Peter O'Toole

Peter O’Toole arrived in the Jordanian desert with a sun-scorched face and a contract that other, more famous actors had turned down. David Lean needed a face that could hold the close-up across three hours of footage, and in that blue-eyed young man he found a strange mix of fragility and madness. In 1962, the release of Lawrence of Arabia catapulted him to stardom in a violent way he never quite learned to handle. That nearly year-long shoot in sand and extreme heat defined his career and also his health.

That shoot was a sandy hell.

Despite the English gentleman image he projected on screen, he was born in Ireland and always kept a rebellious, somewhat chaotic spirit. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art alongside Albert Finney and Alan Bates, but his style was different from that of his generation's peers. O’Toole was not after the gritty realism of the sixties; he preferred a grandiose, technical theatricality. In 1964 he starred in Becket opposite Richard Burton, and that was where one of the most destructive, alcohol-soaked friendships in film history began.

They drank because that was what was expected of them. But O’Toole's body held up less well than those of his partying buddies, and in the mid-1970s doctors had to remove part of his stomach and his pancreas. That surgery left him cadaverously thin, which he used to play darker or more eccentric characters. In 1972 he filmed The Ruling Class, in which he played a nobleman who believed he was Jesus Christ, proving that his range went far beyond historical epics.

The record of silent defeats

O'Toole's relationship with the Academy Awards is one of the most talked-about statistics among critics in Madrid and London. He received his first Oscar nomination in 1963 for playing T.E. Lawrence and lost. After that he accumulated nominations for Becket, The Lion in Winter, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and The Ruling Class without winning a single statuette. Academy members admired his talent but feared his unpredictable temperament and his long absences from the commercial circuit.

In 1980, he returned to the front lines with Profesión: El especialista, playing a brilliant, tyrannical film director. It was his sixth nomination, and once again he went home empty-handed. Two years later, in 1982, he repeated the move with Mi año favorito, where he essentially parodied himself as a boozy, charming has-been of the movies. The industry respected him, but the big prize always seemed to slip through his fingers due to timing or internal politics.

And the bet on being forgotten never came true.

In 2003 the Academy decided to award him an honorary Oscar for his entire professional career. At first O'Toole turned the award down in a letter, because he still felt strong enough to win one in direct competition. He asked the academy members to wait until he turned eighty before giving him the consolation prize. In the end his daughter convinced him to accept the recognition, and he appeared at the ceremony with white hair and the same sharp gaze as always.

A Retreat Away from the Spotlight

His final working years were marked by supporting roles in big productions that sought his veteran prestige. In 2004 he appeared in the film Troy, playing King Priam, and his scene with Brad Pitt was the highlight of a movie loaded with digital effects. He also voiced food critic Anton Ego in the animated film Ratatouille in 2007, delivering a final monologue that many consider his best performance legacy.

But his health was not iron.

In 2006 he earned his eighth and final Oscar nomination for Venus, in which he played an aging actor in love with a much younger woman. He lost to Forest Whitaker, closing his nomination run with a record of eight nominations and zero wins in competitive categories. That figure perfectly captures his status as an eternal outsider in Hollywood, despite being one of the most recognizable faces of the twentieth century.

In July 2012 he announced his definitive retirement from acting in a brief, curt statement. He explained that he no longer had the heart to go on, and that the craft had abandoned him before he had abandoned the craft. He spent his final months at his London home, away from the cameras and the social events he had frequented so often in his youth. He died at London's Wellington Hospital on December 14, 2013, at the age of 81.