From Capt von Trapp to oldest actor to win Oscar
Actor
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER was the patrician Canadian who starred as widower Captain von Trapp opposite Julie Andrews in the blockbuster 1965 musical The Sound Of Music and in 2012 became the oldest actor to win an Oscar.
He died on February 5, aged 91.
“The world has lost a consummate actor today and I have lost a cherished friend,” Andrews said in a statement. “I treasure the memories of our work together and all the humour and fun we shared through the years.”
Plummer, an accomplished Shakespearean actor honoured for his varied stage, television and film work in a career that spanned more than six decades, was best known for his role in The Sound Of Music, which at the time eclipsed Gone With the Wind as the topearning movie in history.
Plummer flourished in a succession of meaty roles after turning 70 — a time in life when most actors merely fade away. At 82, he became the oldest actor to get a competitive Oscar when he won for his supporting role in
Beginners as an elderly man who comes out of the closet as gay.
“You’re only two years older than me, darling,” Plummer, who was born in 1929, purred to his golden statuette at the 2012 Oscars ceremony. “Where have you been all my life?”
One of his last major roles was in the dark comedy Knives Out in 2019.
“This is truly heartbreaking,”
Knives Out costar Chris Evans said on Twitter. “What an unbelievable loss. Few careers have such longevity and impact. He was a lovely man and a legendary talent.”
Plummer appeared in more than 100 films and also was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Russian author Leo Tolstoy in 2009’s The Last Station. He won two Tony Awards for his Broadway work, two Emmy
Awards for TV work and performed for some of the world’s top theatre companies.
But for many fans, his career was defined by his performance as an stern widower in The Sound Of Music — a role he called “a cardboard figure, humourless and onedimensional.” In his 2008 autobiography In Spite Of Myself, Plummer refers to the movie with the mischievous acronym “S&M.”
It took him four decades to change his view of the film and embrace it as a “terrific movie” that made him proud.
Director Robert Wise’s sentimental film follows the singing von Trapp family and their 1938 escape from the Nazis after Plummer’s “captain with seven children” falls in love with the aspiring nun played by Andrews. The movie won the Academy Award as best picture of 1965.
“Originally I had accepted Robert Wise’s offer simply because I wanted to find out what it was like to be in a musical comedy,” Plummer wrote in his book. “I had a secret plan to one day turn ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ into a Broadway musical. ‘S&M’ would therefore be a perfect workout in preparation for such an event.”
He said he had never sung before — “not even in the shower” — before taking a role that included crooning the song Edelweiss. He blamed his own “vulgar streak” for the desire to star in a big, splashy Hollywood extravaganza.
“And yes, all right, I’ll admit it, I was also a pampered, arrogant, young bastard, spoiled by too many great theatre roles,” he wrote. “Ludicrous though it may seem, I still harboured the oldfashioned stage actor’s snobbism toward moviemaking.”
Plummer’s latecareer renaissance began with director Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999) in which he portrayed CBS News interviewer Mike Wallace, acting alongside Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.
That was followed by triumphs in director Ron Howard’s Academy Award best picture winner A Beautiful Mind (2001), director Spike Lee’s Inside Man (2006), Up and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (both 2009), and Barrymore and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (both 2011).
In 2017, Plummer replaced Kevin Spacey as oil billionaire J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World. The film had been completed when Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct. Plummer reshot all of Spacey’s scenes and received an Oscar nomination for the role.
Plummer was born in Toronto on December 13, 1929, into a privileged railroad family. He was the greatgrandson of Sir John Abbott, the third prime minister of Canada.
Plummer confessed to a boozy lifestyle with plenty of affairs through the 1960s. He said his third wife, British actress Elaine Taylor, forced him after their 1970 marriage to stop the carousing that consumed some of his peers and friends, such as Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole.
“Yeah, I stopped,” he told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in 2010. “Square son of a bitch that I was, coward that I was! No, Elaine did say, ‘If you don’t quit this stupid overdrinking, I’m outta here.’ And thank God. She did in a sense save my life.”
Among his more colourful roles were as an eyepatchwearing Klingon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and as an urbane jewel thief in The Return of the Pink Panther (1975). He said he kicked himself for turning down the Gandalf role in the popular The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
His TV roles included the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds.
Plummer was the father of Tony Awardwinning actress Amanda Plummer. — Reuters