“Peter O'Toole” The Legendary Actor

 

“Peter O'Toole”

The Legendary Actor

 

Peter Seamus O'Toole is a stage and film actor from the United Kingdom. Peter Seamus O'Toole was born on August 2, 1932, in Glasgow, Scotland, to Constance Jane Eliot and Patrick Joseph "Spats" O'Toole, an Irish metal plater, football player, and bookmaker. O'Toole claimed in his autobiography that he was unsure of his birthplace or date, stating that he accepted 2 August as his birth date but had birth certificates from England and Ireland. According to Leeds General Registry Office records, he was born on August 2, 1932, at St James's University Hospital in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.

O'Toole grew up in Hunslet, a south Leeds suburb, with an older sister named Patricia. His family began a five-year tour of major racecourse towns in Northern England when he was one year old. His sister and he were raised in their father's Catholic faith. O'Toole was evacuated from Leeds early in the Second World War and attended St Joseph's Secondary School in Hunslet, Leeds, for seven or eight years. "I used to be scared stiff of the nuns: their whole denial of womanhood was so horrible, so terrifying," he later said. Of course, all of that has come to a halt. They're drinking gin and tonic in Dublin pubs now, and a couple of them just flashed their pretty ankles at me."

Following his graduation from high school, O'Toole worked as a trainee journalist and photographer for the Yorkshire Evening Post until he was called up for national service as a signaller in the Royal Navy. According to a 2006 NPR radio interview, he was asked by an officer if there was anything he had always wanted to do. His response was that he had always wanted to be a poet or an actor. He was a scholarship student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1952 to 1954. This came after being rejected by the Abbey Theatre's drama school in Dublin by director Ernest Blythe due to his inability to speak Irish. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art alongside Albert Finney, Alan Bates, and Brian Bedford. This was described by O'Toole "Though we weren't thought of as much at the time, we were the most remarkable class the academy had ever had. We were all thought to be dotty."

He made his West End debut in 1959 in The Long and the Short and the Tall, and in 1963 he played Hamlet in the National Theatre's first production. Off the London stage, O'Toole was known for his "hellraiser" lifestyle.

After making his film debut in 1959, O'Toole rose to international prominence as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He was nominated for this award seven more times for his roles in Becket in 1964 and The Lion in Winter in 1968, Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1969, The Ruling Class in 1972, The Stunt Man in 1980, My Favorite Year in 1982, and Venus in 2006, and he now holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for acting without winning. For his career achievements, he received the Academy Honorary Award in 2002.

O'Toole received four Golden Globe nominations, one BAFTA nomination for Best British Actor, and one Primetime Emmy nomination. What's New Pussycat? in 1965, How to Steal a Million in 1966, Supergirl in 1984, and minor roles in The Last Emperor in 1987 and Troy in 2004 are among her other credits. In 2007, he also played Anton Ego, the restaurant critic in Pixar's Ratatouille.

O'Toole was active in protesting British involvement in the Korean War while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the early 1950s. Later, in the 1960s, he was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.

Although he lost faith in organized religion as a teenager, O'Toole expressed positive feelings about Jesus Christ's life. He stated in an interview, "Nobody can take Jesus away from me... there was no doubt a historical figure of enormous importance, with enormous ideas. For example, peace." He described himself as a "retired Christian" who values "education, reading, and facts" over faith.

He married Welsh actress Sian Phillips in 1959, and they had two daughters, actress Kate and Patricia. In 1979, they divorced. Phillips later stated in two autobiographies that O'Toole had subjected her to mental cruelty, fueled primarily by alcohol, and was subjected to bouts of extreme jealousy when she eventually left him for a younger lover. Lorcan O'Toole was born to O'Toole and his girlfriend, model Karen Brown, when he was fifty years old. Lorcan, now an actor, attended Harrow School before boarding at West Acre in 1996.

As a child in Leeds, O'Toole played rugby league and was 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 Sunderland A.F.C. fan and a lifelong cricket player, coach, and enthusiast. His father, who worked as a laborer in Sunderland for many years, instilled in him a love of the city. He was named their most famous supporter. Following the demolition of Roker Park and subsequent relocation to the Stadium of Light, the actor stated in a later interview that he no longer considered himself a fan.

O'Toole once said in an interview that British actor Eric Porter had the largest impact on him and added that performers of his generation were schooled for "theatre" in contrast to actors nowadays. And he said "excellent roles produce good performers" and that the actor must "use his imagination to attach to his emotion" to be successful. O'Toole acknowledged Donald Wolfit as being his most significant mentor in other contexts, though.

O'Toole's life was nearly lost in the late 1970s due to a severe illness. His stomach cancer was wrongly attributed to his heavy drinking. O'Toole developed insulin-dependent diabetes as a result of surgery in 1976 to remove his pancreas and a sizable piece of his stomach. He almost passed away from a blood condition in 1978. He ultimately got better and started working again. Beginning in 1963, he lived on Sky Road, a short distance from Clifden in Connemara, County Galway, and during the height of his professional life, he also kept residences in Dublin, London, and Paris.

O'Toole claimed that he was familiar with all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets in a December 2006 interview with National Public Radio. O'Toole, a self-described romantic, remarked that nothing else in the English language compares to sonnets and that he reads them every day. He reads Sonnet 18 to Venus. O'Toole penned two autobiographies. His youth is described in Loitering With Intent: The Kid, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1992. His second book, Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice, describes his years of training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with a group of pals.

Due to a recurrence of stomach cancer, O'Toole announced his retirement from acting in July 2012. At the age of 81, he passed away on December 14, 2013, at the Wellington Hospital in St. John's Wood, London. His cremation in a wicker coffin took place at Golders Green Crematorium in London, where his burial service was performed on December 21, 2013. His family declared that they would carry out his final wishes and scatter his ashes in the west of Ireland.

The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School introduced a new award on May 18, 2014, in honor of Peter O'Toole. This prize includes an annual award presented to two young actors from the School, as well as a professional contract with Bristol Old Vic Theatre. In London's Convent Garden, St. Paul's, the Players' Church, has a plaque honoring him.

Kate O'Toole donated her father's archive to the humanities research institution, according to a 21 April 2017 announcement from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. O'Toole's scripts, several published and unpublished writings, props, photos, letters, medical records, and other materials are all included in the collection. Together with Donald Wolfit, Eli Wallach, Peter Glenville, Sir Tom Stoppard, and Dame Edith Evans, it joins the archives of several of O'Toole's collaborators and friends.

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