Peter O'Toole

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Peter O’Toole
File:Peterotoole.jpg
Born
Peter Seamus O’Toole
Years active1956-Present
SpouseSiân Phillips (1959-1976)

Peter Seamus O'Toole (Peter James O'Toole) (b. August 2 1932 (accepted but presumed date) is an eight-time Academy Award-nominated Irish actor.

He has received three Golden Globes and an Emmy Award. He was also awarded an honorary Oscar for his body of work (2003). Despite eight nominations, he has yet to win a Best Actor Oscar.

Early life

Peter O'Toole was born in 1932, with some sources giving his birthplace as Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, and others as Leeds, in West Yorkshire, England, where he also grew up. O'Toole himself is not certain of his birthplace or date, noting in his autobiography that while he accepts August 2 as his birthdate, he has conflicting birth certificates in both countries, with the Irish one giving a June, 1932 birthdate.[1] He was the son of an Irish bookmaker father and a Scottish-born nurse mother.[2][3] When O'Toole was one year old, the O’Tooles began a five-year tour of major racetrack towns in northern England. Peter O'Toole went to a Catholic School for seven or eight years, there he was "implored" to become right handed. “I used to be scared stiff of the nuns: their whole denial of womanhood—the black dresses & the shaving of the hair—was so horrible, so terrifying,” he later commented. “Of course, that's all been stopped. They're sipping gin & tonic in the Dublin pubs now, & a couple of them flashed their pretty ankles at me just the other day.”[4] O'Toole later took pride in his Irish ancestry, even to the point of apparently always wearing at least one item of green clothing - usually his socks.[5]

O'Toole was called up for National Service in Britain and served as a radioman 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'd always wanted to do. His reply was that he'd always wanted to try being either a poet or an actor. Fortunately for him, acting worked out.

O'Toole attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) (1952–1954) on a scholarship after being rejected by the Abbey Theatre's Drama School in Dublin by the then director Ernest Blythe, because he couldn't speak Gaelic. At RADA, he was in the same class as Albert Finney, Richard Harris, 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."[6]

Career

File:3292006113525.jpeg
O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia; this has gained iconic status in cinema history.

He began getting work 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 and a very minor film debut in 1959.

O'Toole's major break came when he was chosen to play T.E. Lawrence in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), after Albert Finney turned down the role. His performance introduced him to U.S. audiences and earned him the first of his eight nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor. For further information, see Academy Award nominations below.

O'Toole is also one of a handful of actors to be Oscar-nominated for playing the same role in two different films; he played King Henry II in both 1964's Becket and 1968's 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 has also appeared in Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock at Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, fulfilling a lifetime ambition when taking to the stage of the Irish capital's Abbey Theatre in 1970 to play in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, alongside the stage actor Donal McCann. His 1980 performance as Macbeth is often considered one of the greatest disasters in theatre history, but he has redeemed his theatrical reputation with his performances 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 (1989).

In 2005, he appeared on television as the older version of legendary 18th century Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova in the BBC drama serial Casanova. O'Toole's role was mainly to frame the drama, telling the story of his life to serving maid Edith (Rose Byrne). 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 won an Emmy Award for his role in the 1999 mini-series Joan of Arc.

In 2004, O'Toole played King Priam in the summer blockbuster Troy. He 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. Most recently, O'Toole co-stars in the Pixar animated film, Ratatouille, an animated film about a rat with dreams of becoming the greatest chef in Paris. Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid praised O'Toole's performance in Ratatouille, "Peter O'Toole's performance as the critic Anton Ego is worthy of another Oscar nomination."

Personal life

In 1960, he married Welsh actress, Siân Phillips, with whom he had two daughters, Kate O'Toole (an award-winning actress and resident of Clifden, Ireland) and Patricia; the couple divorced in 1979. He and his ex-girlfriend, Karen Brown, have a son, Lorcan O'Toole, born when Peter was in his fifties.

Severe illness almost ended his life in the late 1970s. Due to his heavy drinking, he underwent surgery in 1976 to have his pancreas and a large portion of his stomach removed, which resulted in insulin dependent diabetes. O'Toole eventually recovered and returned to work, although he found it harder to get parts in films, resulting in more work for television and occasional stage roles. However, he gave a star turn in 1987's much-garlanded The Last Emperor.

He has resided in Clifden, County Galway, Ireland since 1963 and at the height of his career maintained homes in Dublin, London and Paris (at the Ritz), but now only keeps his home in London.

He is perhaps the only one of his "London" acting contemporaries not to be knighted. While a glaring omission at first glance, it is one that, according to London's Daily Mail in 2006, is one of his own making.[citation needed] According to the paper's Richard Kay, he was offered an honorary knighthood in 1987, but turned it down for personal and political reasons.

He is a noted fan of rugby and used to attend Five Nations matches with friends and fellow rugby fans Richard Harris and Richard Burton.

O'Toole has written two books. "Loitering With Intent: The Child," which chronicles his childhood in the years leading up to WWII, was a New York Times Notable Book of the year 1992. His second, "Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice" is about his years spent training with a cadre of friends at RADA. His writing is infused with his love of language, poetry and literature, and much usage of rhyme and tempo is woven into the prose. The books have been praised by critics such as Charles Champlin in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, who wrote: "A cascade of language, a rumbling tumbling riot of words, a pub soliloquy to an invisible but imaginable audience, and the more captivating for it. O'Toole as raconteur is grand company."

O'Toole is taking the rest of 2007 to finish his third installment. This book will have (as he described it) "the meat," meaning highlights from his stage and filmmaking career.

Trivia

  • The Italian comic book character Alan Ford is graphically inspired by O'Toole.
  • O'Toole is sometimes confused with the Irish musician of the same name who played mandolin on a few tracks on The Indigo Girls' self-titled album. The other O'Toole is a member of the band Hothouse Flowers
  • A lifelong player, coach and enthusiast for the game cricket. O'Toole is licensed to teach and coach cricket to children as young as ten.
  • His performance as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia was ranked number one in Premiere magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.
  • In a BBC Radio interview in January 2007, O'Toole said that he had studied women for a very long time, had given it his best try, but knew "nothing."
  • In an NPR interview in December 2006, O'Toole revealed that he knows all 154 Shakespeare sonnets. A self-described romantic, O'Toole regards the sonnets as among the finest collection of English poems. He reads them daily. In the movie Venus, he recites Sonnet 18, "Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day".
  • In an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on January 11 2007, O'Toole said that the actor he most enjoyed working with was his close friend, actress Katharine Hepburn. They made the movie The Lion in Winter. He played King Henry II to her Eleanor of Aquitaine.
  • O'Toole has been frequently mocked on the NBC show Saturday Night Live by Bill Hader
  • O'Toole has been interviewed three times by Charlie Rose on The Charlie Rose Show. On the last interview January 17 2007, O'Toole said that the actor who had influenced him the most was Eric Porter. He also said that the difference between actors of yesterday and today are 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."
  • On acting: "Whenever I find something getting a bit ornate, I think no, no, deepen. Don't go out, go in." -Charlie Rose Show, January 2007.
  • Richard Harris's family wanted O'Toole to replace him as Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban.
  • The last time he was seen in the Old Vic theatre, he was watching The Entertainer by John Osbourne.

Academy Award nominations

Peter O'Toole has been 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. His nominations were for:

In 2003, 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 he was "still in the game" and would like more time to "win the lovely bugger outright."[citation needed] The Academy informed him that they would bestow the award whether he wanted it or not. Further, as he related on The Charlie Rose Show in January 2007, his children admonished him, saying that it was the highest honor one could receive in the filmmaking industry. And so, 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 actor (14).

Selected filmography

File:PeterOToole.jpg
With Petula Clark in Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Stage appearances

1955-58 Bristol Old Vic

1959 Royal Court Theatre

1960 Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford

1963 National Theatre

1963-1965

1966 Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

1969 Abbey Theatre, Dublin

1973-74 Bristol Old Vic

1978 Toronto, Washington, and Chicago

1980-1999

See also

Plastic Paddy

References

  1. ^ O'Toole, Peter, Loitering With Intent, London: Macmillan London Ltd., 1992, p. 10
  2. ^ Yahoo Movies, "Peter O'Toole Biography", Baseline 2007
  3. ^ Frank Murphy, "The Irish World, Irish News 31 January 2007",
  4. ^ Alan Waldman, "Tribute to Peter O'Toole ",
  5. ^ "All about Peter ",
  6. ^ MovieCrazed

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Peter O'Toole.
Template:S-awards
Preceded by BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1962
for Lawrence of Arabia 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
1965
for Becket 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
1969
for The Lion in Winter 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1970
for Goodbye, Mr. Chips 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Primetime Emmy Award for Supporting Actor - Miniseries or a Movie
1999
for Joan of Arc 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Academy Honorary Award
2003 		Succeeded by



Template:Persondata

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