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| O'Toole played the role of King Henry II, 1964 |
The Grandma is in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. The weather is cold, -1ºC of average and it's snowing without stopping.
She prefers to stay inside her cabin in The Orient Express reading something. Today, a biography about Peter O'Toole, one of the most important Irish actors who offered the best performances about the great William Shakespeare's characters.
Peter Seamus O'Toole (2 August 1932-14 December 2013) was a British-Irish stage and film actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company before making his film debut in 1959.
More information: Bristol Old Vic
He achieved international recognition playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was nominated for this award another seven times for Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982), and Venus (2006) – and holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations for acting without a win. In 2002, O'Toole was awarded the Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements.
O'Toole was born in 1932. Some sources give his birthplace as Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, while others cite St James University Hospital, Leeds, England. O'Toole claimed he was not certain of his birthplace or date, noting in his autobiography that, while he accepted 2 August as his birthdate, he had a birth certificate from each country, with the Irish one giving a June 1932 birth date O'Toole was evacuated from Leeds early in the Second World War and went to a Catholic school for seven or eight years, St Joseph's Secondary School at Joseph Street, Hunslet.
More information: Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
He first appeared on film in 1959 in a minor role in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England. O'Toole's major break came when he was chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in Sir David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), after Marlon Brando proved unavailable and Albert Finney turned down the role. His performance was ranked number one in Premiere magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. The role introduced him to US audiences and earned him the first of his eight nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor. T. E. Lawrence, portrayed by O'Toole, was selected in 2003 as the tenth-greatest hero in cinema history by the American Film Institute.
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| O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, 1962 |
O'Toole fulfilled a lifetime ambition in 1970 when he performed on stage in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, alongside Donal McCann, at Dublin's Abbey Theatre. In 1980, O'Toole starred as Tiberius in the Penthouse-funded biopic, Caligula.
In 1980, he received critical acclaim for playing the director in the behind-the-scenes film The Stunt Man. He received mixed reviews as John Tanner in Man and Superman and Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, and won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (1989). O'Toole was nominated for another Oscar for My Favorite Year (1982), a light romantic comedy about the behind-the-scenes at a 1950s TV variety-comedy show, in which O'Toole plays an aging swashbuckling film star reminiscent of Errol Flynn. He also appeared in 1987's The Last Emperor.
More information: The Smithsonian
On 10 July 2012, O'Toole released a statement announcing his retirement from acting. O'Toole died on 14 December 2013 at Wellington Hospital, London, aged 81. His funeral was held at Golders Green Crematorium in London on 21 December 2013, where he was cremated in a wicker coffin.
O'Toole's remains are planned to be taken to Connemara, Ireland. His daughter Kate said: We're bringing him home. It's what he would have wanted. They are currently being kept at the residence of the President of Ireland, Áras an Uachtaráin, by the President Michael D. Higgins who is an old friend of the actor. His family plan to return to Ireland to fulfill his wishes and take them to the west of Ireland when they can.
On 18 May 2014, a new prize was launched in memory of Peter O'Toole at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School; this includes an annual award given to two young actors from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, including a professional contract at Bristol Old Vic Theatre. He has a memorial plaque in St Paul's, the Actors' Church in Covent Garden.
I woke up one morning to find I was famous.
I bought a white Rolls-Royce and drove down Sunset Boulevard,
wearing dark specs and a white suit, waving like the Queen Mum.
Peter O'Toole
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