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Peter O'Toole Biography

in full Peter Seamus O'Toole

(1932–)

Related Works

Films
1959 Kidnapped
1960 The Day They Robbed the Bank of England

1960 The Savage Innocents
1962 Lawrence of Arabia (Oscar nom)
1964 Becket (Oscar nom)
1964 Lord Jim
1965 What's New Pussycat?
1966 How to Steal a Million
1966 The Bible
1967 The Night of the Generals
1968 Great Catherine
1968 The Lion in Winter (Oscar nom)
1969 Goodbye Mr Chips (Oscar nom)
1971 Murphy's War
1971 Under Milk Wood
1972 The Ruling Class (Oscar nom)
1972 Man of La Mancha
1975 Rosebud
1975 Man Friday
1977 Foxtrot
1978 Power Play
1979 Zulu Dawn
1980 The Stunt Man (Oscar nom)
1982 My Favorite Year (Oscar nom)
1984 Supergirl
1985 Creator
1986 Club Paradise
1987 High Spirits
1987 The Last Emperor
1990 Wings of Fame
1991 King Ralph
1991 Rebecca's Daughters
1997 Fairytale: A True Story
1997 Phantoms
1999 Molokai: The Story of Father Damien
2004 Troy
2005 One Night With the King
2005 Lassie
2006 Venus
2006 Romeo and Me
Television
1998 Coming Home
1999 Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
2005 Casanova

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(born August 2, 1932, Connemara, County Galway, Ire.) Irish stage and film actor whose range extends from classical drama to contemporary farce.

O'Toole grew up in Leeds, England, and was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He was a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post in his teens and made his amateur stage debut at Leeds Civic Theatre. After serving two years in the Royal Navy, he acted with the Bristol Old Vic Company from 1955 to 1958 and made his London debut as Peter Shirley in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (1956). He appeared with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in 1960 in highly praised performances as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and he played the lead in Hamlet for the inaugural production of the National Theatre in London in 1963. A prominent film star by this point in his career, O'Toole continued to appear on stages throughout the world to great acclaim. He was named associate director of the Old Vic in 1980.

O'Toole made his motion picture debut in Kidnapped in 1960 and two years later became an international star for his portrayal of T.E. Lawrence in David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In 1964 he played Henry II in Becket, and he had the title role in Lord Jim (1965). He played Henry II again in The Lion in Winter (1968), a film notable for the witty verbal sparring matches between O'Toole and costar Katharine Hepburn. The Ruling Class (1972), a controversial black comedy that has become a cult classic, cast O'Toole as a schizophrenic English earl with a messiah complex. Personal problems contributed to a decline in his popularity during the 1970s, but he made a strong comeback in the early '80s with three well-received efforts. He played a duplicitous and domineering movie director in The Stunt Man (1980), and his performance as the Roman commander Cornelius Flavius Silva in the acclaimed television miniseries Masada (1981) was hailed as one of the finest of his career. His most popular vehicle during this period was My Favorite Year (1982), an affectionate satire on the early days of television, in which O'Toole plays Alan Swann, a faded, Errol Flynn-type swashbuckling screen star with a penchant for tippling and troublemaking.