ARTS O’TOOLE DIES
Handsome, charismatic actor dies at age 81
A reformed — but unrepentant — hellraiser, actor Peter O’Toole long suffered from ill health. He died Saturday at age 81. “If you can’t do something willingly and joyfully, then don’t do it,” he once said.
LONDON — 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 illness, was fearsomely handsome, with burning blue eyes and a penchant for hard living that 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.
A reformed — but unrepentant — hellraiser, 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 candour.
“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 First World War 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 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.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday the movie was his favourite 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 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 1969 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.
An 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.
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, 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 theatre,” 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 hellraiser stayed with O’Toole for decades, although he gave up drinking in 1975 following health problems and surgery.
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 “with whom I’ve shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits.”
The 1980 Macbeth in which he starred was a critical disaster of heroic proportions, but it played to sellout audiences, .
“The thought of it makes my nose bleed,” he said years later.
In 1989, O’Toole had a big stage success with Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, a comedy about his old drinking buddy and Low Life columnist.
O’Toole divorced Welsh actress Sian Phillips in 1979 after 19 years of marriage. The couple had two daughters.
A brief relationship with U.S. model Karen Somerville led to the birth of son Lorcan in 1983. O’Toole’s daughter Kate said the family is 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,” the statement said.