Christopher Plummer FAREWELL, MY CAPTAIN
The Sound Of Music star will remain forever in our hearts
He was one of Hollywood’s most prolific and hardestworking actors, who, at 82, became the oldest Academy Award acting winner in history. Yet Christopher Plummer, who passed away at the age of 91, was best known – and most loved by audiences – for playing Captain Von Trapp in The Sound Of Music, a character he famously once described as “humourless and one-dimensional”.
“It was so awful and sentimental and gooey,” the star, who once called the film ‘The Sound Of Mucus’, told the Hollywood Reporter in 2011. “You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some minuscule bit of humour into it.”
It’s testament to the Canadian actor’s skills that he managed to make audiences across the world fall in love with his portrayal of the staid but handsome Captain von Trapp, who fled Nazi occupation along with his seven kids – and governess Maria, played by Julie Andrews.
Christopher died on February 5 at his home in Connecticut, with his wife of 50 years, Elaine Taylor, by his side.
Though he reached the height of his fame at a relatively young age – he was just 34 when he played von Trapp – Christopher, also an accomplished theatre actor, enjoyed a hugely varied career, starring in more than 100 films.
He said that for a time, he actively chose filming locations over roles in an attempt to get out and see the world.
“Rather than shooting in the Bronx, I would rather go to the south of France, crazed creature that I am,” he said in 2007. “And so I sacrificed a lot of my career for nicer hotels and more attractive beaches.”
CAREER RENAISSANCE
Christopher more than made up for this, enjoying an extraordinary career renaissance later in life. He starred alongside Russell Crowe in The Insider and A Beautiful Mind, and won the 2012 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Beginners, playing a man who becomes openly gay after his wife passes away.
In 2017, he famously replaced Kevin Spacey in All The Money In The World, for which he scored another Oscar nod.
“Too many people in the world are unhappy with their lot. And then they retire and they become vegetables,” he once said.
“I think retirement in any profession is death, so I’m determined to keep crackin’.”
Christopher’s last major role was in the acclaimed 2019 mystery comedy Knives Out.