Christopher Plummer was an Academy Award-winning actor with a long and
storied career. But while he was best known for playing Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music,
there was much more to the Canadian-born star. This is the untold truth of Christopher Plummer.
Christopher Plummer's grand stage presence might give the impression that he was from
the sort of family that got dressed up for dinner and had entire rooms of their home
dedicated to entertaining — and he absolutely was. According to The Washington Post,
Plummer's family was established by John Abbott, a lawyer and Canadian prime minister
who was given a knighthood in 1892. Plummer was born just a few decades later on December 13,
1929, and was always frank about the advantages he had as a child.
He credited his love of theater to the many evenings his family would
spend reading aloud to one another. Since his love of theater was deep,
Plummer was initially dismissive of film acting, writing in his memoir,
"[I] harbored the old-fashioned stage actor's snobbism toward moviemaking."
Furthermore, Plummer's upbringing was the sort that made him consider a career as a classical
pianist first. He would later tell Vanity Fair that he thought acting was very similar
to playing classical music, since, quote, "You make your own symphony out of words."
Christopher Plummer once described his family as belonging to the, quote,
"fading social aristocracy," but his early life wasn't entirely consumed with playing
tennis and learning the piano, even though both were part of it. Plummer's parents split not long
after he was born, and his father had nothing to do with him until he was a teenager. In fact,
Plummer never even met his father until he was 17, when his father showed up at a play he was in.
Plummer later recalled that he and his father would meet a few more times throughout his life,
but the actor also admitted to never having any kind of relationship with his dad.
Plummer also remembered that while his teachers called him gifted,
he had somewhat of a rebellious side. Recalling his wild early years, Plummer wrote in his memoir:
"How often as a mere teenager, tanked to the gills on cheap rye whiskey and Molson chasers,
did I stagger home in the blinding cold."
To say that Christopher Plummer hated The Sound of Music is putting it very,
very lightly. According to The New York Times, he wasn't even fond of referring to the film by
the proper name, and instead called it "The Sound of Mucus." In an interview with The Irish Times,
Plummer explained why he loathed the film he's best remembered for:
"Because it was so awful and sentimental and gooey. You had
to work terribly hard to try and infuse some miniscule bit of humor into it."
How did he cope with it? Plummer told Vanity Fair that he was only on set for a surprising 11 days,
but filled all of his down time drinking and eating
all the pastries he could find. Plummer recalled,
"I got so fat. [...] When I got to shooting, [director] Robert
Wise said, 'My God, you look like Orson Welles.' We had to re-do the costume."
He didn't just casually drink during his down time, either — Plummer later admitted
that during the famous music festival scene he was completely drunk. His dislike for the movie stayed
with him for a long time. In an interview with Collider, Plummer revealed that it irked him to
no end when someone wanted to only talk about The Sound of Music with him. Plummer told the outlet:
"I don't understand it and you want to say, 'Excuse me,
haven't you seen other films as well?'"
In 2018, Christopher Plummer spoke with The Guardian about his new film Boundaries,
and predictably, the conversation turned to The Sound of Music.
"And it was wonderful to be in a great, big Hollywood musical."
He said that by that point, he'd found "peace with it," and noted that the only reason he agreed to
take the job in the first place was because he'd been working on his singing voice, and wanted
the opportunity to sing in a film. It didn't happen, though, because that's not him singing.
"No, I never frequently sing."
"Really? But you won a Tony for singing."
"Yes, I don't know why. Because it's the sort of voice that's like a crocodile in heat."
When NPR interviewed him in 2012 and asked if he occasionally broke into song,
Plummer responded with, quote, "Of course not." He went on to explain that the entrances and
exits from the songs were him, but the majority of it was not. The reason was fairly simple:
Julie Andrews was a phenomenal singer, and Plummer was not,
so he didn't want to try and compete with her obvious talents. Everyone can agree
that there's no shame in that, so the filmmakers dubbed most of his singing.
When Plummer spoke to The Daily Mail in 2015, he had this to say about women:
"Oh, I adore women! They're not nearly as emotional as men in a funny way.
[Men are] silly, romantic creatures whereas women,
when they have the responsibility of running things, make marvelous leaders."
Plummer found his marvelous match on his third try. At the time of The Daily Mail interview,
he and his third wife had been married for 45 years. His first two marriages
had lasted just a few years each, but he said that he had no doubts, qualms,
or hesitations when it came to the third time. He had met Elaine Taylor just three years after
The Sound of Music, and said that at that point, he knew that he was lonely and thus,
needed someone in his life.
It's one of those stories that's great on the surface, but hints at a much bigger problem.
Christopher Plummer told The Daily Mail that in the 1950s he and fellow actor Jason Robards
were drinking in New York City when they got the attention of a cop. Instead of keeping it down,
they promised to buy the cop a drink, but on one condition: the cop's horse also had to join them.
The cop agreed and shortly after, the horse was brought into the bar.
"And Jason bought everybody, uh, triple tequilas and gave the horse one."
In interviews, Plummer said those days were long past him,
and was candid about his struggles with alcohol. When he met his third wife, Elaine, he said,
"I thought I was devastatingly attractive when I was drunk,
but Elaine soon dissuaded me of that notion."
Plummer admitted that he was usually angry when he was drinking, and credited his wife with
giving him a reason to stop. When he accepted his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2012, Plummer
spoke about how Elaine's insistence that he stop drinking saved his life, telling the audience:
"I was really going downhill. Thank God for that, as far as I'm concerned."
Christopher Plummer's admiration for his daughter,
Amanda, is clear. In describing his daughter to The Guardian, Plummer had this to say:
"She has that inner madness and fire that she lets fly […] Where she unleashes that
power from I don't know, but it's quite natural to her, and rather frightening."
However, that's not to say Plummer and his daughter always had a close or easy relationship.
In fact, Plummer was very much absent throughout much of his daughter's life,
kind of like his own dad. Amanda Plummer was the product of his first marriage to Tammy Grimes, and
she was raised mostly by her mother in the U.S. while her father remained largely in Europe. In an
interview with The Daily Mail, Plummer was honest about his absentee fatherism, telling the outlet,
"I was a lousy husband and an even worse father."
Still, Amanda Plummer went on to follow in her father's footsteps,
and she's best known for her roles in Pulp Fiction and The Hunger Games.
Fortunately for both her and her father, they did make up for lost time. By 2015,
Christopher Plummer was able to describe them as having, quote, "a nice relationship."
When Bethesda announced the release of the video game, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,
they had no idea what a juggernaut they were going to have. According to Digital Trends,
it's impossible to say just how many copies have been sold, but in 2021,
it was still sitting comfortably at number 16 in Digital Trends' best-selling games of all time.
When the voice cast was announced way back in 2011, Christopher Plummer headlined as
the voice of the Greybeards' Arngeir. If it seems like a huge leap from the stage to
voicing characters in video games, it absolutely is, which is why Collider felt compelled to ask
Plummer whether or not he himself was a gamer. Plummer had this short response:
"No, that is something that is totally foreign to me."
These days, it's often not enough to watch and enjoy a film — many want to pull back the
curtain and find out how it all comes together. That extends to actors, too, and learning all
about the weird ways they get into character. When Collider asked Plummer about how he prepared for
roles on the stage and on film, he quickly made it clear that he wasn't going to talk about it.
After saying that it was essentially none of their business, he explained that the world of
moviemaking had pretty much no mystery left to it and that sort of made him sad. He continued:
"You don't want the magician to show his tricks, or how he did them, do you? So,
I do think that is a very private thing that we actors should protect ourselves from."
He did say that getting ready for roles got easier as time went by and he got
more and more experience. In other words? Whatever he did, it totally worked for him,
and everyone should really just sit back and enjoy the show.
In 2017, it was announced that director Ridley Scott had cut Kevin Spacey from a major role in
All the Money in the World amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Spacey had already done days
of work on the film, and they needed someone to not just step in, but also prep for reshoots.
Scott headed to New York to catch Christopher Plummer just before he headed to Florida on
vacation, and according to The Guardian, it all happened with shocking speed.
Plummer signed on just a few weeks before the film was set to premiere.
He only had about two days to get to England and learn his lines. From start to finish,
the whole thing was just a few weeks, and according to Plummer, his theater
background provided some seriously valuable experience in learning his lines on the fly.
He told The Hollywood Reporter that he refused an offer to watch the footage with Spacey and just
sort of jumped in with both feet. Plummer added that while he had met the real-life
version of his character, J. Paul Getty, at parties a few times in the 60s and 70s,
most of what you see on screen was still, quote, "imagination of what the man must've been."
When Christopher Plummer agreed to appear in All the Money in the World, he wasn't the only actor
needed on set — costars Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg also had to return for reshoots.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Plummer had nothing but accolades for both of them. He was a,
quote, "enormous fan" of Williams' work, and lauded Whalberg as being,
quote, "so good." He called both actors "delightful to work with."
And that's incredibly high praise, because Plummer isn't head-over-heels for this next
generation of actors. After being lauded for the on-screen chemistry he had with Helen Mirren
in The Last Station, he told Boston.com that he basically got along with everyone he worked with,
because if he didn't respect them, he wasn't going to work with them. And as far as the
20-something actors he was dealing with in 2010, well, Plummer had this to say,
"They are a problematic bunch. [...] These young actors are not trained enough. They
jump into television and want to be stars without doing any work."
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