# ADSactly Hollywood Legends: The Wondrous Life of Peter O’Toole

*Hello, dear @adsactly cinema lovers. When I started this series I promised you portraits of Hollywood legends, people whose legacy deserves to be preserved for generations to come because they made cinema what it is today. After the last few posts discussing other fascinating aspects of the film industry I want to return to the original portraits’ series and talk about a uniquely talented actor and a fabulous man, Peter O’Toole. He belongs up there among the other film icons this series is dedicated to.*

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It is now almost six years since we got the news of his passing and I remember the pang in my heart. He had not made any new movies for a few years, but the simple mentioning of his name was enough to bring up the memory of his enormous blue-eyes and the incredible performances of his career.
Peter O’Toole was born in 1932, but where exactly is a bit of a mystery, as he had two birth certificates, one from Ireland and one from the UK. Quite a befitting start in life for a man who’ll become famous not only for his talent, but also for his flamboyant and hectic life style. He could not study drama in Dublin as the teachers at the Abbey Theatre drama school considered he couldn’t speak proper Irish. So he went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and started appearing in theater production. Like Olivier before him, Peter O’Toole first gained recognition as a Shakespearean actor. However, his first notable award, Best Actor of the Year in 1959, came not for a Shakespeare performance, but for the leading part in a war play called ‘The Long and the Short and the Tall’.

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His success on stage brought O’Toole many movie offers, his first film being a Disney production **‘Kidnapped’** (1960), followed the same year by an international production called **‘The Savage Innocents’**, in which he stars opposite Anthony Quinn. That’s two movies in one year during which he was also under contract with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, with leading roles in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice’. Not bad for just one year.
It was also in 1960 that he was offered the lead in an upcoming movie **’Lawrence of Arabia’** which would turn out to be the breakthrough of his career, as well as a financial and critical success.

Released in 1962, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ is an epic historical drama film depicting the life of British archaeologist and army officer T.E. Lawrence and is set in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The movie won seven out of ten Oscar nominations and is considered one of the most influential films of all times. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the US Library of Congress.
Sadly, Peter O’Toole did not receive an Academy Award. Actually, he holds the record for the most Oscar nominations (eight) without a win. He eventually got one in 2002, a lifetime achievements one, which he initially refused in frustration, famously saying: ‘I want to win the lovely bugger outright!’He ended up accepting the award with the words: "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, my foot".

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Peter O’Toole created his own production company, which allowed him a certain freedom. His choice of projects proved very wise. In 1964, the company released **‘Becket’**, a film based on Jean Anouilh’s play in which Peter O’Toole plays Henry II, opposite his good friend Richard Burton in the title role. The film was a major success as were many of the ones that followed, such as **’How to Steal a Million’** (1966), in which he appears alongside Audrey Hepburn.

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In 1968, Peter O’Toole again plays the part o Henry II, but in a film based on a different play, James Goldman’s **The Lion in Winter**. Playing the part of an aging monarch confronted with the thorny issue of his own succession is one of the most extraordinary performances of O’Toole’s career and the film greatly benefits from the brilliant chemistry between him and the great Katharine Hepburn.

Peter O’Toole was extremely versatile as an actor - he was at ease in historical dramas, as well as musicals, like **’Goodbye, Mr. Chips’** (1969), or black comedies, like **’The Ruling Class’** (1972) and adventure movies like **Man Friday’** (1975).

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What is truly fascinating about Peter O’Toole is that he managed to make a lot of really great movies, while enjoying an outlandish lifestyle, the actor being famous for his drunken antics, which are today the stuff of legends.
One of his best friends and drinking buddies was the amazing Richard Burton and it is said they were both drunk most of the time they were shooting ‘Becket’. And they both got Oscar nominations for that movie.
Peter O’Toole once confirmed the epic story about him going out for a drink in Paris and waking up on the island of Corsica.
One of the most outrageous stories refers to the time he was filming ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and organized a date for his friend Omar Sharif with a sex-change pioneer called April Ashley. When he realized things were not quite as they appeared, Omar Sharif chased O’Toole with a meat-cleaver.
Or the time he went out drinking with fellow actor Michael Caine. The last thing Caine remembered was eating chips and eggs, before waking up in a strange flat with a massive headache. ‘What time is it’ he asked, to which Peter O’Toole replied: ‘"Never mind what time it is. What f***ing day is it?" Turned out they had been drunk for two days and were due on stage in three hours.
Another time, he went out for a few drinks with his friends and then decided to go see a play. When he took his seat, Peter O’Toole realized he was supposed to be on stage.
The way he explained the excesses of his life certainly makes sense:
>“I do not regret one drop. We were young people who'd been children throughout the war – well, you can imagine what it felt like in 1945 to be free – not to be bombed, not to be rationed, not to be restricted. There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. We weren't solitary, boring drinkers, sipping vodka alone in a room. No, no, no: we went out on the town, baby, and we did our drinking in public!”

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His drinking habit caused him numerous health problems and he almost died several times. Nevertheless, he soldiered on, returning to the stage or the movie set with the true grit of a real actor. In 2012 he announced his retirement:
> "I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell."
>
Peter O’Toole died one year later, his passing being seen as a huge loss for the world of the cinema, as well as in his native Ireland and in the United Kingdom.
As the president of Ireland, Michael Higgins, said at the time:
>“He was unsurpassed for the grace he brought to every performance on and off the stage.”
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**Post authored by @ladyrebecca.**
**References:** [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_O%27Toole), [2](https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-editors/peter-o-toole-80-best-drinking-stories-132719697.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAK5ZKUO4ZKam_5OmpC3_pWmznLM75dEsdmYin2giq0qkm-gPLMI5V3qTnnI6R6YFcLfUhkJ_KFnUz47ZJTXVW4mziPQGmmrwB-nRtkaHhNov7gbHNCTmwd1OydTO-NUdYCG33GhHJC-xuZwysTnO7czf3snclLedsYvSxZW4awmP), [3](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-lawrence-arabia).</center>