Plummer’s ‘likability’ was unflagging
Canadian actor on stage and screen, ‘Sound of Music’ star, dies at 91
Christopher Plummer, the Oscar-winning acting legend whose storied career encompassed stage, television and film, and who was perhaps bestknown for portraying Capt. Georg von Trapp in “The Sound of Music,” has died.
Plummer died “quite peacefully” at his home in Connecticut Friday morning after suffering a fall two and a half weeks ago, said his wife, English actress Elaine Plummer. He was 91.
“It’s so sad but he had a great life,” she told The Canadian Press by phone. “He had a fall, unfortunately. He hit his head against my car and he was taken to the hospital.”
“He fought the good fight,” she added. “But eventually I think he thought ... ‘Exit stage right.’”
The star was supposed to start working on a “King Lear” film with Ontario-raised director Des Mcanuff, she said.
Recently he starred in the Toronto-shot television series “Departure,” which began production on its second season last fall, with Plummer shooting scenes from his home, taking COVID-19 precautions.
Gordon Pinsent, a veteran Canadian actor of the same generation, said Plummer’s “likability” was unflagging, as was his drive to continue performing into his twilight years.
“It must have seemed very much like a game at this stage in his life to continue adding yet another accomplishment,” said Pinsent, a Stratford Festival colleague of Plummer’s. “He wanted to cover the entire baseball diamond of show business.”
The actor went through a particularly fertile creative period in his golden years, receiving his first Academy Award at age 82 for his supporting turn as a widower who embraces life as a gay man in “Beginners.” The trophy made him the oldest-ever Oscar winner in an acting category.
“You’re only two years older than me darling, where have you been all my life?” Plummer said as he accepted the statuette in 2012.
He also received a nomination in the supporting actor category in 2018 for “All The Money In the World,” a mere month after he’d replaced Kevin Spacey as billionaire J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott’s biographical drama. Spacey was abruptly cut from the film in the wake of sexual assault allegations.
The more mature he got, the more the scripts improved and the more he learned about his craft, said Plummer, who scoffed at the word “retire.”
“If you love your work, which I do — and I’ve grown to love it more and more as I get older and realize that I’ve got to cram a lot in before I croak — I wouldn’t think of stopping,” Plummer told The Canadian Press in December 2010.
Christopher Orme Plummer was born in Toronto in 1929 into a notable family.
His great-grandfather on his mother’s side was Prime Minister John Abbott. His parents divorced when he was a baby and Plummer was raised by his mother’s family in Montreal, where he became acquainted with the arts.
Plummer acted with the Montreal Repertory Theatre and made his professional debut in 1948 with Ottawa’s Stage Society, which later became the Canadian Repertory Theatre. He also worked at the CBC, in radio and television.
By his early 20s he was already touring the U.S. in plays. His Broadway debut came in 1954’s
“The Starcross Story.” That was promptly followed by his film debut, Sidney Lumet’s “Stage Struck.”
But it was in 1965, with the release of “The Sound of Music,” that Plummer would become forever known to moviegoers as a crusty Austrian widower whose frosty heart is melted by a young nun-turned-governess hired to care for his children.
His other memorable roles include industrialist Henrik Vanger in 2011’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and the patriarch in the 2019 murder mystery “Knives Out.”
“You’ve got to keep going,” he told The Canadian Press in February 2010 when asked about his busy schedule. “I’m very happy that I seem to be getting more work as I get older. I seem to be doing more than less, which is fabulous, because it keeps one young.”