The Unofficial Peter O'Toole Pages!

By ROBERT SELLERS
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-566034/Last-man-standing-How-Peter-OToole-outlived-cinemas-biggest-hellraisers.html#

Another excerpt here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-565177/Born-raise-hell-The-reckless-passion-drove-Britains-extraordinary-film-stars-on.html#

As a teenager, Peter O'Toole scribbled a pledge in his notebook: "I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony."

How right he was. Now 75 and still going strong, even he could surely never have predicted quite how uncommon his life would prove to be, or how churned up those smooth sands might become.

A natural eccentric, Peter O'Toole's legendary love of drinking only accentuated his off-beat behaviour, leaving the world agog at his escapades when fame threw a spotlight on them.

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Two of a kind: O'Toole as a legendary drinker Jeffrey Bernard

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Born to raise hell: The reckless passion that drove four of Britain's most extraordinary film stars on
This was a man who travelled the world yet never wore a watch or carried a wallet. Nor, on leaving his house, did he ever take his keys with him.

"I just hope some bastard's in," he'd say.

More than once, when someone was not in, O'Toole found himself having to explain to the police why he was breaking into his own property.

Peter O'Toole was born in 1932 in Connemara, Ireland, for which he retained a lifelong affection, although he moved to Leeds at the age of just one.

The neighbourhood where O'Toole grew up was rough, and three of his playmates were later hanged for murder. "I'm not from the working class," O'Toole liked to say. "I'm from the criminal class."

Although it was his mother, Connie, who instilled in O'Toole a strong sense of literature, by far the biggest influence in his young life was his father, Patrick, a bookie who was often drunk.

One day, Patrick stood his young son up on the mantelpiece and said: "Jump, boy. I'll catch you. Trust me."

When O'Toole jumped, his father withdrew his arms, leaving the boy splattered on the hard stone floor. The lesson, said his father, was "never trust any bastard".

Later, father and son often got plastered together, such as the occasion in London when Patrick came down from Leeds in 1959.

The O'Tooles got slaughtered and as everyone retired to bed, Peter lay spread-eagled on the floor, "not asleep, but crucified", as he later said.

Patrick tried lifting his flagging son to his feet, but to no avail. Instead he opened another bottle and joined him on the floor. That's where the pair were found the following afternoon.

O'Toole's childhood was dogged by ill health, and although he could read by the age of three, he did not attend school regularly until he was 11.

He left two years later with no qualifications and one ambition: to sell second-hand Jaguars.

When this failed to materialise, he landed a job on his local newspaper, the Yorkshire Evening News.

Starting as a tea boy, O'Toole did a stint as a reporter, covering stories with the likes of future columnist Keith Waterhouse and author Barbara Taylor Bradford.

He quickly concluded, however, that this was not the career for him, a view shared by his editor.

"I soon found out that, rather than chronicling events, I wanted to be the event," he said.

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Hellraisers to the end: Richard Harris with Peter O'Toole

To help achieve this, he landed a scholarship at RADA in a class that include future stars Alan Bates and Albert Finney.

In 1959, O'Toole was cast as a Cockney sergeant in the play The Long And The Short And The Tall at the Royal Court Theatre.

His understudy was a young Michael Caine, and one Saturday night after the show O'Toole invited him to a restaurant he knew.

Eating a plate of egg and chips was the last thing Caine remembered, until he woke up in broad daylight in a strange flat.

"What time is it?" he inquired. "Never mind what time it is," said O'Toole. "What f***ing day is it?"

It turned out that it was five o'clock in the afternoon two days later. Curtain-up was at eight.

Back at the theatre, the stage manager was waiting for them with the news that the restaurant owner had been in and banned them from his establishment for life.

Caine was about to ask what they'd done when O'Toole whispered: "Never ask what you did. It's better not to know."

Most evenings after the show, O'Toole would enjoy a long walk around Covent Garden. Sometimes if he was in the mood, he'd scale the wall of Lloyds bank.

The first time he took his future wife, the actress Sian Phillips, on one of these nocturnal jaunts, she was startled when he began his ascent of the north face of the building.

But after a few nights she came to accept that, by O'Toole's standards anyway, it was quite normal.

It was the sheer unpredictability of the man that had attracted her to him in the first place.

He once showed up in a sports car yelling: "Get your passport, we're off!" Heading for Rome, they took a wrong turning and ended up in Yugoslavia.

By the end of the trip, Sian's nerves were in shreds as a result of O'Toole's manic driving.

After he'd once taken a friend to Amsterdam, the unfortunate woman later confided to Sian: "He should never drive anything. He's lovely, but I thought we were going to die."

Over the years, cars and O'Toole have never been the best of friends. One woman who accepted a lift from him swore afterwards that she would never do so again.

During the journey, he had ignored a Keep Left sign on the grounds that it was "silly", and also narrowly avoided driving down a flight of steps.

O'Toole's first proper film credit was a small role in Walt Disney's 1959 movie Kidnapped. Amazingly, on his very first day he overslept, and the angry film company had to phone the home of the actor Kenneth Griffith, where O'Toole was staying, to find out where he was.

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Extraordinary quartet: Richard Burton, Oliver Reed, Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole

Griffith popped his head round O'Toole's bedroom door - he was fast asleep. "O'Toole," he shouted. "You're 45 minutes late."

Lifting his bedraggled head off the pillow, O'Toole asked if his car had arrived.

"No," said Griffith. O'Toole's head crashed back onto the pillow. "No car, no me," he said.

"From that day to this, there has been a Rolls-Royce waiting for him," Griffith once revealed. Even on his first day, O'Toole was behaving like the star he would later become.

The star of Kidnapped was the Australian actor Peter Finch, a mighty drinker. Not surprisingly, he and O'Toole became great friends.

During one of their legendary boozing sessions in Ireland in the Sixties they were refused a drink because it was after closing time.

Both stars decided that the only course of action was to buy the pub, so they wrote out a cheque for it.

The following morning, after sobering up, the pair rushed back to the scene of the crime. Luckily the landlord hadn't cashed the cheque and disaster was averted.

O'Toole and Finch remained friends with the pub owner, and when he died his wife invited them to his funeral.

Both knelt at the graveside as the coffin was lowered in, sobbing noisily. When Finch turned away, unable to stand it any more, O'Toole saw his friend's face change from a look of sorrow to one of total astonishment.

They were at the wrong funeral; their friend was being buried 100 yards away.

In his late 20s, O'Toole became the youngest leading man ever at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, where he took the opportunity to seal his growing reputation as a hellraiser.

At one after-show party O'Toole held court on stage sitting on a throne, sustained by two pedal bins on either side of him, one full of beer, the other containing hard liquor into which he would alternately scoop two pint mugs.

But his tearaway existence was taking its toll, and O'Toole's doctors warned him that he needed to cut out the booze.

For the rest of the season, O'Toole made a great show of downing large quantities of milk, although he remained sceptical.

"I get drunk and disorderly and all that, but I don't think it's true that there is any danger of me destroying myself," he said.

When director David Lean was casting the lead in Lawrence Of Arabia in 1959, he favoured O'Toole, but producer Sam Spiegel had reservations because of his reputation.

Having seen his screen test, however, he had to admit they'd found their Lawrence.

Lawrence Of Arabia occupied O'Toole for two years, filming in seven different countries.

By the end of it, he'd lost 2st, received third-degree burns, sprained both ankles, torn ligaments in both his hip and thigh, dislocated his spine, broken his thumb, sprained his neck and been concussed twice.

But his extraordinary performance made him a star. Lawrence Of Arabia was a world-wide smash when it opened in 1962 and was hailed as one of cinema's true masterpieces.

"I woke up one morning to find I was famous," he said. "I bought a white Rolls-Royce and drove down Sunset Boulevard, wearing dark specs and a white suit, waving like the Queen Mum.

"Nobody took any f***ing notice, but I thoroughly enjoyed it."

His family life, however, was suffering. When one of his daughters was ill, he paid her a visit in the nursery. Days later, the child asked Sian: "You know that man who came to see me, Mummy - who is he?"

After that, Sian made a point of pinning up stills of O'Toole's current film or stage guises to avoid any misunderstandings.

The filming of the 1968 historical drama The Lion In Winter, in which O'Toole starred with Katharine Hepburn, was notable for a series of bizarre incidents.

Shooting a scene on a lake one day, O'Toole trapped his finger between two boats. "Bloody agony it was," he said. "Took the top right off."

O'Toole carried the tip of his finger back to shore, dipped it into a glass of brandy to sterilise it and then pushed it back on, wrapping it in a poultice.

Three weeks later he unwrapped it and there it was, all crooked and bent.

"I'd put it back the wrong way, probably because of the brandy, which I drank," explained O'Toole.

Another time, he awoke at 4am to discover that his bed was on fire.

"At first I tried to put the thing out myself, but I couldn't read the small print on the fire extinguisher," he said.

"By the time the first fireman arrived, I was so glad to see him I kissed him."

O'Toole didn't have much luck with fires. During a cottage holiday in Wales with Sian, he had decided to cook, although she had never seen him do so before.

"I can make the best French toast," he told her. Minutes later the stove exploded into flames.

They tried to extinguish the fire, but it was impossible, and they were driven out into the garden, where they watched in the rain as the kitchen burnt down.

Meanwhile, O'Toole's film career was hardly going from strength to strength. One of his commercial flops was the 1968 movie The Great Catherine, a moribund historical effort that hardly got a cinema run.

During filming, O'Toole's habit was to go back to his dressing room when not required, ostensibly to rest and learn his lines.

In reality, he opened a bottle of champagne and chatted to his minder, who drove him around and got him home safely after a night on the sauce.

One afternoon, director Gordon Fleming sent an assistant to fetch O'Toole.

The assistant found the dressing room empty, with a TV showing horse-racing from Sandown Park, not far from the studio.

Suddenly, the TV camera zoomed in and there, in the crowd, was O'Toole cheering on the horses.

A car was dispatched to bring the errant actor back to the studio. O'Toole arrived all smiles, thinking it was one big joke.

During the Sixties, O'Toole had blazed a mighty trail of hell-raising, but as the decade came to a close he was approaching his 40s and some wondered if he was getting tired of lugging around his reputation as a drunkard and general crank.

"The damage has been done," he lamented. "There is a legend, there is a myth: to protest is daft."

In 1975, when he was 43, matters were taken out of his hands. An abdominal irregularity he'd persistently ignored (he hated doctors) finally erupted and he was rushed into hospital for a major operation.

For years, O'Toole refused to say what the problem was. "My plumbing is no one's business but my own," he said.

In fact, O'Toole came as close to dying as you can without doing so. "It was a photo-finish, the surgeons said," he said.

There was so little of his digestive system left that any amount of alcohol could prove fatal. Having come so close to death, O'Toole was determined to live each day to the full.

"The time has come to stop roaming," he said. "The pirate ship has berthed. I can still make whoopee, but now I do it sober."

That was more than 30 years ago. Now, in his mid-70s, Peter O'Toole has outlived all his fellow hellraisers and is still very much in the game.

In 2004, he played Priam in the epic Troy, which also starred Orlando Bloom, Brad Pitt and Sean Bean, a self-confessed O'Toole aficionado.

"The first time I met him on the set," recalled Bean, "he was in a robe with a cigarette holder and he said: 'Sean, how are you, dear boy?' He was just how I imagined him to be."

Last year, O'Toole notched up his eighth Oscar nomination for his performance in Venus, the story of an almost wholly platonic romance between an elderly thespian and a 21-year-old girl.

O'Toole was delighted at the script and at his casting.

"No one better for a dirty old man who falls for a sluttish young woman," he said. Sadly, the coveted Oscar still eludes him, although he remains hopeful.

So O'Toole is the last surviving British reprobate. "The common denominator of all my friends is that they're dead," he said.

"There was a time when I felt like a perpendicular cuckoo clock, popping up and down in pulpits saying: 'Fear no more the heat o' the sun.' They were dying like flies."

But like all the other hellraisers, he has never once regretted the mistakes he made.

"I loved the drinking, and waking up in the morning to find I was in Mexico," he said. "It was part and parcel of being an idiot." Long may he continue.

EXTRACTED from Hellraisers: The Life And Times Of Burton, Harris, O'Toole & Reed by Robert Sellers, published by Preface on May 29 at £16.99. To order a copy for £15.30 (p&p free), call 0845 606 4206.

Posted by Hamish at 12:24 PM | Permalink

Pygmalion: accents are disappearing

It's a pity that Professor Henry Higgins wouldn't identify accents in London today

Melanie McDonagh

Pygmalion is returning to the London stage in a production for the Old Vic by Peter O'Toole. I can't wait. The play is, as George Bernard Shaw triumphantly observed, “so intensely didactic... that I delight in throwing it at the heads of the wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry that art should never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention that art should never be anything else.”

Shaw's Pygmalion is, however, a melancholy reminder that phonetically, England is not the place it once was. The first Act has a brilliant scene in which Henry Higgins is surrounded by an angry crowd and identifies in turn exactly where the people who address him come from. Eliza, he says decisively, comes from Lisson Grove, a bystander from Hoxton. But it is not only the lower orders he can place phonetically as exactly as a botanist might some exotic bloom - Freddy Eynsford Hill's sister is Earl's Court; his mother from Epsom; Colonel Pickering is Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge and India.

Is there any place where such a feat would still be possible? Certainly not London, where the accents of Hoxton, Earl's Court and Lisson Grove are indistinguishable, at least in terms of the white English. It's partly because few people in the capital actually live where their parents grew up, partly because London is now divided phonetically on generational, not local, grounds. Freddy's great-granddaughters almost certainly have the Australian uplift at the end of their sentences - you know?

His great-grandsons will sound a bit like Prince Harry, with a deliberately downbeat take on the vernacular. In fact, a really successful contemporary Sloane will sound a bit Rasta. It's a kind of survival mechanism - the phonetic equivalent of dressing from Gap - and with luck will stop you getting beaten up when you open your mouth in mixed company. The one place where, until recently, Professor Higgins's skills survived was Northern Ireland during the Troubles. There you could identify not just someone's religion but the part of town they came from as soon as they opened their mouth: you had to.

The other aspect of changing diction is something that Shaw would have disliked intensely - a diminution in articulacy. The one person I know who maintains the standard of elocution of the generation before last is the art critic Brian Sewell. But he insists he does not have an accent at all.

Of course, the old bores in linguistics departments will maintain that English is a vibrant, ever-changing language. So it is. But the fact that the multifarious accents of Shaw's time - including his own Protestant Irish diction - have disappeared as utterly as Nineveh and Tyre is a change for the worse.

Here's an article from 1987 on Peter and Amanda Plummer's Pygmalion production in New York.

Posted by Hamish at 09:22 AM | Permalink

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/otoole%20blasts%20west%20end%20dross_1064269

"(April 1, 2008) PETER O'TOOLE has slammed London theatre because artistic directors have turned the West End into "dross". The outspoken 75-year-old thespian is unimpressed with modern musicals and plays in the capital, accusing directors of ruining the art of acting. He rages, "Acting today is s**t. London theatre is a graveyard and it's all because of this whole invention of the director. The power of the actor has been taken away. "There are only three indispensable things: the audience, the actor and the author. The rest is dross.""

O'Toole's sentiments echo those of actor Kevin Spacey, owner of the Old Vic theatre in London, who most recently railed against the BBC's penchant for reality-show-style talent competitions, saying they express a bias for big-money musicals of the sort produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Posted by Hamish at 11:58 AM | Permalink

Peter appeared on Charlie Rose this week - whenever he's in New York he always takes time to sit down with Charlie for a decent interview.

( link: http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/03/24/1/a-conversation-with-actor-peter-otoole )

blog comments about the interview: here.

Posted by Hamish at 09:30 AM | Permalink

*Ahem* ... been a little busy what with kids and Easter and all. Finally got around to posting about this. As of Monday, the Unofficial Peter O'Toole Pages have been in operation for 10 years! A whole decade. WTF!

This board has never had banner advertising, never will - it's all about Peter and that's all it's about and I hope you like it and continue to use it.

On that note - I'll repeat my infrequent request for anecdotes, stories, photos, scans, etc. of your experiences with Peter O'Toole. It's nice to have a repository of reference material about the man but he is such a charmer it's always fun to read and publish how he interacts with people in real life.

Looking ahead, Peter's still busy with film and television work and the ever possible third volume of his memoirs, "Loitering with Intent" will hopefully be published in the next couple of years. All good!

Thanks for reading this site and thank you again to the many contributors who have made it the best place on the web for everything Peter O'Toole!

Cheers,
Hamish

Posted by Hamish at 04:17 PM | Permalink

Peter will be appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote his role as Pope Paul III in the March 30th episode of "The Tudors". I'll tape the appearance and post it here.

Update: Here's the interview in Quicktime .mov and .m4v formats.

Posted by Hamish at 08:39 AM | Permalink

Bertolucci's masterpiece biopic, "The Last Emperor", in which Peter O'Toole starred as the young emperor Pu Yi's tutor, is due to be re-released in a 4-disc Criterion Collection edition at the end of February. This is one of my favourite of O'Toole's many roles, I'll definitely be picking this one up!

See http://www.movieweb.com/dvd/news/95/26195.php for more details.

Posted by Hamish at 08:55 AM | Permalink

(from the New Zealand Herald)
Following on from 2006's critically acclaimed film No. 2, local director Toa Fraser has turned his hand to another high-profile project, Dean Spanley.

Based on the 1936 novel by Lord Dusanay, the film will star eight-time Oscar nominee Peter O'Toole and New Zealand's own Sam Neill.

Cast and crew are in New Zealand filming the final portion of the picture, after spending six weeks filming in Norfolk, England.

Set in the Edwardian era, the comedy looks at the relationship between master and dog, father and son.

Mark Vette, of TV One's The Funny Farm fame, is helping with the shoot, wrangling the film's furry stars. The New Zealand-British co-production is set for release later this year.

Posted by Hamish at 02:46 PM | Permalink

Marie-Noelle informs us that "Hellraisers: The Inebriated Life and Times of Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris and Oliver Reed" is due to be released. (from amazon:)

"This highly entertaining biography of four charismatic and much loved actors follows them through five decades of boozing, brawling and braggadocio.

At their career peaks, these four controversial actors had the whole world at their feet and lived through some of the wildest exploits Hollywood has ever seen. But all that fame had a price; Richard Burton’s liver was shot by the time he was 50, Richard Harris’s film career stalled for over a decade. Peter O’Toole’s drinking almost put him in the grave before his 43rd birthday, and Oliver Reed ended up dying prematurely.

This is the story of four of the greatest thespian boozers who ever walked — or staggered — off a film set into a pub. It’s a story of drunken binges of near biblical proportions, parties and orgies, broken marriages, drugs, riots and wanton sexual conquests. And yet these piss-artists were seemingly immune from the law. They got away with it because of their extraordinary acting talent and because the public loved them. They were truly the last of a breed, the last of the movie hellraisers.

About the Author
Robert Sellers is a former stand-up comedian and the author of biographies of Sting, Tom Cruise, two appreciations of the work of Sean Connery, and the definitive book on the Pythons: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

Thanks, Marie-Noelle!

Posted by Hamish at 11:29 AM | Permalink

Reader Malcolm informs me that Peter is shooting a new film this November called "My Talks with Dean Spanley"... produced by Alan Harris and Matthew Metcalfe, and directed by Toa Fraser. Not much in the way of details yet - I'll update as I get them.

Peter's got a busy year coming up! According to imdb.com he's involved in at least 5 films that are slated for 2007-2008 release.

Update: Accoridng to the Hollywood Reporter, The castlist for Spanley includes Jeremy Northam and Sam Neill... The film will be set in Edwardian England, "where upper lips are always stiff and men from the Colonies are not entirely to be trusted, [the film] reveals just how deep an Englishman's love for his dog can go."

Posted by Hamish at 02:32 PM | Permalink

Peter O'Toole - Hellraiser - The Biography is due to be released soon in the UK. Written by Carolyn Soutar, who has also penned bios of comedian Dave Allen, ballet star Rudolph Nureyev, this is an unofficial account of O'Toole's life - no doubt because O'Toole himself isn't finished with living and is apparently spending part of this year completing the long-awaited third volume of his memoirs, "Loitering with Intent". I've ordered a copy of Hellraiser and I'll post a review when it comes in.

* side note I wonder if they will change the title of the book for the North American release (if any) due to the title being the same as the successful horror film series "Hellraiser".

Posted by Hamish at 09:04 AM | Permalink

September 18th will see the re-release of MASADA, the epic mini-series, in which Peter starred Silva, a Roman general.

Posted by Hamish at 08:08 PM | Permalink

O'Toole Handed the Baton
(from this article at filmstew)

Back in the 1960’s in Abington, Pennsylvania, the local high school relay team was celebrated for having won a prestigious relay championship. Doesn’t really sound like the kind of material that might overlap with the talents of eight-time Oscar nominee Peter O’Toole, does it? Be that as it may, O’Toole is indeed on board as one of the co-stars of Baton, a fictitious tale taking its cue from that time period; it begins filming in Abington next week and is being associate produced by local boy Jay Staats, a 1963 graduate of Abington High. The drama leaves the Pennsylvania locales when its young protagonist Sean (Thomas Easley) travels to Montreal to live with the leader of the World Peace Organization, played by O’Toole. All against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. The now 75-year-old actor (his birthday was last week, August 2nd) has remained extremely busy since he was in the running for Best Actor with Venus. In addition to voicing the food critic in Ratatouille and playing a king in this week’s new fantasy film release Stardust, he’s got close to half a dozen things in the works or in the can, including an episode of Showtime's The Tudors and the CBC Canadian miniseries Iron Road. O’Toole’s part is no doubt a small one, but still, it is impressive that this indie production was able to score such a name. The film marks the directorial debut of Jeff January, a veteran First Assistant Director, and also co-stars James Brolin.

Religion a key part of portfolio for actor

(from this article at the Columbus dispatch - reprinted from the New York Times) August 1 2007

By Anita Gates

DUBLIN, Ireland -- On a typically drizzly Irish day, protected by a huge green umbrella, Peter O'Toole crossed a movie-studio lot.

He looked elegant in white papal robes and a red cape, with a characteristic glint in his world-famous eyes.

Spotting a new acquaintance, he called out: "Did you see Page 8 of The Irish Times?"

He proceeded to read aloud a report about Protestant leader Ian Paisley and his criticism of Pope Benedict XVI.

O'Toole, 74, had just finished filming his portrayal of a 16th-century pope, Paul III, in the much-discussed Showtime series The Tudors, to begin a second season in the spring.

Even out of character, he seemed happy to discuss religion.

"I am a retired Christian," he announced playfully, relaxing in his trailer at the end of the day.

His costume had been replaced by pants, a sweater, a jacket and an ascot.

Six decades after his altar-boy childhood and subsequent loss of faith, O'Toole said, he looked elsewhere for guidance.

"I suggest that an education and reading and facts aren't bad things on which to ponder a few notions," he said.

Yet he acknowledged a "very strong and very real" spiritual side.

"No one can take Jesus away from me," he said, having just expressed an affection for the Sermon on the Mount ("Blessed are the meek . . .").

"There's no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance with enormous notions -- such as peace."

The character O'Toole plays will spend most of next season in an epistolary battle with Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) over the king's insistence on a divorce from Catherine of Aragon so he can marry Anne Boleyn.

(Some dramatic license was taken: The real pope at the time was Clement VII, played in last season's brief papal scenes by Ian McElhinney; when O'Toole came aboard, producers made him Clement's successor, Paul III, but by that time, Boleyn was dead.)

Few of The Tudors' actors have scenes with O'Toole because the pope is in Rome, but they were on the set to be photographed with him or simply shake his hand.

"He's the only poster I've ever had on my wall," said Meyers, recalling his youthful adulation after seeing Lawrence of Arabia for the first time. "I just hope that I can hold up against him."

Michael Hirst, who has written every episode of the series so far, said he was delighted to have O'Toole speaking his dialogue.

"The pope was extremely cynical, so what I wanted was to hear the character of a man who is spiritual but also worldly," Hirst said. "He says something about, 'The French king has guns and soldiers, whereas we must make do with truth and beauty.' "

Over a glass of wine, O'Toole chatted about past roles, which have included a cardinal in the TV production Joan of Arc, angels in The Bible and a British lord who thinks he is Jesus in The Ruling Class.

He recalled also having played a pope before, onstage when he was 24, filling in at the last minute for an older actor.

Although he reluctantly accepted an honorary Oscar in 2003, O'Toole has never won a competitive Academy Award despite eight nominations.

O'Toole smiled, got up to retrieve a small spiral notebook and revealed inside a tiny, Oscar-shaped piece of golden paper: a bit of confetti, he said, from a party after this year's ceremony.

"So," he said pleasantly, "I've got my own, thank you very much indeed."

Posted by Hamish at 11:55 AM | Permalink

Today (August 2nd) is Peter O'Toole's 75th birthday! Happy Birthday, Peter!

I have to wonder what he's doing with himself today... 75 is a nice number - one of those birthdays they get the Queen to send a card for.

Posted by Hamish at 09:01 AM | Permalink

(from the July 26th New York Times)

Papal Robes, and Deference, Fit O’Toole Snugly
By ANITA GATES

DUBLIN — On a typically drizzly Irish day Peter O’Toole crossed a movie studio lot, protected by a huge green umbrella. He was elegant in white papal robes and red cape, with a characteristic glint in his world-famous eyes.

Spotting a new acquaintance, he called out, “Did you see Page 8 of The Irish Times?” He proceeded to read aloud the report about the Protestant leader Ian Paisley’s criticism of Pope Benedict XVI for the “excommunication of all Christendom” by endorsing a Vatican declaration that Roman Catholicism was the only true church.

Mr. O’Toole, 74, had just completed filming his portrayal of the 16th-century pope Paul III in Showtime’s much-talked-about series “The Tudors,” which returns for its second season next spring. Even out of character he seemed happy to discuss religion.

“I am a retired Christian,” he announced playfully, relaxing in his trailer at the end of a hard workday. His costume had been replaced by sweater, jacket, pants and an ascot.

Six decades after his altar-boy childhood and subsequent loss of faith, Mr. O’Toole said he looked elsewhere for life guidance. “I suggest that an education and reading and facts aren’t bad things on which to ponder a few notions,” he said. But he acknowledged a “very strong and very real” spiritual side to his nature.

“No one can take Jesus away from me,” he said, having just expressed an affection for the Sermon on the Mount (“Blessed are the meek,” etc.). “There’s no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such as peace.”

Mr. O’Toole’s character will spend most of next season in an epistolary battle with Henry VIII (the equally blue-eyed Jonathan Rhys Meyers) over the king’s insistence on a divorce from Catherine of Aragon so he can marry Anne Boleyn. The real pope at the time was Clement VII, but in last season’s brief papal scenes Clement was played by Ian McElhinney. So when Mr. O’Toole came on board, the series made him Clement’s successor, Paul III, instead. (Actually, by Paul III’s time, Anne was already in her grave. But what’s a little dramatic license among friends?

The “Tudors” set can look a bit like the Island of Lost Handsome British Actors. Besides Mr. Rhys Meyers (who turns 30 on July 27 and plays a particularly young, fit Henry), there are, among others, Jeremy Northam as Thomas More, James Frain as Thomas Cromwell and the newcomer Henry Cavill as Henry’s hunky brother-in-law Charles Brandon.

But the presence of Mr. O’Toole caused a stir. Few of the actors have scenes with him because the pope is in Rome, but several managed to be on the set to be photographed with him or simply shake his hand.

“He’s the only poster I’ve ever had on my wall,” Mr. Rhys Meyers said, recalling his youthful adulation after seeing “Lawrence of Arabia” for the first time. “I just hope that I can hold up against him.”

But Mr. Rhys Meyers quickly regained his kingly attitude. “I’d love to have had a scene with Peter,” he said over tea in his own trailer. “It would have been war. It’s war anyway.”

Michael Hirst, who has written every episode of the series so far, said he was delighted to have Mr. O’Toole speaking his dialogue. “The pope was extremely cynical, so what I wanted was to hear the character of a man who is spiritual but also worldly,” Mr. Hirst said. “He says something about, ‘The French king has guns and soldiers, whereas we must make do with truth and beauty.’ ”

Mr. Hirst mentioned another cherished line. It was part of a discussion of Henry’s infatuation with the cunning Anne Boleyn, and it reflected the past of Paul III, who had mistresses and children.

“You and I have done well to escape the craft of women,” the pope tells Cardinal Campeggio (John Kavanagh). “Celibacy is an immense relief.”

Mr. O’Toole, who was married to the British actress Sian Phillips for 20 years (they divorced in 1979), recited the same line during his interview, which ended with a couple of glasses of red wine (a Margaux), one of his current drinks of choice. (The other is whisky.)

He chatted about other subjects: his lifelong avoidance of physical exercise but enjoyment of sports (he professed to be taking up archery), his background (born in Connemara, reared in Leeds, England, the son of a racetrack bookmaker), training (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London) and past roles, which have included a cardinal in a television “Joan of Arc,” angels in “The Bible” and a British lord convinced he is Jesus in “The Ruling Class.”

He recalled having played a pope before, onstage when he was 24 and filled in at the last minute for an older actor. (In “Becket” he was on the other side, playing a king, Henry II, who ordered the murder of the archbishop.)

Ultimately the subject of the Oscar was broached. Although he reluctantly accepted an honorary one in 2003, Mr. O’Toole has never won an American Academy Award and has surpassed the record of his old friend Richard Burton as the actor nominated most often (eight times, most recently for the 2006 film “Venus”) without ever winning.

Mr. O’Toole smiled, got up to retrieve a small spiral notebook and revealed inside a tiny, Oscar-shaped piece of golden paper: a bit of confetti, he said, from a party after this year’s ceremony.

“So,” he said pleasantly, “I’ve got my own, thank you very much indeed.”

Posted by Hamish at 10:02 AM | Permalink

Hamish's Note: Lorcan has worked with Joan Plowright before, as Desmond in last year's "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont"

Hickox thriller rolls in England
By ARCHIE THOMAS (Variety)
LONDON — Brit thesp Nathalie Press will take the lead in psychological thriller "Knife Edge." Anthony Hickox's pic is about a Wall Street trader whose efforts to settle in a rural English idyll with her young son are wrecked by nightmarish visions.

Hugh Bonneville plays a family lawyer whose involvement with Press's character goes beyond the professional.

Also appearing are Joan Plowright, Matthieu Boujenah, Tamsin Egerton, Jamie Harris, Lorcan O'Toole and newcomer Miles Ronayne.

Press came to the fore in 2004's "My Summer of Love" and turned heads last year in Andrea Arnold's critically acclaimed drama "Red Road."

Pippa Cross ("Shooting Dogs") is producing alongside Janette Day and Fee Combe. Exec producing is Shelagh Miller, Peter Graham and Stephen Hays.

The chiller is from an original screenplay by Hickox, Robin Squire and Combe.

"Knife Edge" is a Seven Arts presentation in association with 120dB Films of a Knife Edge Films production. Seven Arts is handling worldwide sales, including the German, Russian and Eastern European rights, acquired by Telepool.

Posted by Hamish at 01:19 PM | Permalink

Peter O'Toole will join the cast of Showtime's 'The Tudors' in the second season of the cable television drama. He's booked for seven(!) episodes, filming in Ireland later this year and airing next spring. He will play Pope Paul III in a recounting of the 16th century showdown with Henry VIII, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers - PPIII excommunicated the King over his divorce from first wife Catherine of Aragon, resulting in the historic break between England and the Roman Catholic Church. This should be interesting viewing, not just because of the talent Peter will no doubt bring to the role, but also because of his history of negativity toward the Catholic school system he was brought up in.

(Post Chronicle) (cinematical)

Posted by Hamish at 09:37 AM | Permalink

Longtime reader Jeff Swindoll has provided a nice review of the (US) DVD release of Venus over at dvd.monstersandcritics.com:

I'm impotent, of course, but I can still take a theoretical interest.

Continue reading "Venus arrives on DVD; Review by Jeff Swindoll" »

Posted by Hamish at 01:20 PM | Permalink

(from this story)

"Ultimately, the surprise nominee did not turn out to be the surprise winner – The Last King of Scotland's Forest Whitaker took home the golden statuette instead, beating Gosling, Peter O'Toole, Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith.

But Gosling got his golden memory.

"I had a great moment with Peter O'Toole, though it's not like he mentioned my film or anything," Gosling says.

"We were both waiting for our cars in the parking lot. He bent down and picked up a piece of Oscar confetti, gave it to me and said, 'I'd like to present you with your Academy Award'," Gosling laughs.

"Then he said 'I have mine' and shook his little Oscar confetti piece in his hand.

"And I thought that was probably the best thing. If that's my only experience of the Oscars, it's the greatest. There's nothing better than losing with Peter O'Toole. I can't think of anything cooler than that.""

Posted by Hamish at 03:58 PM | Permalink

Peter will star as King of Stormhold in the fantasy film, "Stardust", due to be released this August. Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro also star.

Posted by Hamish at 01:31 PM | Permalink