Peter O’Toole, Star of ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ Is Dead at 81
Peter O’Toole, an Irish bookmaker’s son with a hell-raising streak whose magnetic performance in the 1962 epic film “Lawrence of Arabia” earned him overnight fame and put him on the road to becoming one of his generation’s most accomplished and charismatic actors, died on Saturday in London. He was 81. His daughter Kate O’Toole said in a statement that he had been ill for some time.
A blond, blue-eyed six-footer, Mr. O’Toole had the dashing good looks and high spirits befitting a leading man, and he did not disappoint in “Lawrence,” David Lean’s wide-screen, almost-four-hour homage to T.E. Lawrence, the daring British soldier and adventurer who led an Arab rebellion against the Turks in the Middle East during World War I.
The performance brought Mr. O’Toole the first of eight Academy Award nominations, a flood of film offers and a string of artistic successes in the 1960s and early ‘70s. In the theater — he was a classically trained actor — he played an anguished, angular tramp in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” and a memorably battered title character in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”
In film, he twice played a robust King Henry II, first opposite Richard Burton in “Becket,” then with Katharine Hepburn as his queen in “The Lion in Winter.” Both earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor, as did his repressed, decaying schoolmaster in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and the crazed 14th Earl of Gurney in “The Ruling Class.”
Less successful was his Don Quixote in “Man of La Mancha,” Arthur Hiller’s 1972 adaptation of the Broadway musical, but it emphasized that his specialty was increasingly becoming the outsider or misfit: dreamy, romantic, turbulent, damaged, or even mad, but usually larger than life.
Mr. O’Toole threw himself wholeheartedly into what he called “bravura acting,” courting and sometimes deserving the accusation that he became over-theatrical, mannered, even hammy. His lanky, loose-jointed build; his blue eyes; his long, lantern-jawed face; his oddly languorous sexual charm; and the eccentric loops and whoops of his voice tended to reinforce the impression of power and extravagance.
Mr. Burton called him “the most original actor to come out of Britain since the war,” with “something odd, mystical and deeply disturbing” in his work.
Some critics called him the next Laurence Olivier. As a young actor Mr. O’Toole displayed an authority that the critic Kenneth Tynan said “may presage greatness.” In 1958 the director Peter Hall called Mr. O’Toole’s Hamlet in a London production “electrifying” and “unendurably exciting” — a display of “animal magnetism and danger which proclaimed the real thing.”
He showed those strengths somewhat erratically, however; for all his accolades and his box-office success, there was a lingering note of unfulfilled promise in Mr. O’Toole.
It was no surprise when Olivier chose Mr. O’Toole to inaugurate Britain’s National Theater Company in 1963 with a reprisal of his Hamlet. But the first night left most critics unmoved and unexcited and the actor himself lamenting “the most humbling, humiliating experience of my life.”
“As it went on,” he said, “I suddenly knew it wasn’t going to be any good.”
A production in 1965 of David Mercer’s “Ride-a-Cock-Horse,” in which he played an adulterous alcoholic, was booed at its London opening.
Onscreen, mixed reviews followed his performances as the cowardly naval officer seeking redemption in “Lord Jim,” Richard Brooks’s 1965 adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel; as a playboy in “What’s New, Pussycat?” a 1965 comedy with Peter Sellers and written by a young Woody Allen; and as the Three Angels in “The Bible: In the Beginning,” John Huston’s 1966 recreation of Genesis. And his sadistic Nazi general in Anatole Litvak’s “Night of the Generals” (1967) was panned.
His carousing became legend, particularly in the 1970s. As he himself said, he had long been “happy to grasp the hand of misfortune, dissipation, riotous living and violence,” counting Mr. Burton, Richard Harris, Robert Shaw, Francis Bacon, Trevor Howard, Laurence Harvey and Peter Finch among his drinking companions. He lost much of his “Lawrence” earnings in two nights with Omar Sharif at casinos in Beirut and Casablanca.
Though he won many lesser awards during his career, triumph at the Academy eluded him, perhaps in part because he had made no secret of his dislike of Hollywood and naturalistic acting, which he considered drab. He was nothing if not ambitious, but success would come on his own terms, not the movie industry’s. He had made that plain at 18, when an acting career was already in his mind. In his notebook he made a promise to himself:
“I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.”
Marc Santora and Robert Berkvist contributed reporting.
Peter O'Toole: a beautiful actor whose debut made a sensational splash
In Lawrence of Arabia he was insouciant, elegant and outrageously sexy – a star who had sprung out of nowhere
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| Peter O'Toole in My Favourite Year. |
Perhaps there were other actors as beautiful as Peter O'Toole in his 60s pomp but surely no one had such mesmeric eyes – the eyes of a seducer, a visionary or an anchorite, a sinner or a saint. That long, handsome face compellingly suggested something intelligent and romantic. But there was also something tortured there, sexually wayward and dysfunctional, something that no O'Toole character would ever entirely own up to.
In 1962, aged 30, the unknown Peter O'Toole made one of the most brilliant debuts in Hollywood history, playing the mercurial Arabist and aesthete TE Lawrence in David Lean's monumental Lawrence Of Arabia. He made a sensational splash – as big as the one Vivien Leigh had made in Gone With the Wind a generation before. He was insouciant, dapper, elegant, somehow intensely English – though O'Toole himself was an Irishman and proud of it – and also outrageously sexy.
Here was an authentic star who had sprung almost fully formed out of nowhere: different from the new working-class young lions such as Albert Finney or Michael Caine, with a refinement and self-awareness that could be compared to that of Laurence Olivier or Richard Burton. And what was so extraordinary about Lawrence Of Arabia was that it was a movie without any women in it, and O'Toole was a male lead without romantic interest. Lean conveyed as far as he could the hint of homoeroticism. In other roles O'Toole would be very much the ladies' man, but this element of exoticism and danger never entirely left him.
Incredibly, O'Toole was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor eight times but never won – and he was not entirely mollified by his lifetime achievement Oscar in 2003. His last nomination was in 2006 at the age of 74, playing the ageing actor Maurice in Roger Michell's Venus, tormented by desire for a beautiful young woman, played by Jodie Whittaker. It was a classic O'Toole performance in a classic O'Toole role: a little louche, witty and self-mocking, candidly disturbed by his sexual feelings – taking refuge from painful emotions in a brittle parade of erudition and affectation. It all only revealed his vulnerability more clearly.
The 60s were his great period: a dynamic, good-looking star who always promised and delivered something special. He was nominated for Oscars for his performances in Peter Glenville's Becket in 1964, playing opposite Burton, and in Anthony Harvey's The Lion in Winter in 1968, with Katharine Hepburn.
Interestingly, in both films he played the same character, the embattled King Henry II. In Becket he faced off against Burton's Thomas Becket, a saint in the making, and in The Lion in Winter he struggled against the increasing ambition and resentment of his sons and his wife, Eleanor Of Aquitaine, played by Hepburn. The role brought out the regal hauteur in O'Toole, his highly strung quality, his ability to show the fear and rage of an alpha-male in retreat. It was a showcase for thespian fireworks – and perhaps, it could be admitted, showed O'Toole's weakness for stagey hamminess, which was to come to full, legendary flower not in the movies but in his stage version of Macbeth in 1981. But these films showed real technique and accomplishment.
In Herbert Ross's Goodbye Mr Chips (1969), based on the Terence Rattigan stage play, he won hearts as well as minds with a tender performance as the shy schoolmaster who falls in love with Petula Clark, and in 1972 he gave an extraordinary turn in a cult movie rarely revived now, Peter Medak's The Ruling Class, in which he played a young man who succeeds to an earldom after the ageing incumbent dies in an auto-erotic strangling incident, and reveals that he believes himself to be Jesus Christ. It is a tale of bizarre freakiness and loopiness. Only O'Toole could have got away with its sheer English oddness.
From here O'Toole's career went into the doldrums, but two remarkable films – both about movies and showbusiness – brought him back to public attention in the 1980s. In The Stunt Man he was a megalomaniac film director, much addicted to swooping about the place in his crane from which he got a God's-eye view through overhead camera shots.
And Richard Benjamin's My Favourite Year (1982) is my favourite Peter O'Toole film. It is based on awestruck reports about the ageing and drunken Errol Flynn's chaotic appearance on Sid Caesar's programme Your Show of Shows in the 50s. O'Toole played an amiable but washed-up Hollywood movie star from the golden age who is booked to appear on a top-rated TV variety show. To the relief and delight of everyone, he reveals himself in rehearsal to be something of a comedy natural, but that is only because he doesn't fully understand that the show will be broadcast live and that he will not have the movie star's traditional prerogative of calling for retakes. O'Toole himself was an absolute delight in My Favourite Year, with a superb comic touch and a twinkly eyed sense of how to send himself up.
His legendary status was beyond question and he would continue to work indefatigably, coming out of retirement this year to play the Roman orator Gallus in Michael Redwood's sword-and-sandal drama Katherine of Alexandria. This was his final film.
But he will always be remembered for his great role, to which he brought such passion and power: TE Lawrence, who single-handedly led an Arab force against the Ottoman empire and succeeded in infuriating the stuffy dullards who made up the British army's officer class. He brought pure sensual excitement and danger to the cinema screen. What a sad passing.
In 1962, aged 30, the unknown Peter O'Toole made one of the most brilliant debuts in Hollywood history, playing the mercurial Arabist and aesthete TE Lawrence in David Lean's monumental Lawrence Of Arabia. He made a sensational splash – as big as the one Vivien Leigh had made in Gone With the Wind a generation before. He was insouciant, dapper, elegant, somehow intensely English – though O'Toole himself was an Irishman and proud of it – and also outrageously sexy.
Here was an authentic star who had sprung almost fully formed out of nowhere: different from the new working-class young lions such as Albert Finney or Michael Caine, with a refinement and self-awareness that could be compared to that of Laurence Olivier or Richard Burton. And what was so extraordinary about Lawrence Of Arabia was that it was a movie without any women in it, and O'Toole was a male lead without romantic interest. Lean conveyed as far as he could the hint of homoeroticism. In other roles O'Toole would be very much the ladies' man, but this element of exoticism and danger never entirely left him.
Incredibly, O'Toole was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor eight times but never won – and he was not entirely mollified by his lifetime achievement Oscar in 2003. His last nomination was in 2006 at the age of 74, playing the ageing actor Maurice in Roger Michell's Venus, tormented by desire for a beautiful young woman, played by Jodie Whittaker. It was a classic O'Toole performance in a classic O'Toole role: a little louche, witty and self-mocking, candidly disturbed by his sexual feelings – taking refuge from painful emotions in a brittle parade of erudition and affectation. It all only revealed his vulnerability more clearly.
The 60s were his great period: a dynamic, good-looking star who always promised and delivered something special. He was nominated for Oscars for his performances in Peter Glenville's Becket in 1964, playing opposite Burton, and in Anthony Harvey's The Lion in Winter in 1968, with Katharine Hepburn.
Interestingly, in both films he played the same character, the embattled King Henry II. In Becket he faced off against Burton's Thomas Becket, a saint in the making, and in The Lion in Winter he struggled against the increasing ambition and resentment of his sons and his wife, Eleanor Of Aquitaine, played by Hepburn. The role brought out the regal hauteur in O'Toole, his highly strung quality, his ability to show the fear and rage of an alpha-male in retreat. It was a showcase for thespian fireworks – and perhaps, it could be admitted, showed O'Toole's weakness for stagey hamminess, which was to come to full, legendary flower not in the movies but in his stage version of Macbeth in 1981. But these films showed real technique and accomplishment.
In Herbert Ross's Goodbye Mr Chips (1969), based on the Terence Rattigan stage play, he won hearts as well as minds with a tender performance as the shy schoolmaster who falls in love with Petula Clark, and in 1972 he gave an extraordinary turn in a cult movie rarely revived now, Peter Medak's The Ruling Class, in which he played a young man who succeeds to an earldom after the ageing incumbent dies in an auto-erotic strangling incident, and reveals that he believes himself to be Jesus Christ. It is a tale of bizarre freakiness and loopiness. Only O'Toole could have got away with its sheer English oddness.
From here O'Toole's career went into the doldrums, but two remarkable films – both about movies and showbusiness – brought him back to public attention in the 1980s. In The Stunt Man he was a megalomaniac film director, much addicted to swooping about the place in his crane from which he got a God's-eye view through overhead camera shots.
And Richard Benjamin's My Favourite Year (1982) is my favourite Peter O'Toole film. It is based on awestruck reports about the ageing and drunken Errol Flynn's chaotic appearance on Sid Caesar's programme Your Show of Shows in the 50s. O'Toole played an amiable but washed-up Hollywood movie star from the golden age who is booked to appear on a top-rated TV variety show. To the relief and delight of everyone, he reveals himself in rehearsal to be something of a comedy natural, but that is only because he doesn't fully understand that the show will be broadcast live and that he will not have the movie star's traditional prerogative of calling for retakes. O'Toole himself was an absolute delight in My Favourite Year, with a superb comic touch and a twinkly eyed sense of how to send himself up.
His legendary status was beyond question and he would continue to work indefatigably, coming out of retirement this year to play the Roman orator Gallus in Michael Redwood's sword-and-sandal drama Katherine of Alexandria. This was his final film.
But he will always be remembered for his great role, to which he brought such passion and power: TE Lawrence, who single-handedly led an Arab force against the Ottoman empire and succeeded in infuriating the stuffy dullards who made up the British army's officer class. He brought pure sensual excitement and danger to the cinema screen. What a sad passing.
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