Peter Seamus O'Toole was a British-Irish stage and film actor. He attended the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and began working in the theatre, gaining
recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English
Stage Company, before making his film debut in 1959.
He achieved international recognition playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of
Arabia for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. He received
seven further Oscar nominations – for Becket, The Lion in Winter, Goodbye, Mr.
Chips, The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year and Venus – and holds
the record for the most Academy Award acting nominations without a win. He won
four Golden Globes, a BAFTA and an Emmy, and was the recipient of a Honorary
Academy Award in 2002. Early life
O'Toole was born in 1932. Some sources give his birthplace as Connemara, County
Galway, Ireland while others cite Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England.
O'Toole himself claimed he was not certain of his birthplace or date,
noting in his autobiography that, while he accepted 2 August as his birthdate,
he had a birth certificate from each country, with the Irish one giving a
June 1932 birthdate, although it is impossible that his parents would not
have known where and when their only child was born. He grew up in the
Hunslet industrial area of south Leeds, son of Constance Jane Eliot, a Scottish
nurse, and Patrick Joseph "Spats" O'Toole, an Irish metal plater, football
player and racecourse bookmaker. When O'Toole was one year old, his family
began a five-year tour of major racecourse towns in Northern England. He
was brought up as a Catholic. O'Toole was evacuated from Leeds early
in World War II and went to a Catholic school for seven or eight years, St
Joseph's Secondary School at Joseph Street, Hunslet, where he was "implored"
to become right-handed. "I used to be scared stiff of the nuns: their whole
denial of womanhood – the black dresses and the shaving of the hair – was so
horrible, so terrifying," he later commented. "Of course, that's all been
stopped. They're sipping gin and tonic in the Dublin pubs now, and a couple of
them flashed their pretty ankles at me just the other day."
Upon leaving school O'Toole obtained employment as a trainee journalist and
photographer on the Yorkshire Evening Post, until he was called up for
national service as a signaller in the Royal Navy. As reported in a radio
interview in 2006 on NPR, he was asked by an officer whether he had something
he had always wanted to do. His reply was that he had always wanted to try
being either a poet or an actor. O'Toole attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art from 1952 to 1954 on a scholarship after being rejected by the Abbey
Theatre's drama school in Dublin by the director Ernest Blythe, because he
couldn't speak the Irish language. At RADA, he was in the same class as Albert
Finney, Alan Bates and Brian Bedford. O'Toole described this as "the most
remarkable class the academy ever had, though we weren't reckoned for much at
the time. We were all considered dotty." Career
O'Toole began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean
actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company, before making
his television debut in 1954. He first appeared on film in 1959 in a minor role
in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England. O'Toole's major break came when
he was chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in Sir David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia,
after Marlon Brando proved unavailable and Albert Finney turned down the role.
His performance was ranked number one in Premiere magazine's list of the 100
Greatest Performances of All Time. The role introduced him to US audiences and
earned him the first of his eight nominations for the Academy Award for
Best Actor. T. E. Lawrence, portrayed by O'Toole, was selected in 2003 as the
tenth-greatest hero in cinema history by the American Film Institute.
O'Toole was one of several actors to be Oscar-nominated for playing the same
role in two different films: he played King Henry II in both Becket and The
Lion in Winter. O'Toole played Hamlet under Laurence Olivier's direction in
the premiere production of the Royal National Theatre in 1963. He
demonstrated his comedic abilities alongside Peter Sellers in the Woody
Allen-scripted comedy What's New Pussycat?. He also appeared in Seán
O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre.
O'Toole fulfilled a lifetime ambition in 1970 when he performed on stage in
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, alongside Donal McCann, at the Irish
capital's Abbey Theatre. In 1972, he played both Miguel de Cervantes and his
fictional creation Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, the motion picture adaptation
of the 1965 hit Broadway musical, opposite Sophia Loren. The film was a
critical and commercial failure, criticised for using mostly non-singing
actors. His singing was dubbed by tenor Simon Gilbert, but the other actors did
their own singing. O'Toole and co-star James Coco, who played both Cervantes's
manservant and Sancho Panza, both received Golden Globe nominations for
their performances. In 1980, O'Toole starred as Tiberius in the
Penthouse-funded biopic, Caligula. In 1980, he received critical acclaim
for playing the director in the behind-the-scenes film The Stunt Man. He
received mixed reviews as John Tanner in Man and Superman and Henry Higgins in
Pygmalion, and won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in Jeffrey
Bernard is Unwell. O'Toole was nominated for another Oscar for My Favorite Year,
a light romantic comedy about the behind-the-scenes at a 1950s TV
variety-comedy show, in which O'Toole plays an ageing swashbuckling film star
reminiscent of Errol Flynn. He also appeared in 1987's The Last Emperor.
He won an Emmy Award for his role as Bishop Pierre Cauchon in the 1999
mini-series Joan of Arc. In 2004, he played King Priam in the summer
blockbuster Troy. In 2005, he appeared on television as the older version of
legendary 18th century Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova in the BBC
drama serial Casanova. The younger Casanova, seen for most of the action,
was played by David Tennant, who had to wear contact lenses to match his brown
eyes to O'Toole's blue. O'Toole was once again nominated for the Best Actor
Academy Award for his portrayal of Maurice in the 2006 film Venus, directed
by Roger Michell, his eighth such nomination.
O'Toole co-starred in the Pixar animated film Ratatouille, an animated film about
a rat with dreams of becoming the greatest chef in Paris, as Anton Ego, a
food critic. O'Toole appeared in the second season of Showtime's successful
drama series The Tudors, portraying Pope Paul III, who excommunicates King Henry
VIII from the church; an act which leads to a showdown between the two men in
seven of the ten episodes. Also in 2008, he starred alongside Jeremy Northam and
Sam Neill in the New Zealand/British film Dean Spanley, based on an Alan
Sharp adaptation of Irish author Lord Dunsany's short novel, My Talks with
Dean Spanley. On 10 July 2012, O'Toole released a
statement announcing his retirement from acting.
Richard Burton said of Peter O'Toole: "He looked like a beautiful, emaciated
secretary bird… his voice had a crack like a whip… most important of all, you
couldn't take your eyes off him… acting is usually regarded as a craft and I
claim it to be nothing more except in the hands of the odd few men and women
who, once or twice in a lifetime, elevate it into something odd and
mystical and deeply disturbing. I believe Peter O'Toole to have this
strange quality." Personal life
While studying at RADA in the early 1950s, O'Toole was active in protesting
against British involvement in the Korean War. Later, in the 1960s, he was
an active opponent of the Vietnam War. He played a role in the creation of the
current form of the well-known folksong "Carrickfergus" which he related to
Dominic Behan, who put it in print and made a recording in the mid-1960s.
In 1959, he married Welsh actress Siân Phillips, with whom he had two
daughters: actress Kate and Patricia. They were divorced in 1979. Phillips
later said in two autobiographies that O'Toole had subjected her to mental
cruelty, largely fuelled by drinking, and was subject to bouts of extreme
jealousy when she finally left him for a younger lover.
O'Toole and his girlfriend, model Karen Brown, had a son, Lorcan Patrick
O'Toole, when O'Toole was fifty years old. Lorcan, now an actor, was a pupil
at Harrow School, boarding at West Acre from 1996.
Severe illness almost ended O'Toole's life in the late 1970s. His stomach
cancer was misdiagnosed as resulting from his alcoholic excess. O'Toole
underwent surgery in 1976 to have his pancreas and a large portion of his
stomach removed, which resulted in insulin-dependent diabetes, but caused
him to stop drinking. In 1978, he nearly died from a blood disorder. He
eventually recovered, however, and returned to work. He resided on the Sky
Road, just outside Clifden in Connemara in County Galway, Ireland, from 1963,
and at the height of his career maintained homes in Dublin, London and
Paris. Finally, he made his home in London.
In an interview with National Public Radio in December 2006, O'Toole revealed
that he knew all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets. A self-described romantic,
O'Toole regarded the sonnets as among the finest collection of English poems,
reading them daily. In Venus, he recites Sonnet 18. O'Toole wrote two memoirs.
Loitering With Intent: The Child chronicles his childhood in the years
leading up to World War II and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in
1992. His second, Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice, is about his years spent
training with a cadre of friends at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. O'Toole
spent parts of 2007 writing the third instalment.
O'Toole played rugby league as a child in Leeds and was also a rugby union fan,
attending Five Nations matches with friends and fellow rugby fans Richard
Harris, Kenneth Griffith, Peter Finch and Richard Burton. He was also a
lifelong player, coach and enthusiast of cricket and a fan of Sunderland A.F.C.
O'Toole was interviewed at least three times by Charlie Rose on his eponymous
talk show. In a 17 January 2007 interview, O'Toole stated that British
actor Eric Porter had most influenced him, adding that the difference between
actors of yesterday and today is that actors of his generation were trained
for "theatre, theatre, theatre". He also believes that the challenge for the
actor is "to use his imagination to link to his emotion" and that "good parts
make good actors". However, in other venues, O'Toole credited Donald Wolfit
as being his most important mentor. In an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart, O'Toole stated that actor he most enjoyed working with was Katharine
Hepburn; he played Henry II to her Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in
Winter. Although he lost faith in organised
religion as a teenager, O'Toole expressed positive sentiments regarding
the life of Jesus Christ. In an interview for The New York Times, he
said "No one can take Jesus away from me... there's no doubt there was a
historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such
as peace." He called himself "a retired Christian" who prefers "an education and
reading and facts" to faith. In the last decade of his life, he played "Samuel"
in One Night with the King as well as a minor role as "Father Christopher" in
For Greater Glory: the True Story of Cristiada.
Death O'Toole died on 14 December 2013 at
Wellington Hospital, London, aged 81. His funeral was held at Golders Green
Crematorium in London on 21 December 2013, where he was cremated in a wicker
coffin. O'Toole's remains are planned to be
taken to Connemara, Ireland. His daughter Kate said: "We're bringing him
home. It's what he would have wanted." They are currently being kept at the
residence of the President of Ireland, Áras an Uachtaráin, by the current
President Michael D. Higgins who is an old friend of the actor. His family plan
to return to Ireland to fulfill his wishes and bring them to the west of
Ireland when they can. On 18 May 2014 a new prize was launched
in memory of Peter O'Toole at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School; this
includes an annual award given to two young actors from the Bristol Old Vic
Theatre School, including a professional contract at Bristol Old Vic Theatre. It
was performing as part of the Bristol Old Vic at the Theatre Royal in King
Street in the 1950s that O'Toole won his early acclaim.
Academy Award nominations O'Toole was nominated eight times for
the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, making him the most
nominated actor never to win the award. In 2002, the Academy honoured him with
an Academy Honorary Award for his entire body of work and his lifelong
contribution to film. O'Toole initially balked about accepting, and wrote the
Academy a letter saying that he was "still in the game" and would like more
time to "win the lovely bugger outright." The Academy informed him that
they would bestow the award whether he wanted it or not. He told Charlie Rose
in January 2007 his children admonished him, saying that it was the highest
honour one could receive in the filmmaking industry. O'Toole agreed to
appear at the ceremony and receive his Honorary Oscar. It was presented to him
by Meryl Streep, who has the most Oscar nominations of any actress.
= Other awards= Filmography
Stage appearances = 1955–58 Bristol Old Vic=
King Lear The Recruiting Officer
Major Barbara Othello
Pygmalion A Midsummer Night's Dream
Look Back in Anger Man and Superman
Hamlet Amphitryon '38
Waiting for Godot = 1959 Royal Court Theatre=
The Long and the Short and the Tall = 1960 Royal Shakespeare Company,
Stratford= The Taming of the Shrew
The Merchant of Venice Troilus and Cressida
= 1963 National Theatre= Hamlet directed by Laurence Olivier
= 1963–65= Baal
Ride a Cock Horse = 1966 Gaiety Theatre, Dublin=
Juno and the Paycock Man and Superman
= 1969 Abbey Theatre, Dublin= Waiting for Godot
= 1973–74 Bristol Old Vic= Uncle Vanya
Plunder The Apple Cart
Judgement = 1978 Toronto, Washington and Chicago=
Uncle Vanya Present Laughter
Caligula = 1980–99=
Macbeth Man and Superman
Pygmalion The Apple Cart
Pygmalion Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
Our Song. Books authored
Loitering with Intent: The Child Loitering with Intent: The Apprentice
References External links
Peter O'Toole at the Internet Broadway Database
Peter O'Toole at the Internet Movie Database
Peter O'Toole at the TCM Movie Database Peter O'Toole at the British Film
Institute's Screenonline "Peter O'Toole as Casanova"
University of Bristol Theatre Collection, University of Bristol
The Making of Lawrence of Arabia, Digitised BAFTA Journal, Winter 1962–63
Peter O'Toole Interview at 2002 Telluride Film Festival, conducted by
Roger Ebert