Peter O'Toole, the wry, fun-loving star who played the dashing English adventurer and army officer T.E. Lawrence in the 1962 epic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia for one of his eight best actor Oscar nominations without a win, has died, his agent told BBC News. He was 81.
The actor died Saturday at The Wellington Hospital in London after a long illness, his agent, Steve Kenis, said.
O’Toole announced in July 2012 that he was retiring from acting. “The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back,” he said. He did, however, return with announced parts in Katherine of Alexandria and Mary, two films yet to be released.
O'Toole, who died Saturday at age 81 after a long bout of illness, was fearsomely handsome, with burning blue eyes and a penchant for hard living which 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, chuckling.
A reformed — but unrepentant — hell-raiser, 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 candor.
"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." ... 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, northern 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 theater," 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 hell-raiser stayed with O'Toole for decades, although he gave up drinking in 1975 following serious health problems and major surgery.
He did not, however, give up smoking unfiltered Gauloises cigarettes in an ebony holder. That and his penchant for green socks, voluminous overcoats and trailing scarves lent him a rakish air and suited his fondness for drama in the old-fashioned "bravura" manner.
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 "me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits."
"However, it's my belief that one should decide for oneself when it is time to end one's stay," he said. "So I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell." ...
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PFF
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Posts: 25153 From: Florida USA Registered: Aug 2002
I remember him best from Lawrence of Arabia. I bought the HD directors cut version of the movie at BigLots for $2.99 a year or so ago... it was the first time I had ever seen the movie as an adult. I barely remember seeing some of it as a kid when it was on HBO in the early 80s. But what an amazing movie... I'm pretty surprised he didn't win any awards for that movie.
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pokeyfiero Member
Posts: 16233 From: Free America! Registered: Dec 2003
