Peter O'Toole, the charismatic actor who achieved instant stardom as
Lawrence of Arabia and was nominated eight times for an Academy Award,
has died, his agent said Sunday. He was 81.
O'Toole died Saturday after a long illness, Steve Kenis said in a brief statement.
The family was overwhelmed "by the outpouring of real love and affection
being expressed towards him, and to us, during this unhappy time. ...
In due course there will be a memorial filled with song and good cheer,
as he would have wished," O'Toole's daughter Kate said in the statement.
O'Toole got his first Oscar nomination for 1962's "Lawrence of Arabia,"
his last for "Venus" in 2006. With that he set the record for most
nominations without ever winning, though he had accepted an honorary
Oscar in 2003.
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 hard 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.
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
spectacularly photographed desert epic 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."
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 offset 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.
After a teenage foray into journalism at the Yorkshire Evening Post and
national military service with the navy, 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.
——
AP writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report.
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