


www.picktainment.com/blog/2012/07/extraordinary-peter-otoole/

The Extraordinary Peter O’Toole

July 24th, 2012 at 9:41 pm | by Dino Ladki



Legendary actor Peter O’Toole, who shot to stardom 50 years ago in the title role of Lawrence of Arabia, has announced his retirement. He is just shy of 80 years old. He bid farewell with a public statement that said in part: “It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back.”

They broke the mold when they made Mr. O’Toole. To start with, his looks have always been (and continue to be) utterly unique. In his youth he was hauntingly good-looking and almost pretty. Mesmerizing really. As Noel Coward said, ‘If you were any better looking you would be Florence of Arabia.’ Whether it carries the beauty of his youth or the wizened, regal look we see today, his is simply not a face one easily forgets.

His life and work are equally memorable: He partied like a rock star (once saying that [booze is] ‘the most outrageous of drugs, which is why I chose it’) and lived like an aristocrat (he was made a commander in the prestigious French Legion d’Honneur), all the while, turning in one brilliant performance after another.

He has been nominated for an Oscar no less than eight times. He has never won, but was awarded an honorary one in 2003, which he initially balked at receiving, saying he was “still in the game” and that he would like more time to “win the lovely bugger outright.” He did indeed earn himself one more shot, three years later, with his masterful performance in Venus, though still to no avail.

It’s easy to rattle-off a figure like “8 nominations, 0 wins,” which has been done ad-nauseam since his retirement was announced (it is a record after all). But what few have done is to put his nomination history into perspective. Put it this way: Some of the people that Peter O’Toole has lost an Oscar to include: Marlon Brando (for The Godfather), Robert De Niro (for Raging Bull), Gregory Peck (for To Kill a Mockingbird), Ben Kingsley (for Gandhi) & John Wayne (for True Grit). Not bad company. And, this last time around, with Venus, he was up against a whole new crop of Hollywood’s best and brightest: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling, Will Smith & Forest Whitaker (who won for The Last King of Scotland). Again, not bad company.

As with his life, his work often had a sense of mischief, danger and audacity to it – whether it was in the dramatic (Arabia) or comedic (My Favorite Year) his characters were often eccentric and always unpredictable. Journalist Glenys Roberts who has known him since 1970 put it best: “There was no one who had more passion than this long-limbed, mercurial eccentric with his blazing blue eyes and aura of ever-present danger…he was compelling but it was the danger that made him a star. Mayhem used to follow O’Toole and that’s the way he and his hard-drinking, hellraising friends liked it.” To clarify, the friends to which Roberts was referring were O’Toole’s merry band of thespians – Richard Burton, Oliver Reed and Richard Harris whose debauched exploits are the stuff of legend. Those guys made the Rat Pack look like school girls.

At once a Shakespearean stage actor of the highest order, a movie-star in the truest sense of the word and an actor’s actor if there ever was one, his marvelous work will be sorely missed. If you’re under a certain age and haven’t seen any of his films, do your self a favor and go rent a few. Here are ten of his best:

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) O’Toole plays T.E. Lawrence in this epic about the flamboyant and controversial British military figure and his conflicted loyalties during wartime service.

Becket (1964) King Henry II (O’Toole) comes to terms with his affection for his close friend and confidant Thomas Becket (Richard Burton), the Archbishop of Canterbury, who finds his true honor by observing God’s divine will rather than the King’s.

Night of the Generals (1967) An unhinged Nazi general (O’Toole) may be guilty of killing prostitutes in early-1940s Warsaw.

The Lion in Winter (1968) O’Toole’s second time playing King Henry II. His three sons all want to inherit the throne, but he won’t commit to a choice. They and his wife variously plot to force him.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) A shy, withdrawn English school teacher (O’Toole) falls for a flashy showgirl.

The Ruling Class (1972) A member of the House of Lords dies leaving his estate to his insane son (O’Toole) who at turns believes he is Jesus Christ and the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper.

The Stunt Man (1980) A maniacal movie director (O’Toole) directs a stunt man (Steve Railsback) who is actually a fugitive who stumbled onto the movie set.

My Favorite Year (1982) Alan Swann (O’Toole) is an aging movie idol, former star of swashbucklers, a womanizer and an alcoholic who is to be this week’s guest star on a 1950′s comedy variety/show. When he finds out the show is live he declares “I’m not an actor, I’m a movie star.”

The Last Emperor (1987) A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China (O’Toole plays his tutor).

Venus (2006) An elderly actor (O’Toole) who finds himself increasingly attracted to his friends great-niece (Jodie Whittaker) while simultaneously finding himself in deteriorating health due to prostate cancer.

It is fitting to end here with one of O’Toole’s most famous quotes:

“I have no intention of uttering my last words on the stage. Room service and a couple of depraved young women will do me quite nicely for an exit.”

[rosafermu]

Magistral !!! I sorry it. Thanks Ace

[Myrtle Groggins]

I remember so many of his movies but the one that stands out the most is King Ralph. The only reason I could imagine is because it turned out O'Toole's character was the inheritor.

Even as an older gent, his eyes are still stunning.

[rosafermu]

Legendary film Lawrence of Arabia, incidentally shot in Spain. He will always be remembered for this magnificent performance

Attachments:

[Ace]

Not unexpected but heart breaking when an irreplaceable light goes out. But what a life he lead!


"I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity."  -- Peter O'Toole (age 18)

“Many years ago I sent an old, beloved jacket to a cleaner, the Sycamore Cleaners. It was a leather jacket covered in Guinness and blood and marmalade, one of those jobs… and it came back with a little note pinned to it, and on the note it said, ‘It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.’ So that will do for me. That can go on my tombstone.“  -- Peter O'Toole




Peter O’Toole, Star of ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ Is Dead at 81
By BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE
Published: December 15, 2013

Peter O’Toole, an Irish bookmaker’s son with a hell-raising streak whose magnetic performance in the 1962 epic film “Lawrence of Arabia” earned him overnight fame and put him on the road to becoming one of his generation’s most accomplished and charismatic actors, died on Saturday in London. He was 81.

His daughter Kate O’Toole said in a statement that he had been ill for some time.

A blond, blue-eyed six-footer, Mr. O’Toole had the dashing good looks and high spirits befitting a leading man, and he did not disappoint in “Lawrence,” David Lean’s wide-screen, almost-four-hour homage to T.E. Lawrence, the daring British soldier and adventurer who led an Arab rebellion against the Turks in the Middle East during World War I.

The performance brought Mr. O’Toole the first of eight Academy Award nominations, a flood of film offers and a string of artistic successes in the 1960s and early ‘70s. In the theater — he was a classically trained actor — he played an anguished, angular tramp in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” and a memorably battered title character in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”

In film, he twice played a robust King Henry II, first opposite Richard Burton in “Becket,” then with Katharine Hepburn as his queen in “The Lion in Winter.” Both earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor, as did his repressed, decaying schoolmaster in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and the crazed 14th Earl of Gurney in “The Ruling Class.”

Less successful was his Don Quixote in “Man of La Mancha,” Arthur Hiller’s 1972 adaptation of the Broadway musical, but it emphasized that his specialty was increasingly becoming the outsider or misfit: dreamy, romantic, turbulent, damaged, or even mad, but usually larger than life.

Mr. O’Toole threw himself wholeheartedly into what he called “bravura acting,” courting and sometimes deserving the accusation that he became over-theatrical, mannered, even hammy. His lanky, loose-jointed build; his blue eyes; his long, lantern-jawed face; his oddly languorous sexual charm; and the eccentric loops and whoops of his voice tended to reinforce the impression of power and extravagance.

Mr. Burton called him “the most original actor to come out of Britain since the war,” with “something odd, mystical and deeply disturbing” in his work.

Some critics called him the next Laurence Olivier. As a young actor Mr. O’Toole displayed an authority that the critic Kenneth Tynan said “may presage greatness.” In 1958 the director Peter Hall called Mr. O’Toole’s Hamlet in a London production “electrifying” and “unendurably exciting” — a display of “animal magnetism and danger which proclaimed the real thing.”

He showed those strengths somewhat erratically, however; for all his accolades and his box-office success, there was a lingering note of unfulfilled promise in Mr. O’Toole.

It was no surprise when Olivier chose Mr. O’Toole to inaugurate Britain’s National Theater Company in 1963 with a reprisal of his Hamlet. But the first night left most critics unmoved and unexcited and the actor himself lamenting “the most humbling, humiliating experience of my life.”

“As it went on,” he said, “I suddenly knew it wasn’t going to be any good.”

A production in 1965 of David Mercer’s “Ride-a-Cock-Horse,” in which he played an adulterous alcoholic, was booed at its London opening.

Onscreen, mixed reviews followed his performances as the cowardly naval officer seeking redemption in “Lord Jim,” Richard Brooks’s 1965 adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel; as a playboy in “What’s New, Pussycat?” a 1965 comedy with Peter Sellers and written by a young Woody Allen; and as the Three Angels in “The Bible: In the Beginning,” John Huston’s 1966 recreation of Genesis. And his sadistic Nazi general in Anatole Litvak’s “Night of the Generals” (1967) was panned.

His carousing became legend, particularly in the 1970s. As he himself said, he had long been “happy to grasp the hand of misfortune, dissipation, riotous living and violence,” counting Mr. Burton, Richard Harris, Robert Shaw, Francis Bacon, Trevor Howard, Laurence Harvey and Peter Finch among his drinking companions. He lost much of his “Lawrence” earnings in two nights with Omar Sharif at casinos in Beirut and Casablanca.

Though he won many lesser awards during his career, triumph at the Academy eluded him, perhaps in part because he had made no secret of his dislike of Hollywood and naturalistic acting, which he considered drab. He was nothing if not ambitious, but success would come on his own terms, not the movie industry’s. He had made that plain at 18, when an acting career was already in his mind. In his notebook he made a promise to himself:

“I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.”

Marc Santora and Robert Berkvist contributed reporting.



www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-lawrence-arabia

Peter O'Toole, star of Lawrence of Arabia, dies aged 81
Actor who shot to fame in David Lean's 1962 masterpiece and received eight Oscar nominations has died in hospital in London

Obituary: Peter O'Toole, 1932-2013

Sunday 15 December 2013


The actor Peter O'Toole who found stardom in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, has died aged 81, his family has annouced.

The acclaimed leading man who overcame stomach cancer in the 1970s passed away at the Wellington hospital in London following a long illness.

His daughter Kate O'Toole said: "His family are very appreciative and completely overwhelmed by the outpouring of real love and affection being expressed towards him, and to us, during this unhappy time. Thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts."

O'Toole announced last year he was stopping acting saying: "I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell."

He said his career on stage and screen fulfilled him emotionally and financially, bringing him together "with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits."

The president of Ireland, Michael Higgins, was among the first to pay tribute: "Ireland, and the world, has lost one of the giants of film and theatre."

"In a long list of leading roles on stage and in film, Peter brought an extraordinary standard to bear as an actor," Higgins said. "He had a deep interest in literature and a love of Shakespearean sonnets in particular. While he was nominated as best actor for an Oscar eight times, and received a special Oscar from his peers for his contribution to film, he was deeply committed to the stage. Those who saw him play leading roles on the screen from Lawrence in 1962, or through the role of Henry II in Becket, and The Lion in Winter, or through the dozens of films, will recognise a lifetime devoted to the artform of the camera.

Higgins, who knew O'Toole as a friend since 1969, said "all of us who knew him in the west will miss his warm humour and generous friendship.

"He was unsurpassed for the grace he brought to every performance on and off the stage," he said.

The British prime minister, David Cameron, paid tribute to the actor, saying that Lawrence of Arabia, his favourite film, was "stunning".

O'Toole's agent, Steve Kenis, said: "He was one of a kind in the very best sense and a giant in his field."

The O'Toole family announced there will be "a memorial filled with song and good cheer, as he would have wished", but until then they would like to be allowed to grieve privately.

Early in his career O'Toole became emblematic of a new breed of hard-drinking Hollywood hellraiser.

"We heralded the '60s," he once said. "Me, [Richard] Burton, Richard Harris; we did in public what everyone else did in private then, and does for show now. We drank in public, we knew about pot."

In the 1990s he found stage fame starring in Keith Waterhouse's play, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, about a hard-drinking journalist who propped up bars in Soho. O'Toole's version sold out the Old Vic theatre in 1999.

Last month it was reported he had been coaxed out of retirement to act in a film about ancient Rome called Katherine of Alexandria in which he would play Cornelius Gallus, a palace orator. It is believed he completed filming on the project alongside Joss Ackland, Steven Berkoff and Edward Fox and the movie is due to be released next year.

O'Toole is believed to have been born in Connemara in County Galway in Ireland, and lived in London. He shot to stardom in the 1962 film of TE Lawrence's life story and went on to take leading roles in Goodbye Mr Chips, The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man and My Favourite Year. He received an honorary Oscar in 2003 after receiving eight nominations and no wins – an unassailed record. He considered turning it down and asking the Academy to hold off until he was 80, on the basis that "I am still in the game and might win the bugger outright."

He finally accepted, saying: "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, my foot".

He is survived by his two daughters, Pat and Kate O'Toole, from his marriage to actress Siân Phillips, and his son, Lorcan O'Toole, by Karen Brown.

www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-lawrence-arabia

Peter O'Toole, star of Lawrence of Arabia, dies aged 81
Actor who shot to fame in David Lean's 1962 masterpiece and received eight Oscar nominations has died in hospital in London

Obituary: Peter O'Toole, 1932-2013

Sunday 15 December 2013


The actor Peter O'Toole who found stardom in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, has died aged 81, his family has annouced.

The acclaimed leading man who overcame stomach cancer in the 1970s passed away at the Wellington hospital in London following a long illness.

His daughter Kate O'Toole said: "His family are very appreciative and completely overwhelmed by the outpouring of real love and affection being expressed towards him, and to us, during this unhappy time. Thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts."

O'Toole announced last year he was stopping acting saying: "I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell."

He said his career on stage and screen fulfilled him emotionally and financially, bringing him together "with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits."

The president of Ireland, Michael Higgins, was among the first to pay tribute: "Ireland, and the world, has lost one of the giants of film and theatre."

"In a long list of leading roles on stage and in film, Peter brought an extraordinary standard to bear as an actor," Higgins said. "He had a deep interest in literature and a love of Shakespearean sonnets in particular. While he was nominated as best actor for an Oscar eight times, and received a special Oscar from his peers for his contribution to film, he was deeply committed to the stage. Those who saw him play leading roles on the screen from Lawrence in 1962, or through the role of Henry II in Becket, and The Lion in Winter, or through the dozens of films, will recognise a lifetime devoted to the artform of the camera.

Higgins, who knew O'Toole as a friend since 1969, said "all of us who knew him in the west will miss his warm humour and generous friendship.

"He was unsurpassed for the grace he brought to every performance on and off the stage," he said.

The British prime minister, David Cameron, paid tribute to the actor, saying that Lawrence of Arabia, his favourite film, was "stunning".

O'Toole's agent, Steve Kenis, said: "He was one of a kind in the very best sense and a giant in his field."

The O'Toole family announced there will be "a memorial filled with song and good cheer, as he would have wished", but until then they would like to be allowed to grieve privately.

Early in his career O'Toole became emblematic of a new breed of hard-drinking Hollywood hellraiser.

"We heralded the '60s," he once said. "Me, [Richard] Burton, Richard Harris; we did in public what everyone else did in private then, and does for show now. We drank in public, we knew about pot."

In the 1990s he found stage fame starring in Keith Waterhouse's play, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, about a hard-drinking journalist who propped up bars in Soho. O'Toole's version sold out the Old Vic theatre in 1999.

Last month it was reported he had been coaxed out of retirement to act in a film about ancient Rome called Katherine of Alexandria in which he would play Cornelius Gallus, a palace orator. It is believed he completed filming on the project alongside Joss Ackland, Steven Berkoff and Edward Fox and the movie is due to be released next year.

O'Toole is believed to have been born in Connemara in County Galway in Ireland, and lived in London. He shot to stardom in the 1962 film of TE Lawrence's life story and went on to take leading roles in Goodbye Mr Chips, The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man and My Favourite Year. He received an honorary Oscar in 2003 after receiving eight nominations and no wins – an unassailed record. He considered turning it down and asking the Academy to hold off until he was 80, on the basis that "I am still in the game and might win the bugger outright."

He finally accepted, saying: "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, my foot".

He is survived by his two daughters, Pat and Kate O'Toole, from his marriage to actress Siân Phillips, and his son, Lorcan O'Toole, by Karen Brown.

[Ace]

Hollywood Reporter: Peter O'Toole, the wry, fun-loving star who played the dashing English adventurer and army officer T.E. Lawrence in the 1962 epic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia for one of his eight best actor Oscar nominations without a win, has died, his agent told BBC News. He was 81.

The actor earned eight Academy Award nominations throughout his career and took home an honorary Oscar in 2003.

The actor died Saturday at The Wellington Hospital in London after a long illness, his agent, Steve Kenis, said.

O’Toole announced in July 2012 that he was retiring from acting. “The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back,” he said. He did, however, return with announced parts in Katherine of Alexandria and Mary, two films yet to be released.

PHOTOS: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2013

During a career that spanned nearly six decades, the son of an Irish father and Scottish mother also received Oscar noms for his turns in The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982) and Venus (2008). No one else has ever earned as many acting noms without a win.

O’Toole did receive an honorary award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2003 after first refusing the honor, saying he would like to “win the lovely bugger outright.”

However, O’Toole’s felicitous performances in Lawrence of Arabia and Becket (1964) earned him the British equivalent of the Academy Award as best actor. Lawrence notwithstanding, some think his work as the eccentric King Henry II in Becket opposite Richard Burton was his finest film performance.

O’Toole’s roles were vastly diverse, comedic and dramatic. His résumé also includes Lord Jim (1965), What's New Pussycat? (1965), The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), How to Steal a Million (1966), The Night of the Generals (1967), Man of La Mancha (1972), Caligula (1979), Creator (1985) and the 1981 TV miniseries Masada, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award.

His career catapulted in 1960 when director David Lean cast him in the lead role in the majestic Lawrence of Arabia. O’Toole, who lost 28 pounds, broke an ankle, dislocated his back and cracked his skull during the one-year production, became an international star known as much for his desert-sated blonde hair and piercing blue eyes as for his luminous performance.

"Lawrence was the seminal film of my youth," TriStar Productions chairman Tom Rothman recently told The Hollywood Reporter. "Twenty-five years later, I had the surreal thrill of working on the restoration at Columbia and being at an intimate screening with Lean, O'Toole and [co-star Omar] Sharif. When the lights came up, O'Toole turned to Sharif and said, 'My, we were pretty, weren't we?' "

Filmed in Super Panavision 70 cinematography, Lawrence of Arabia was nominated for 10 Oscars and captured seven, including one for best picture (at 222 minutes, it is the longest film to ever win the top Academy Award). In the best actor race, O’Toole lost out to Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.

In addition, his stage credits were vast and auspicious, including lauded performances in Man and Superman, Waiting for Godot, Macbeth and Pygmalion.

With his career at a peak with heady performances during the 1970s and early ‘80s, O’Toole’s career floundered as a result of personal problems, including a battle with alcohol. In 1975, he was diagnosed with an abdominal malignancy and told he was going to die. Only 43 at the time, he rebounded.

"It proved inconvenient to a few people, but there you go," he later quipped with his characteristic blithe humor.

VIDEO: 5 of Peter O'Toole's Most Memorable Performances

Born in 1932 in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, O’Toole spent much of his childhood in Kerry, Dublin and Leeds, England. As a child, he delighted in the horse races. The atmosphere at the track, with its colorful characters and scoundrels, delighted him, sparking an interest in human behavior and foibles.

His first job was as an office boy for The Yorkshire Evening News. He soon became a reporter but was called to serve in the Royal Navy, serving as a signalman on a submarine.

After his brief tour, O’Toole studied at the Royal Academy of Art, where his classmates included Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Brian Bedford. His first professional engagement was with the Bristol Old Vic, and he quickly established himself as a daring and versatile talent, performing in 73 varied roles.

He followed to the West End Theater and in 1959 was named Actor of the Year for his performance as Private Charley Barnforth in The Long and the Short and the Tall. He also toured England in The Holiday and eventually married the Welsh actress Sian Phillips, who played the part of his sister. They had two daughters, Kate and Pat, but divorced in 1979.

O’Toole’s first film role was a small part in Kidnapped (1960); his second, as a Scots Guards lieutenant in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England, also from 1960, won him critical notice. Yet, his love of the theater was so strong that even after winning distinction, he spurned several film offers in order to continue with the Stratford-on-Avon Memorial Theater.

An actor with a decidedly intellectual bent and idiosyncratic intelligence, O’Toole often sought offbeat roles, including a turn as the depraved Roman emperor Tiberius in the Gore Vidal-scripted Caligula. He won accolades and an avid following with his performance on stage as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. His roles were diverse, ranging from Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger to Hamlet to Christmas pantomime comedy.

In 1963, at the request of Laurence Olivier, O’Toole inaugurated Britain’s first National Theatre by playing Hamlet. He also formed a production company, Keep Film, which co-produced Becket. In 1980, after an absence of several years from the screen, O’Toole starred in Richard Rush’s independent film The Stunt Man. He won widespread acclaim for his fearless portrayal of a flamboyant movie director who hides a young fugitive amid his movie cast, disguising him as a stunt man.

STORY: Peter O'Toole Comes Out of Retirement for 'Katherine of Alexandria'

In recent years, O’Toole won an Emmy for his role the 1999 miniseries Joan of Arc, played a king in Troy (2004) and collected his last Oscar nom for his poignant portrayal as an elderly actor who finds himself increasingly attracted to his friend's great-niece (Jodie Whitaker) in Venus. He also voiced a food critic in the animated film Ratatouille (2007) and appeared as Pope Paul III in the Showtime series The Tudors.

“My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort,” O’Toole wrote when he announced his retirement. “It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I’ve shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits. However, it’s my belief that one should decide for oneself when it is time to end one’s stay. So I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell.”



Variety: Peter O’Toole Dies; ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ Star Was 81

December 15, 2013 | 10:33AM PT
Assistant Managing Editor, Features @stevechagollan

Irish-born stage and screen actor Peter O’Toole, who became an international star in the title role of David Lean’s Oscar-winning epic “Lawrence of Arabia,” died on Saturday at age 81.

He was undoubtedly one of the greatest actors of his generation. And yet with the 2006 film “Venus,” O’Toole surpassed Welshman Richard Burton and assumed the dubious distinction of being the most nominated actor never to win a competitive Oscar. When it was first announced that O’Toole would receive an Honorary Oscar in 2002, O’Toole astonished the Academy by turning it down, announcing in a letter to the organization that he was “still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright, would the Academy please defer the honour until I am 80.’”

But he did indeed show up at the ceremony the following year, accepting the award from Meryl Streep. “Always a bridemaid never a bride,” he said with typical theatrical flair to an adoring crowd, “my very own Oscar now to be with me till death do us part.”

He racked up eight Oscar-nominated performances — including the beloved schoolmaster in “Goodbye Mr. Chips” (1969); two portrayals of King Henry II (“Becket,” 1964, “Lion in Winter,” 1968); an insane aristocrat who thinks he’s Jesus Christ in “The Ruling Class” (1972); the larger-than-life film director in “The Stunt Man” (1980); and the swashbuckling actor in “My Favorite Year” — but his “Lawrence” always loomed largest.

The 1962 film was considered Lean’s masterpiece and possibly the greatest debut lead performance by any screen actor in history. Given the young O’Toole’s flaxen mane and sky-blue eyes, Noel Coward is said to have remarked to O’Toole: “If you’d have been any prettier, it would have been ‘Florence of Arabia.”

But for all of O’Toole’s stellar stage and screen work over the years, his acting threatened to be overshadowed by the wild antics of his personal life. He was grouped among a group of hellraising U.K. actors that included Burton, Richard Harris, Albert Finney, Michael Caine, Robert Shaw and Oliver Reed. And like Burton, only more so, the great promise of O’Toole’s early years was marred by bouts of alcoholism and serious physical decline that made him appear emaciated and prematurely aged.

And yet O’Toole was unapologetic about his lifestyle. When asked by Charlie Rose if he ever regretted anything, or didn’t live up to his own expectations, he told the interviewer with deadly seriousness that he achieved everything to which he ever aspired. In fact, he padded his own legend by tales of debauchery on talkshows, where he could always be relied upon for his colorful yarns and unmatched eloquence (he once described being inspired early in his career by Michael Redgrave’s performance as “King Lear” as “a concatenation of extraordinary circumstances and coincidences”).

He regaled David Letterman, taping his show in London at the time, with the story of how he and a fellow “Lawrence” actor prepared themselves to ride camels in the movie’s famous charge at Aqaba by getting properly lubed with brandy to get over their fear of falling off the animals: “This look of messianic determination on my face was in fact a drunk actor,” he told the talkshow host.

When he was on target, however, as in “Lawrence,” the showy “The Stunt Man” or “My Favorite Year,” O’Toole’s hammy exuberance was used to great advantage. His intensity was such that his performances in films including “The Ruling Class,” The Stunt Man” and “The Night of the Generals” (1967), in which he played a murderous, high-ranking Nazi, were positively frightening.

“His family are very appreciative and completely overwhelmed by the outpouring of real love and affection being expressed towards him, and to us, during this unhappy time,” his daughter Katherine O’Toole said in a statement on Sunday. “Thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts.”

O’Toole’s vocal work was also exemplary, voicing Sherlock Holmes in an animated series on British television in the early ’80s, or as the dyspeptic food critic Anton Ego in the 2007 feature “Ratatouille.”

His stage work was largely limited to Britain’s West End and Dublin, where he shone in a wide range of Shakespearean roles — his Hamlet inaugurated Laurence Olivier’s National Theater in 1963 — as well as contemporary pieces such as “The Long, the Short and the Tall,” which first brought him to audience attention in 1959, and John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger.”

Actor-helmer Stephen Fry, who directed O’Toole in “Bright Young Things,” said on Twitter: “Oh what terrible news. Farewell Peter O’Toole. I had the honor of directing him in a scene. Monster, scholar, lover of life, genius …”

O’Toole was born Peter Seamus O’Toole in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, and grew up largely as an Irish immigrant in the northern England industrial town of Leeds. (He would return to Connemara to live for much of his later life). For a time he was conscripted to a convent school, but in his teens he abandoned his education and, after several menial jobs, he joined the staff of the Yorkshire Evening News as a copyboy and photographer’s assistant. After four years, his editor fired him, declaring that journalism held little opportunity for him. So he turned to his avocation, acting, touring with a local repertory company.

Once asked about his aspirations as a journalist, O’Toole replied, “People like me thought that he’d rather be the person written about than do the writing.”

After a stop in the British Submarine Service, he headed to London in 1952 and auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He was granted a scholarship and graduated in 1954 in the same class as Albert Finney and Richard Harris.

During this period actor Wilfrid Lawson became his close friend and mentor.

O’Toole spent the next 3½ years with the Bristol Old Vic, debuting in 1955 in “The Matchmaker” and moving on to London in productions of “Major Barbara” and the musical “Oh My Papa” within a year.

He performed in 73 productions at the Old Vic, but it was his Angry Young Man interpretation of “Hamlet” that really caught London critics’ eyes. The London Times called it “a restless interpretation, crudely staccato in diction and gesture yet blessed with uncommon energy and staying power.” His first post-Old Vic production, “The Holiday,” closed before reaching London in 1958, but the following year his Royal Court performance in “The Long and the Short and the Tall” brought him the London Critics Award for best actor.

First movie roles

His first movie roles were in Disney’s “Kidnapped” and “The Savage Innocents” in 1960. But it was his performance in the film “The Day They Robbed the Bank of England” the same year that bumped him from among the promising to the brink of stardom.

He spent a season at the Memorial Theater in Stratford-on-Avon under the direction of Peter Hall, playing Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” and Petruchio in “Taming of the Shrew” and seeing his star continue to rise.

David Lean then cast him in the coveted title role in “Lawrence of Arabia” over the expected Marlon Brando; his performance was mercurial and highly praised, as was the film, which copped seven Oscars, including best picture.

He next appeared onstage in “Baal,” then quickly segued to star opposite Burton in “Becket,” for which both actors copped nominations as best actor in 1964. O’Toole’s Keep Films Ltd. co-produced the film.

His “Hamlet” at the National Theater brought mixed reviews, which mentioned for the first but not the last time O’Toole’s tendency to slip into overheated overacting.

His next few roles in Joseph Conrad adaptation “Lord Jim,” the play “Ride a Cock Horse” and the film comedy “What’s New Pussycat,” did not sit well with critics or audiences. The romantic comedy “How to Steal a Million,” opposite Audrey Hepburn, was somewhat better received, but his Dublin debut in “Juno and the Paycock” was not.

O’Toole reversed the slide with a third Oscar nomination in “The Lion in Winter” opposite Katharine Hepburn. He earned $750,000 for the role and 10% of the gross but didn’t get the Oscar.

Two more nominations followed for the musical version of “Goodbye Mr. Chips” and, in 1972, for “The Ruling Class.” During this period he also appeared in Dublin in “Arms and the Man” and “Waiting for Godot.” But during these years, fighting alcoholism and being sidetracked by stomach surgery, O’Toole had a tendency to choose his projects unwisely. Film such as “Man of la Mancha” (for which he received $1 million), “Caligula,” “Murphy’s War” and even Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood” tarnished his star further.

His “Macbeth” for the Old Vic was a step in the right direction, as was his starring role in the 1981 ABC miniseries “Masada.” In Toronto he appeared onstage in “Present Laughter” and “Uncle Vanya” to good effect.

Then, in 1980, playing a sly, megalomaniacal film director in Richard Rush’s “The Stunt Man” brought him a sixth Oscar nomination as best actor, followed in 1982 by another wacko interpretation as an alcoholic thesp modeled after Errol Flynn in “My Favorite Year” (by which time O’Toole was on the wagon). He also starred in an Irish miniseries, “Strumpet City.”

He starred in “Pygmalion” repeatedly, including on Broadway in 1987.

O’Toole also appeared in a string of pay-the-bills roles in the mid-’80s in films including “Creator,” “Club Paradise,” “Supergirl” and “High Spirits.” In Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1988 Oscar best picture winner “The Last Emperor,” he was a charismatic presence as the young emperor’s tutor.

In 1988 he starred in Keith Waterhouse’s comedy “Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell” in London. In 1991 he was set to appear in a quasi-sequel to “Look Back in Anger” called “Deja Vu” on the West End, but it was aborted after O’Toole and playwright Osborne fell out over creative differences.

In choosing projects the actor seemed to seek out as much variety as possible. He appeared in Lina Wertmuller’s arty 1989 film “Crystal or Ash, Fire or Wind, as Long as It’s Love,” followed by the surreal “Wings of Fame,” then did a TV movie for CBS called “Crossing to Freedom.”

He appeared in the silly John Goodman comedy “King Ralph” and was in the 1994 miniseries “Heaven and Hell: North & South, Book III.” In 1997 he appeared as Arthur Conan Doyle in “Fairy Tale: A True Story,” then took on the schlocky horror film “Phantoms” with Ben Affleck.

For the impressive 1999 Canadian miniseries “Joan of Arc,” starring Leelee Sobieski, however, he won an Emmy Award.

In 2003’s “Bright Young Things,” an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Young Bodies,” and in the big-budget historical epic “Troy,” in which he played King Priam, O’Toole stole “his scenes almost kindly from his fellow actors,” Roger Ebert wrote.

He played the older version of the legendary Italian adventurer in the 2005 BBC drama serial “Casanova.”

In his Oscar-nominated performance in “Venus,” he played an elderly man attracted to his friend’s grand-niece.

The actor appeared in the second season of Showtime series “The Tudors,” portraying Pope Paul III, who excommunicates King Henry VIII from the church. One of his last roles was as Father Christopher in the 2012 feature “For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada.”

O’Toole wrote the memoirs “Loitering With Intent: The Child,” which recounts his childhood before WWII, and “Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice,” which concerns his years spent training with friends at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. They were intended as the first two parts of a trilogy.

For 20 years O’Toole was married to actress Sian Phillips, which produced two daughters, actress Kate and Patricia. In 1983 he fathered a son by model Karen Brown.

In April 2011 O’Toole was honored by the TCM Classic Film Festival, as part of which he added his hand and footprints to those at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

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Remembering Peter O'Toole (Last Interview)

By Sarah Standing 15 December 13

An actor by accident, an Oscar winner by right, last year Peter O'Toole let the curtain fall on a career as a leading man who made headlines for all the right - and wrong - reasons. In his final interview before his death aged 81 today, GQ talked to the movies' man of mischief about drama school antics, those binges with Richard Burton and how he made international stardom look so damn easy.

Three decades ago I truly thought Peter O'Toole had died on my watch. It was 1982, the year he was to star in My Favorite Year and I was being paid £50 a week to wake him up every morning. He was in Toronto staying at the Four Seasons hotel, filming a TV version of Pygmalion for Showtime. Playing opposite him were Margot Kidder and my husband John Standing. I was just 23 and as Johnnie and I were sharing a suite the producer had decided to enlist my services.

"Your job is simply to get Peter up," he explained. "Order him some breakfast, make sure he eats it and get him into the car and on to the set." It sounded like easy money to me. I had no inkling that O'Toole's off-screen persona was alarmingly similar to that of the swashbuckling, reprobative Alan Swann character he subsequently immortalised on celluloid.

The first day of filming, Johnnie had an early call and was picked up by his driver at 7am. O'Toole wasn't needed until 9am, so at 7.30am I dutifully knocked on his bedroom door. Nothing. I knocked again. Silence. Next I tried simultaneously knocking and shouting. No response. Finally, I took my courage in both hands and went in.

Carnage. The room was pitch-black and smelt of Gauloises. Through the gloaming I could just about make out the form of a body in the bed. A motionless, silent corpse. I tiptoed across. "Peter?" No response. Louder this time. "Peter, it's time to get up."

He remained totally immobile. Gingerly, I pulled back the sheets. He didn't appear to be breathing. With mounting hysteria I knelt beside the bed and shook him. "Peter, wake up! You've got to go to work!"

Very slowly he cocked one eyebrow and let out a deep, guttural moan.

"Be a love and crack open the curtain," he instructed, eyes firmly closed. I did as I was told, but by the time I turned around, he'd rolled over and had gone back into flatline mode. I picked up the telephone and decided to order room service: "I'd like porridge, wholewheat toast, orange juice and a large pot of coffee, please."

"Bollocks, darling. The film company are paying for breakfast," O'Toole muttered from beneath the blankets. "Order everything they've got. Say you want breakfast for eight."

I started out as a journalist on the Yorkshire Post. Then it occurred to me I didn't want to be writing the story - I wanted to be the story

I was so relieved he was alive, I did just that. Minutes later a procession of trolleys were wheeled into my bedroom by a series of bemused foreign staff needing O'Toole's signature.

"Mr O'Toole is in the next-door bedroom," I said gesturing somewhat helplessly towards the interconnecting door. "You need to go in there and get him to sign - it's his breakfast."

"No, madame. We knock already. Mr O'Toole say he in bath. Do not disturb. He say for you to sign on his behalf."

My day had suddenly become a whole lot worse. I had now put my name to £150 worth of waffles, hash browns, steak, muffins, bacon and eggs. Yet my "charge" was, if not unwell, then certainly still indisposed. Time was fast running out; I had to get him down into the lobby in less than ten minutes. I followed the waiters into O'Toole's bedroom with trepidation. The scene had changed. The bed was now empty, the bathroom door ajar. There were bubbles - lots of bubbles - lapping against the carpet, a wall of steam and an overwhelming sickly smell.

"Peter? Everything okay?" I enquired nervously. "Your breakfast has arrived."

"I think..." Long dramatic pause. "I think... I think... Lazarus is slowly rising from the dead," he announced mischievously, spitting out each syllable with exaggerated voice projection, volume and enunciation before appearing through the mist like an apparition.

He was naked, had an oversized powder puff the size of a Frisbee in one hand and was liberally covering himself and the room with Penhaligon's Bluebell talcum powder.

"Autograph, boys?" he asked the trio of stunned waiters.

"I've done it, Peter," I replied briskly, handing him a towel.

"Good girl," he said, grinning. "Be a love, and pour me a cup of Rosie Lee, will you? Make it strong."
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Fast-forward 30 years. Last July, just before his 80th birthday, O'Toole announced his immediate retirement. Typically, he penned the press release himself.

"It's time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won't come back. My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfilment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits. However, it's my belief that one should decide for oneself when it's time to end one's stay. So I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell."

I remember O'Toole telling me years ago that it was imperative for actors to continue believing they had a future. His initial reluctance to accept an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences aged 70 was because he considered himself to be still very much in the game and had it in him to "win the lovely bugger outright".

In the end, he capitulated, but only because he was seduced by the fact his eldest daughter, Kate, "fancied a little jaunt" to Los Angeles. He spent the evening backstage giggling with Meryl Streep. "She was terrified to go for a wee because her beautiful frock was too heavy to lift up. She wanted a cigarette, I wanted a joint. In the end I just got the vodka going because she's a game girl. Likes a drop. The trick at those Oscar awards is to stay sober, because the evening goes on for-ev-er," he tells me.

"Actors have to stay optimistic. The moment we start thinking otherwise, we're dead." Fighting words. Having been nominated for Best Actor an astounding eight times (from Lawrence Of Arabia in 1962 to Venus in 2006), and although each time going home empty handed, he was very moved to be honoured by his peers. "Yeah. Of course I was. It meant a lot. But awards are just trinkets, baby. Pretty trinkets. That's all. I've got a mantelpiece of them. There is only one I truly treasure," he says on his way to the cupboard, dragging out something heavy, wrapped in a grey cashmere sock. "I treasure my David [David di Donatello Award - the Italian "Oscar"]. Solid gold, made by Bulgari." He caresses it tenderly. "I got him for Lawrence. It's Donatello's David in miniature, made by a proper goldsmith. I was going to sell him but I'm pleased to report I've heard from the post office my savings account is all right. Isn't he gorgeous?"

At the weekends, during the filming of Becket, Richard Burton and I would go potty. But during the week, we were angels.

We are sitting in his book-lined conservatory in the suburbs of Brondesbury, London; overlooking the slightly dishevelled garden, solely cultivated for its ability to serve as a functioning cricket net. O'Toole was 50 when his only son Lorcan was born and wholeheartedly embraced late fatherhood, becoming a qualified cricket coach and enthusiastically running an after-school club in his backyard. "The only thing I've ever been interested in teaching anyone in life is cricket. I loved teaching the babies because they've no clue how dangerous or skilful the game is - they just want to whack it. I'd offer them a quid for every window they broke," he recalls nostalgically. "I wanted Lorcs to know I still shared his sense of adventure - a merriment. I was an older father and I had to keep up without conscious effort."

I think Lorcan's birth provided a pivotal, stabilising and important turning point for O'Toole. It gave him a second chance. It tethered him. Divorced from actress Siân Phillips (with whom he has two daughters) he'd unapologetically accelerated his sybaritic lifestyle. And in doing so, in the same fashion as his hell-raising drinking buddies Richard Burton and Richard Harris, he'd succeeded in diluting his talent. His much-anticipated performance as Macbeth at the Old Vic theatre in 1980 (coincidentally directed by my father, Bryan Forbes) made headlines and front-page news for all the wrong reasons. Despite completely selling out, both in London and later on tour, it had a wanton, car-crash, voyeuristic appeal and the moments of genius were buried beneath a John Barrymore bravado that almost certainly left O'Toole bloodied, if not quite unbowed. He brazened out the prurient furore that followed opening night with typical aplomb and insouciance, greeting the door-stepping press that besieged his house the next day unshaven, dressed in a nightshirt, holding a cup of tea and refusing to get caught up in the mounting hysteria. "It's just a bloody play, darlings," he declared. "The show will go on." And go on it did. To unprecedented packed houses and with tickets selling on the black market for in excess of £200. Watching dangerous performers is like gulping neat oxygen to an audience, but only truly enjoyable if they keep to the hidden boundaries. O'Toole kept everyone gasping.
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Lorcan was born three years later, serendipitously on St Patrick's Day in Dublin. O'Toole had brilliantly managed to convince Lorcan's mother - a stunningly beautiful and sophisticated American called Karen Brown Somerville - that Dublin was the cutting-edge gynaecological centre of the universe. She gave birth in an establishment that I doubt had been significantlymodernised since the days of Oscar Wilde. It was positively archaic - boot-faced nuns begrudgingly administering a whisper of gas and air. O'Toole was ecstatic, waking Johnnie and me up at the crack of dawn to share his good fortune. "A boy. On St Patrick's Day," he crowed. "I shall call him Lorcan - Irish for Lawrence."

"Were you there at the birth, Peter?" I asked. "What was that like? Bit gory?"

"A piece of cake, baby. Piece of cake. To be honest, I've seen far worse things come out of my nose."

It's early afternoon and the room is flooded by hazy, watery sunshine. Those legendary Corinthian-blue eyes are still like lasers, the skin a little more translucent perhaps, the Alan Clark, long-legged, predatory stride a tad floppier, but mentally he's still razor sharp.

My tape recorder breaks and O'Toole kindly donates his, saying he wouldn't be needing it anymore. It's seen a lot, this tape recorder.

"It's such a relief for me to sit in front of a tape recorder and not be using it to learn my lines," he explains, nursing a glass of red wine. "No rush. Take your time. I learn my lines - no, I beg your pardon, I learnt my lines - everything, every comma, every pause on one of these little machines. I'd record it, record myself. I became adept at autohypnosis. So to use this fiddly little machine for an interview is thrilling. I'm never giving another one. This is it."

So why have you retired?

Long, dramatic pause. "It wasn't a sudden decision. I'd been a bit poorly. I'd caught some vicious viral infection in my lungs and bladder. Perhaps when filming in Kazakhstan, perhaps on the way back. The recovering gave me a lot of time to think. I had a lot of doctors buggering about, a lot of antibiotics. All the minor sports injuries you acquire over the years begin to multiply like flies when you get over 70. I can no longer walk from the check-in desk to an aeroplane - that's a f***ing journey in itself - and I have to wrap these things up in elastic bands," he says, rolling his trousers up to show me his legs. "Look at my knee, baby. Swollen. It's like a sackful of dead babies. And I refuse to have my cruciate ligament done, or knee reconstruction because I'm not in any pain. I've a nice new hip, but my bowling arm's completely buggered. Have to be careful putting on a jacket now."

Acting is just being human. Not forcing it. Some make it their entire life. Big mistake. Laurence Olivier fell into that category.

Being ill gave him time to reflect. "I thought of all the things I never wanted to do again. Getting up at sparrow fart. Getting up in the mornings full stop. Slit-eyed blunderings, putting on trousers at 5.30am in the morning, lovey, putting down the porridge. Eating steak for breakfast when I'm filming just to keep the energy up. Drinking 'soothies' - smoothies, whatever they're called. Getting the old vocal equipment up to concert pitch at eight-a-f***ing-clock in the morning, and keeping at concert pitch until eight at f***ing night. And I played leading roles right the way through."

So no regrets? "I'm not bloody Edith Piaf you know," he says. "No. No regrets. Nothing that's going to fester." He looks at me defiantly, suddenly energised. "I'm 80. I don't fancy shuffling on as a butler. I gave up the stage in 1999 (Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell) because I could no longer move easily, and I don't want to take on the agony and terror of making another movie. No thank you. I never found it easy to learn my lines. It was slog, slog, slog. It wasn't because I was on the brink of dying when I was ill. It wasn't an easy decision. I will miss all the good bits."

And what were the best bits? "The companionship," he replies without hesitation. "We all had such larks. Yes, it was hard work but the friendships and the genuine respect we had for one another, that side I shall miss greatly. I've stopped acting, but I don't think I've finished using my voice. I could, and probably will, record the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets. They live at the side of my bed and are my constant companions."

He compares the relief of retiring to the way he felt when he gave up competitive swimming at 16 in Leeds, where he was raised (there is some confusion about the exact location of his birth in 1932). "I'd done it since I was 12 years old. I was good at it and at first I loved it. But then the dread crept in. I'd get on the tram with two cossies and my towel in a bag. I'd do it for half an hour with no audience. No one ever watched competitive swimming. And then I'd change in a filthy cubicle - invariably being watched by a hairy poof - and I reached a stage when every time I finished and touched the bar, a warmth and relief flooded over me. That's what I feel right now. Relief. Relief I don't have to turn up to act any more. Done it as a leading man for half a century. That's enough."

I've always thought of O'Toole as a complex, tripartite character invented by JM Barrie. He's capable of seducing with the irresistible, innocent charm of Peter Pan. He can produce a nonchalant, urbane sophistication worthy of Mr Darling, before intentionally self-sabotaging with Captain Hook-like flashes of dangerous, deranged derring-do. You never quite know which personality to expect.

As a boy, O'Toole scribbled a promise in his notebook: "I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony." He doesn't disappoint. He has a wonderful, eccentric way of using language when he talks. Although he rolls certain words out with the theatricality of a carpet salesman in New Delhi, he is the antithesis of a "luvvie". When he is being interviewed, O'Toole's conversation is more likely to be peppered with quotes from Dylan Thomas and James Joyce than anecdotes about other actors. He spits his syllables out like Morse code and gives them a unique sound. He loves words. Loves the writers. "The text", as he calls it.

"I became an actor completely by accident," he concedes. "Started out as a journalist on the Yorkshire Post. That's what I thought I wanted to do. Then it occurred to me I didn't really want to be writing the story - I wanted to be the story. But before I did anything to alter circumstances

I was called up to do my national service. I joined the [Royal] Navy as a signaller in a submarine. Best days... they were the best days. I was with men. Real men. Men who had been torpedoed in the Battle of the Atlantic, men who had knocked out ten German destroyers and three cruisers at the loss of a great many lives. I had a lot of time to think when I was in the Navy. But I became an actor completely by default. There was no master plan."

After the Navy he returned to Leeds where he "accidentally" made his stage debut. "It was a complete fluke," he insists. "I was doing a [poetry] course at the Arts Centre and there was a professional production of Fathers And Sons going on at the Civic Centre down the road. The leading man fell down [some] stairs - his name was Gordon Luck. I'd done a Christmas skit there in 1952 and they asked me if I wanted to go on. I played it for two weeks and I got the bug, baby. And I got it bad."
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There followed a brief stint in Leeds working as a steeplejack and demolition man. "Blowing things up and knocking things down with a bloody great hammer. Nobody gave a flying shit for health and safety in those days. It was glorious," he says. "And," he adds, with a glint in his eye, "I earned enough money to live on for six months." He and a friend were in Stratford-upon-Avon watching "old Rita [Michael] Redgrave give his [King] Lear and we decided to hitch a ride to London on a lorry." As they aimlessly wandered down Euston Road trying to find a YMCA so they could "go down for a snore", they passed Rada and, according to O'Toole, his friend Patrick pointed it out to him saying: "That's your shop isn't it, Pete?"

He went in, just to have a "butchers", and immediately bumped into the principal, Sir Kenneth Barnes. Barnes told him they were holding auditions the following week. He did the auditions, only to be recalled into the Navy. When he returned, he got a telegram from his mother telling him he'd won a scholarship. "My fees were paid, as well as a small grant, books and leotards. I was in heaven." He claims he was so outnumbered by girls he didn't do any work in his first year - "just f***ed myself stupid."

He then met a teacher who not only took a shine to him but also forced him to take acting seriously. "And I did," says O'Toole sounding astonished at his own tenacity.

From Rada he got into the Bristol Old Vic. "It never occurred to me to become a movie star," says O'Toole with the beauteous irony of hindsight. "That was something John Gielgud or Ralph Richardson did occasionally. It was a possibility, sure. But way out of my league."

He spent the next five years steadily honing his craft in the theatre.

And then came Lawrence Of Arabia. "I was at Stratford playing Shylock. There were rumours. I'd read that Albert Finney was cast, that Marlon Brando was cast..."

And then?

"David Lean rang me. He'd got a script by Michael Wilson. I read it and rang him up and said: 'Well, it's a wonderful adventure story, David.'" O'Toole roars with laughter. "I actually said that. Lean said, 'Is it as bad as all that?'"

According to O'Toole, the original script was dire, and Lean asked him who the young, exciting new writers were. "I said, there's John Osborne who writes bitchy dialogue and Robert Bolt who's a clever Marxist fart who I like very much. And David went for Robert."

Long pause. "And me."

He knew from the second he started filming that it was going to propel him to stardom. "Of course I did," he declares. "I knew." Despite the fact he and Omar Sharif were paid "buttons", it was a life-changing experience. "It was the hottest heat I've ever known," recalls O'Toole. "Sand everywhere. Sand as fine as cornflour. It was uncharted desert and I was usually to be found covered in vermin, sitting on top of a camel, learning my lines. Everyone else was there for six months, except me. It took two years of my life. We were a family at the end of it. A tight family."

He got on extremely well with director Lean, who treated him like a younger brother. "He did 'love-cuts'. He'd call me up and invite me over to see footage. 'Look at this bit, Pete,' he'd say. 'You come off the Jeep and stumble. Bit clumsy. I'm going to "love-cut" that bit. Cut away to Tony Quayle. It will make you look better.' I adored him."

O'Toole maintains that Lawrence wasn't an overnight success. "England thought it was a bit lightweight and iffy. America got it immediately. It was huge."

He was struck by mega-fame at a time that predated the constant 24/7 media scrutiny that exists today, and is scathing about celebrity culture. "Keith Waterhouse and I had a theory about 'celebrity'. It's a newspaper fact that when capital punishment was abolished and photographs of the likes of [the murderers] Ruth Ellis and James Hanratty were no more, a replacement had to found, and 'celebrity' filled the void. All the larks I got up to as a young actor were never reported. Thank God. If anyone had dared to talk about my sex life when I was in my prime I'd have said very simply, 'Remove your eye from my keyhole.' I am a solitary beast. I like my own company. I hate press intrusion. And yes, I admit, I have put two or three who crossed the line in hospital. I just won't - and wouldn't - put up with that sort of invasion. In my day it was only ever really bad in Rome. But nowadays... no, thank you. Impossible way to exist."

He adored filming Becket with Richard Burton and claims they both were clean, dry and sober throughout. "Weekends we'd go potty," he admits. "But during the week we were angels. It was proper acting. Lovely words, lovely mates."

Two of the loveliest mates of all were his old drinking buddies, Keith Waterhouse and Jeffrey Bernard. Waterhouse came up with the inspired idea of turning Bernard's celebrated "Low Life" Spectator column into a vehicle for the stage, having spent an early evening drinking at the Coach & Horses pub, Soho, with him. According to O'Toole, Waterhouse was in black tie "downing a quick tincture" before taking his wife to the opera. "He got there and hated the f***ing thing. He thought: 'Hang on, I was having so much fun in the pub', and his brain went tick, tick, and suddenly he knew he had his play. Old Keith had been savouring Jeff's columns forever and by setting it in a pub he could have characters popping in and out, but he could create the boozer's dream: a monologue uninterrupted."

Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell was a huge success, the perfect marriage of playwright, muse and performer. "It was nectarous. Pure joy. Forty per cent of the text was neat Jeff, but there was a lot of Keith in it and a lot of me." According to O'Toole the audience laughter was so uncontrollable it had to be factored in to the running length of the play. "Nothing I have ever done has made me laugh more on stage. We were always in stitches. Night after night. Jeff adored it. Adored it. Loved coming to see it. One night he was so pissed he took a wrong turn from my dressing room and ended up on the empty stage. He thought he was hallucinating."

"It was an ideal play to bow out on. I'd done it three separate times between 1989 and 1999 and I was dreading saying goodbye on the last night at the Old Vic. Dreading it. But it turned out OK. I got through it just fine." He sighs. "I just thought, well that's it. The stage days are over." He looks up, smiles and pours himself another drink.

"Acting is just being a man. Being human. Not forcing it. Some make it their entire life. Big mistake. Laurence Olivier fell into that category. He was a tiny, strange, vain f***er. He used to lecture me: 'Do you think it's a good idea to have a drink after the show?' For f***'s sake. When he did The Prince And The Showgirl with Marilyn Monroe it didn't work because she wasn't attracted to him. She simply couldn't work with someone she didn't fancy. She knew she was on a losing wicket and had no intention of doing anything except suffer. She was disenchanted. She couldn't fake it. And who could blame her? [Greta] Garbo was the same. As was I. I couldn't have pulled off Lion In Winter if it hadn't been with Kate [Katharine Hepburn]. We had chemistry. Real chemistry."

O'Toole leans forward.

"No one should ever know where conduct ends and acting begins," he confides. "Conduct unbecoming. That's what acting is. It's people doing it, not for themselves, but for the audience. That's the magic, baby. That's what matters. That's what an audience remembers."

He's right. We do. Thanks for the memories.


Originally publsihed in the June 2013 issue of British GQ.

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The Guardian: Peter O'Toole: a beautiful actor whose debut made a sensational splash
In Lawrence of Arabia he was insouciant, elegant and outrageously sexy – a star who had sprung out of nowhere

Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian, Sunday 15 December 2013


Perhaps there were other actors as beautiful as Peter O'Toole in his 60s pomp but surely no one had such mesmeric eyes – the eyes of a seducer, a visionary or an anchorite, a sinner or a saint. That long, handsome face compellingly suggested something intelligent and romantic. But there was also something tortured there, sexually wayward and dysfunctional, something that no O'Toole character would ever entirely own up to.

In 1962, aged 30, the unknown Peter O'Toole made one of the most brilliant debuts in Hollywood history, playing the mercurial Arabist and aesthete TE Lawrence in David Lean's monumental Lawrence Of Arabia. He made a sensational splash – as big as the one Vivien Leigh had made in Gone With the Wind a generation before. He was insouciant, dapper, elegant, somehow intensely English – though O'Toole himself was an Irishman and proud of it – and also outrageously sexy.

Here was an authentic star who had sprung almost fully formed out of nowhere: different from the new working-class young lions such as Albert Finney or Michael Caine, with a refinement and self-awareness that could be compared to that of Laurence Olivier or Richard Burton. And what was so extraordinary about Lawrence Of Arabia was that it was a movie without any women in it, and O'Toole was a male lead without romantic interest. Lean conveyed as far as he could the hint of homoeroticism. In other roles O'Toole would be very much the ladies' man, but this element of exoticism and danger never entirely left him.

Incredibly, O'Toole was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor eight times but never won – and he was not entirely mollified by his lifetime achievement Oscar in 2003. His last nomination was in 2006 at the age of 74, playing the ageing actor Maurice in Roger Michell's Venus, tormented by desire for a beautiful young woman, played by Jodie Whittaker. It was a classic O'Toole performance in a classic O'Toole role: a little louche, witty and self-mocking, candidly disturbed by his sexual feelings – taking refuge from painful emotions in a brittle parade of erudition and affectation. It all only revealed his vulnerability more clearly.

The 60s were his great period: a dynamic, good-looking star who always promised and delivered something special. He was nominated for Oscars for his performances in Peter Glenville's Becket in 1964, playing opposite Burton, and in Anthony Harvey's The Lion in Winter in 1968, with Katharine Hepburn.

Interestingly, in both films he played the same character, the embattled King Henry II. In Becket he faced off against Burton's Thomas Becket, a saint in the making, and in The Lion in Winter he struggled against the increasing ambition and resentment of his sons and his wife, Eleanor Of Aquitaine, played by Hepburn. The role brought out the regal hauteur in O'Toole, his highly strung quality, his ability to show the fear and rage of an alpha-male in retreat. It was a showcase for thespian fireworks – and perhaps, it could be admitted, showed O'Toole's weakness for stagey hamminess, which was to come to full, legendary flower not in the movies but in his stage version of Macbeth in 1981. But these films showed real technique and accomplishment.

In Herbert Ross's Goodbye Mr Chips (1969), based on the Terence Rattigan stage play, he won hearts as well as minds with a tender performance as the shy schoolmaster who falls in love with Petula Clark, and in 1972 he gave an extraordinary turn in a cult movie rarely revived now, Peter Medak's The Ruling Class, in which he played a young man who succeeds to an earldom after the ageing incumbent dies in an auto-erotic strangling incident, and reveals that he believes himself to be Jesus Christ. It is a tale of bizarre freakiness and loopiness. Only O'Toole could have got away with its sheer English oddness.

From here O'Toole's career went into the doldrums, but two remarkable films – both about movies and showbusiness – brought him back to public attention in the 1980s. In The Stunt Man he was a megalomaniac film director, much addicted to swooping about the place in his crane from which he got a God's-eye view through overhead camera shots.

And Richard Benjamin's My Favourite Year (1982) is my favourite Peter O'Toole film. It is based on awestruck reports about the ageing and drunken Errol Flynn's chaotic appearance on Sid Caesar's programme Your Show of Shows in the 50s. O'Toole played an amiable but washed-up Hollywood movie star from the golden age who is booked to appear on a top-rated TV variety show. To the relief and delight of everyone, he reveals himself in rehearsal to be something of a comedy natural, but that is only because he doesn't fully understand that the show will be broadcast live and that he will not have the movie star's traditional prerogative of calling for retakes. O'Toole himself was an absolute delight in My Favourite Year, with a superb comic touch and a twinkly eyed sense of how to send himself up.

His legendary status was beyond question and he would continue to work indefatigably, coming out of retirement this year to play the Roman orator Gallus in Michael Redwood's sword-and-sandal drama Katherine of Alexandria. This was his final film.

But he will always be remembered for his great role, to which he brought such passion and power: TE Lawrence, who single-handedly led an Arab force against the Ottoman empire and succeeded in infuriating the stuffy dullards who made up the British army's officer class. He brought pure sensual excitement and danger to the cinema screen. What a sad passing.


Life & Career in Pictures:

www.theguardian.com/film/gallery/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-life-career-in-stills

Clips

www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-81-movies-clips

[Ace]

'Lawrence of Arabia' star Peter O'Toole dead at 81

By GREGORY KATZ



O'Toole, the charismatic actor who achieved instant stardom as Lawrence of Arabia and was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, has died. He was 81. O'Toole's agent Steve Kenis says the actor died Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013 at a hospital following a long illness. (AP Photo/File)

LONDON (AP) — Known on the one hand for his starring role in "Lawrence of Arabia," leading tribesmen in daring attacks across the desert wastes, and on the other for his headlong charges into drunken debauchery, Peter O'Toole was one of the most magnetic, charismatic and fun figures in British acting.

O'Toole, who died Saturday at age 81 after a long bout of illness, was fearsomely handsome, with burning blue eyes and a penchant for hard living which long outlived his decision to give up alcohol. Broadcaster Michael Parkinson told Sky News television it was hard to be too sad about his passing.

"Peter didn't leave much of life unlived, did he?" he said, chuckling.

A reformed — but unrepentant — hell-raiser, O'Toole long suffered from ill health. Always thin, he had grown wraithlike in later years, his famously handsome face eroded by years of outrageous drinking.

But nothing diminished his flamboyant manner and candor.

"If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it," he once said. "If you give up drinking, don't go moaning about it; go back on the bottle. Do. As. Thou. Wilt."

O'Toole began his acting career as one of the most exciting young talents on the British stage. His 1955 "Hamlet," at the Bristol Old Vic, was critically acclaimed.

International stardom came in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia." With only a few minor movie roles behind him, O'Toole was unknown to most moviegoers when they first saw him as T.E. Lawrence, the mythic British World War I soldier and scholar who led an Arab rebellion against the Turks.

His sensitive portrayal of Lawrence's complex character garnered O'Toole his first Oscar nomination, and the spectacularly photographed desert epic remains his best known role. O'Toole was tall, fair and strikingly handsome, and the image of his bright blue eyes peering out of an Arab headdress in Lean's film was unforgettable.

Playwright Noel Coward once said that if O'Toole had been any prettier, they would have had to call the movie "Florence of Arabia."

Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday the movie was his favorite film, calling O'Toole's performance "stunning."

In 1964's "Becket," O'Toole played King Henry II to Richard Burton's Thomas Becket, and won another Oscar nomination. Burton shared O'Toole's fondness for drinking, and their off-set carousing made headlines.

O'Toole played Henry again in 1968 in "The Lion in Winter," opposite Katharine Hepburn, for his third Oscar nomination.

Four more nominations followed: in 1968 for "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," in 1971 for "The Ruling Class," in 1980 for "The Stunt Man," and in 1982 for "My Favorite Year." It was almost a quarter-century before he received his eighth and last, for "Venus."

Seamus Peter O'Toole was born Aug. 2, 1932, the son of Irish bookie Patrick "Spats" O'Toole and his wife Constance. There is some question about whether Peter was born in Connemara, Ireland, or in Leeds, northern England, where he grew up, but he maintained close links to Ireland, even befriending the country's now-president, Michael D. Higgins.

Ireland and the world have "lost one of the giants of film and theater," Higgins said in a statement.

After a teenage foray into journalism at the Yorkshire Evening Post and national military service with the navy, a young O'Toole auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and won a scholarship.

He went from there to the Bristol Old Vic and soon was on his way to stardom, helped along by an early success in 1959 at London's Royal Court Theatre in "The Long and The Short and The Tall."

The image of the renegade hell-raiser stayed with O'Toole for decades, although he gave up drinking in 1975 following serious health problems and major surgery.

He did not, however, give up smoking unfiltered Gauloises cigarettes in an ebony holder. That and his penchant for green socks, voluminous overcoats and trailing scarves lent him a rakish air and suited his fondness for drama in the old-fashioned "bravura" manner.

A month before his 80th birthday in 2012, O'Toole announced his retirement from a career that he said had fulfilled him emotionally and financially, bringing "me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits."

"However, it's my belief that one should decide for oneself when it is time to end one's stay," he said. "So I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell."

In retirement, O'Toole said he would focus on the third volume of his memoirs.

Good parts were sometimes few and far between, but "I take whatever good part comes along," O'Toole told The Independent on Sunday newspaper in 1990.

"And if there isn't a good part, then I do anything, just to pay the rent. Money is always a pressure. And waiting for the right part — you could wait forever. So I turn up and do the best I can."

The 1980 "Macbeth" in which he starred was a critical disaster of heroic proportions. But it played to sellout audiences, largely because the savaging by the critics brought out the curiosity seekers.

"The thought of it makes my nose bleed," he said years later.

In 1989, however, O'Toole had a big stage success with "Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell," a comedy about his old drinking buddy, the legendary layabout and ladies' man who wrote The Spectator magazine's weekly "Low Life" column when he was sober enough to do so.

The honorary Oscar came 20 years after his seventh nomination for "My Favorite Year." By then it seemed a safe bet that O'Toole's prospects for another nomination were slim. He was still working regularly, but in smaller roles unlikely to earn awards attention.

O'Toole graciously accepted the honorary award, quipping, "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, my foot," as he clutched his Oscar statuette.

He had nearly turned down the award, sending a letter asking that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hold off on the honorary Oscar until he turned 80.

Hoping another Oscar-worthy role would come his way, O'Toole wrote: "I am still in the game and might win the bugger outright."

The last chance came in, for "Venus," in which he played a lecherous old actor consigned to roles as feeble-minded royals or aged men on their death beds. By failing again to win, he broke the tie for futility which had been shared with his old drinking buddy, Richard Burton.

O'Toole divorced Welsh actress Sian Phillips in 1979 after 19 years of marriage. The couple had two daughters, Kate and Pat.

A brief relationship with American model Karen Somerville led to the birth of his son Lorcan in 1983, and a change of lifestyle for O'Toole.

After a long custody battle, a U.S. judge ruled Somerville should have her son during school vacations, and O'Toole would have custody during the school year.

"The pirate ship has berthed," he declared, happily taking on the responsibilities of fatherhood. He learned to coach schoolboy cricket and, when he was in a play, the curtain time was moved back to allow him part of the evenings at home with his son.

O'Toole's death was announced by agent Steve Kenis, who said the actor had been ill for some time.

His daughter Kate said the family had already been overwhelmed by the expressions of sympathy.

"In due course there will be a memorial filled with song and good cheer, as he would have wished," she said in the statement.


Image Gallery: Remembering Peter O'Toole

news.yahoo.com/39-lawrence-arabia-39-star-peter-o-39-183119119.html

[brina]

Saw this news when I was at work last night. Very sad to have lost another of the greats of the acting world