Hollywood actors pay tribute to Lawrence of Arabia star O’Toole
18 Dec 2013 5:04 AM IST
‘There won’t be any more like that, will there?’ said 73-year-old actor Michael Gambon, who played Dumbledore in several Harry Potter films.
O’Toole, the 81-year-old star of Lawrence of Arabia, died Saturday in London. Britain’s prime minister and Ireland’s president were among the many expressing condolences.
Irish President Michael D. Higgins said O’Toole had been ‘unsurpassed for the grace he brought to every performance.’ O’Toole was nominated eight times for an Academy Award without winning - a record. He was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2003.
Nick James, editor of film magazine Sight & Sound, said O’Toole was ‘an actor with a kind of bohemian quality to him which has kind of passed on - largely to do with health and safety concerns on movie sets.’ ‘You’re not allowed to behave that way anymore,’ James said. ‘You don’t get hell-raisers anymore because you can’t get them insured.’
O’Toole had long suffered from ill health, his famously handsome face eroded by years of prodigious drinking. He gave up alcohol in 1975 following serious health problems and major surgery, but was unrepentant about his life of excess.
‘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.’ James said O’Toole’s career ‘was intrinsic to the times he lived in, the milieu he moved in.’
‘I don’t think he would have wanted it any other way. The arts have always dallied with the dark side in order to feed creativity.’ Seamus Peter O’Toole was born on 2 August 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.
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, where his 1955 Hamlet was acclaimed, and was soon recognized as one of the most exciting young talents on the British stage. International stardom came in David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia. With only a few minor cinema roles behind him, O’Toole was unknown to most moviegoers when they first saw him as T.E. Lawrence, the British World War I soldier and scholar who led an Arab rebellion against the Turks.
O’Toole, the 81-year-old star of Lawrence of Arabia, died Saturday in London. Britain’s prime minister and Ireland’s president were among the many expressing condolences.
Irish President Michael D. Higgins said O’Toole had been ‘unsurpassed for the grace he brought to every performance.’ O’Toole was nominated eight times for an Academy Award without winning - a record. He was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2003.
Nick James, editor of film magazine Sight & Sound, said O’Toole was ‘an actor with a kind of bohemian quality to him which has kind of passed on - largely to do with health and safety concerns on movie sets.’ ‘You’re not allowed to behave that way anymore,’ James said. ‘You don’t get hell-raisers anymore because you can’t get them insured.’
O’Toole had long suffered from ill health, his famously handsome face eroded by years of prodigious drinking. He gave up alcohol in 1975 following serious health problems and major surgery, but was unrepentant about his life of excess.
‘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.’ James said O’Toole’s career ‘was intrinsic to the times he lived in, the milieu he moved in.’
‘I don’t think he would have wanted it any other way. The arts have always dallied with the dark side in order to feed creativity.’ Seamus Peter O’Toole was born on 2 August 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.
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, where his 1955 Hamlet was acclaimed, and was soon recognized as one of the most exciting young talents on the British stage. International stardom came in David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia. With only a few minor cinema roles behind him, O’Toole was unknown to most moviegoers when they first saw him as T.E. Lawrence, the British World War I soldier and scholar who led an Arab rebellion against the Turks.
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