Peter O'Toole has died | Golden Skate

Peter O'Toole has died

Tonichelle

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Jun 27, 2003
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-lawrence-arabia

The actor Peter O'Toole, who found stardom in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, has died aged 81, his agent has said.


The acclaimed leading man who overcame stomach cancer in the 1970s passed away on Saturday at the Wellington hospital in London following a long illness, Steve Kenis said.


O'Toole announced last year he was stopping acting saying: "I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell."

He said his career on stage and screen fulfilled him emotionally and financially, bringing him together "with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits."
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I was shocked to read this, though of course he's looked very drawn and weak for quite some time. O'Toole really was one of the giants of film and theater. Lawrence of Arabia is to this day one of the greatest films ever made--both epic and personal. It's amazing to realize that O'Toole was in his twenties in this movie, and that it was his first major film. Soon after that, he made what used to be called a "caper film," a stylishly lighthearted movie centered around an attempt to steal a prized object. How to Steal a Million co-starred him with Audrey Hepburn, and he more than held his own, proving that he was as adept in romantic comedy as he had been in Lawrence, an epic film that had no female roles at all.

Then there were O'Toole's other great Sixties epics, Becket and The Lion in Winter, in which he played the same role at different ages. Which one is the better film? The one I'm watching at the time someone asks.

I'm sorry he never won an Oscar. But that's more a shortcoming of Oscar than of O'Toole. He's in good company, too: with Richard Burton, Glenn Close, Garbo, Lillian Gish, and Cary Grant.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Golly, yes, Toni! The warmth of his voice came through even in cartoon form. It seems odd knowing the roisterer he was in life, but there was a refinement in his acting that was missing in someone like his drinking companion Richard Harris. The year he was to get the honorary Oscar, I watched an interview with him. Beforehand I worried that he'd be one of those bombastic, verbally disorganized poseurs like many stars who think they're too hip for the room, but he was thoughtful, polite, articulate, respectful of the interviewer, and humorous. I became an even greater fan, if that were possible.

That generation of British actors was just about as astonishing, enduring, and iconic as the first golden age of film actors from the thirties. O'Toole, Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Terence Stamp, the now-lesser-known Tom Courtenay--other names will come to me and probably to many of you. Unlike most American actors with that degree of hotness, these guys weren't just handsome faces. Most of them had theatrical training, and many worked in the theater in between movie gigs. They could embody characters as well as burning up a screen. The proof is how well many of them aged, playing odd codgers and even supporting roles. They'll never really leave us as long as we have their works to watch and enjoy.
 
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