CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER, THE BEST CANADIAN ELEGANCE

Today, The Grandma has received sad news. Christopher Plummer, one of her favourite actors has died. She wants to remember him talking about his career and his life.

 

Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer (December 13, 1929-February 5, 2021) was a Canadian actor whose career spanned seven decades.

He gained recognition for his performances in film, television, and theatre. Plummer made his Broadway debut in 1954, and continued to act in leading roles on stage playing Cyrano de Bergerac in Cyrano (1974), Iago in Othello, as well as playing the titular roles in Macbeth, King Lear, and Barrymore. Plummer also performed in stage productions J.B., No Man's Land, and Inherit the Wind.

Plummer was born in Toronto and grew up in Senneville, Quebec. He made his film debut in Sidney Lumet's Stage Struck (1958), and won great acclaim with audiences for his performance as Captain Georg von Trapp in the musical film The Sound of Music (1965) alongside Julie Andrews.

Plummer portrayed numerous major historical figures, including Roman emperor Commodus in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington in Waterloo (1970), Rudyard Kipling in The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009), Kaiser Wilhelm II in The Exception (2016), and J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World (2017).

Plummer also appeared in such films as Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind (2001), Terrence Malick's The New World (2005), David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Mike Mills' Beginners (2011), and Rian Johnson's Knives Out (2019).

Plummer received various accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a British Academy Film Award; he is one of the few performers to receive the Triple Crown of Acting, and the only Canadian.

More information: BBC America

He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the age of 82 for Beginners (2010), becoming the oldest person to win an acting award, and he received a nomination at the age of 88 for All the Money in the World, making him the oldest person to be nominated in an acting category.

Plummer was born on December 13, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario. He spoke both English and French fluently. As a schoolboy, he began studying to be a concert pianist, but developed a love for theatre at an early age, and began acting while he was attending the High School of Montreal. He took up acting after watching Laurence Olivier's film Henry V (1944). He learned the basics of acting as an apprentice with the Montréal Repertory Theatre, where fellow Montrealer William Shatner also played.

Plummer never attended college, something he regretted all his life. Although his mother and his father's family had ties with McGill University, he was never a McGill student.

In 1946, he caught the attention of Montreal Gazette's theatre critic Herbert Whittaker with his performance as Mr Darcy in the Montreal High School production of Pride and Prejudice. Whittaker was also amateur stage director of the Montreal Repertory theatre, and he cast Plummer at age 18 as Oedipus in Jean Cocteau's La Machine infernale.

Plummer made his debut at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1956, playing the title role in Henry V, which subsequently was performed that year at the Edinburgh Festival. He played the title role in Hamlet and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night at Stratford in 1957.

 

The following year, he played Leontes in The Winter's Tale, Bardolph in Henry IV, Part 1, and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing.

Plummer's film career began in 1958 when Sidney Lumet cast him as a young writer in Stage Struck. That same year, Plummer played the lead in Nicholas Ray's film Wind Across the Everglades (1958). That same year, he appeared in the live television drama Little Moon of Alban with Julie Harris, for which he received his first Emmy Award nomination. He also appeared with Harris in the 1958 television adaptation of Johnny Belinda and played Torvald Helmer to Harris' Nora in a 1959 television version of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.

In 1960, he played Philip the Bastard in King John and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet.

In 1962, he played the title roles in both Cyrano de Bergerac and Macbeth, returning in 1967 to play Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra.

In April 1961, he appeared as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He also appeared with the RSC in May 1961 in the lead role of Richard III.

He made his London debut on June 11, 1961, playing King Henry II in Jean Anouilh's Becket with the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre, directed by Peter Hall. The production later transferred to the Globe for a December 1961 to April 1962 run. For his performance, Plummer won the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor.

More information: Vanity Fair

His next film, the Oscar-winning The Sound of Music, made cinematic history, becoming the all-time top-grossing film, eclipsing Gone with the Wind. Plummer remains widely known for his portrayal of Captain Von Trapp due to the box office success and continued popularity of The Sound of Music (1965), a role which he once described as so awful and sentimental and gooey. He found all aspects of making the film unpleasant, except working with Andrews, and he avoided using its name, instead calling it that movie, S&M, or The Sound of Mucus.

On screen, Plummer portrayed the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo (1970). The Pyx (1973) was his first Canadian film. He also appeared in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) playing Rudyard Kipling alongside Michael Caine and Sean Connery. He also appeared in the comedy The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), alongside Peter Sellers and The Silent Partner (1978) opposite Elliott Gould. He appeared in Aces High (1976), International Velvet (1978), and Murder by Decree (1979), playing Sherlock Holmes.

In 2000, Plummer starred as Sir David Maxwell Fyfe in the Primetime Emmy Award-winning Nuremberg (2000) starring Alec Baldwin, Brian Cox and Max Von Sydow. 

Plummer received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Mike Mills' independent comedy drama film Beginners (2011) starring Ewan McGregor, and Mélanie Laurent.

Plummer was announced as the winner at the 84th Academy Awards. Plummer's win made him, at age 82, the oldest actor to win an Academy Award. When he accepted the award, he quipped You're only two years older than me, darling. Where have you been all my life?.

More information: The Guardian

Most actors come from the streets,
and their rise to fame is guided by a natural anger.
It was harder to find that rage coming from a gentle background.

Christopher Plummer