LONDON - Peter O’Toole, the charismatic actor who achieved stardom as Lawrence of Arabia and was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, has died, his agent said Sunday. He was 81.
O’Toole died Saturday after a long illness, Steve Kenis said in a brief statement.
The family was overwhelmed “by the outpouring of real love and affection being expressed towards him, and to us, during this unhappy time. … In due course there will be a memorial filled with song and good cheer, as he would have wished,” O’Toole’s daughter, Kate, said in the statement.
O’Toole got his first Oscar nomination for 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia, his last for Venus in 2006. With that, he set the record for most nominations without ever winning, although he had accepted an honorary Oscar in 2003.
A reformed - but unrepentant - hell-raiser, O’Toole long suffered from ill health. Always thin, he had grown wraith-like in later years, his famously handsome face eroded by years of hard drinking.
But nothing diminished his flamboyant manner and candor.
“If you can’t do something willingly and joyfully, then don’t do it,” he once said. “If you give up drinking, don’t go moaning about it; go back on the bottle. Do. As. Thou. Wilt.”
O’Toole began his acting career as one of the most exciting young talents on the British stage. His 1955 Hamlet, at the Bristol Old Vic, was critically acclaimed.
International stardom came in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. With only a few minor movie roles previously, O’Toole was unknown to most moviegoers when they first saw him as T.E. Lawrence.
His sensitive portrayal of Lawrence’s complex character garnered O’Toole his first Oscar nomination.
In 1964’s Becket, O’Toole played King Henry II to Richard Burton’s Thomas Becket and earned another Oscar nomination.
O’Toole played Henry again in 1968 in The Lion in Winter for his third Oscar nomination.
Four more nominations followed: in 1968 for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, in 1971 for The Ruling Class, in 1980 for The Stunt Man and in 1982 for My Favorite Year. It was almost a quarter-century before he received his eighth and last for Venus.
Seamus Peter O’Toole was born Aug. 2, 1932, the son of Irish bookie Patrick “Spats” O’Toole and his wife, Constance.
After a teenage foray into journalism at the Yorkshire Evening Post and national military service with the navy, O’Toole auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and won a scholarship.
He went from there to the Bristol Old Vic and soon was on his way to stardom, helped along by an early success in 1959 at London’s Royal Court Theatre in The Long and The Short and The Tall.
The image of the renegade hell-raiser stayed with O’Toole for decades, although he gave up drinking in 1975 after serious health problems and major surgery.
He did not, however, give up smoking unfiltered Gauloises cigarettes in an ebony holder. That and his penchant for green socks, overcoats and scarves lent him a rakish air and suited his fondness for drama.
A month before his 80th birthday in 2012, O’Toole announced his retirement from a career that he said had fulfilled him emotionally and financially.
“However, it’s my belief that one should decide for oneself when it is time to end one’s stay,” he said. “So I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell.”
The 1980 Macbeth in which he starred was a critical disaster of heroic proportions.
In 1989, however, O’Toole had a big stage success with Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell.
The honorary Oscar came 20 years after his seventh nomination for My Favorite Year.
O’Toole divorced Welsh actress Sian Phillips in 1979 after 19 years of marriage. The couple had two daughters, Kate and Pat.
A brief relationship with American model Karen Somerville led to the birth of his son Lorcan in 1983.
Information for this article was contributed by Raphael Satter of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 12/16/2013