It is always a sad day when someone passes away. For the family, friends, and fans of legendary actor Peter O’Toole, 14 December 2013 was a very sad day indeed.
Peter O’Toole died after a long illness at the age of 81. As an actor, he plied his craft brilliantly on stage, film, and television for more years than many of us have been alive.
Even as a youngster, I was mesmerized by O’Toole’s blue eyes. I didn’t know anything about what makes a great actor, nor did I have the vocabulary to express how charismatic I found him to be. I stared, and took in as much of his characters and the films’ stories as I could grasp at the time.
Over time, I grew to appreciate his talent for embodying his roles, where O’Toole the man, the actor, disappeared from view and British Army officer T.E. Lawrence (of Lawrence of Arabia)
For each of those roles and five others (including Arthur Chipping in Goodbye, Mr. Chips,
In total, O’Toole was nominated for 67 awards and won 21, including a BAFTA, an Emmy, and four Golden Globes. For his contribution to film during a career that spanned more than half a century, he received an Honorary Oscar® in 2003, three years before his last Academy Award nomination for Venus.
Within his body of work are a few more of my O’Toole favorites — some nominated, some not, but gems all — including the romantic comedy How to Steal a Million,
And although seeing O’Toole guest star in an episode of Doctor Who will never come to pass now, watching him play the aged but no less frisky Lothario to David Tennant’s youthful one in Casanova
Like many others, I’m sure, I would have loved to have met Peter O’Toole, to have had a chat and a laugh, and to have gazed into those blue eyes up close and personal. Sadly, the possibility of such an encounter no longer exists. So, I will do what I have done for years: pick up a DVD or log in to a VOD account and watch this master actor inhabit a character like no other.
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