Peter O'Toole dies at 81: Film legend and Hollywood hellraiser who shot to fame as Lawrence of Arabia had suffered from long illness

Peter O’Toole has died at the age of 81, it was announced last night.

The veteran actor – best known for his starring role in Sir David Lean’s 1962 film classic Lawrence Of Arabia – died on Saturday at the Wellington hospital in London after a long illness.

Tributes were led by Prime Minister David Cameron, who declared that Lawrence Of Arabia was his ‘favourite film’, with O’Toole’s performance ‘stunning’.

Legendary: O'Toole was one of the film industry's most well-respected stars

Most famous role: Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia - a film which put the actor on the map

Legend: Peter O'Toole has died at the age of 81 - just one year after he announced his retirement

The acclaimed star was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed during his career



The actor’s agent, Steve Kenis, said: ‘He was one of a kind in the very best sense and a giant in his field.’

O’Toole’s daughter, actress Kate O’Toole, said: ‘His family are very appreciative and completely 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.’

A reformed but unrepentant hell-raiser, O’Toole long suffered from ill health, but continued to amuse and delight those he met. Broadcaster Michael Parkinson said it was hard to be too sad about the news of his passing. ‘Peter didn’t leave much of life unlived, did he? he said, chuckling.

Comedian David Walliams tweeted: ‘He was hugely entertaining. The greatest company. A legend on screen and off.’

Stephen Fry wrote: ‘Oh what terrible news. Farewell Peter O’Toole. I had the honour of directing him in a scene. Monster, scholar, lover of life, genius ...’

Irish President Michael D Higgins said Ireland and the world had lost ‘one of the giants of film and theatre’.

Film role: Lawrence Of Arabia starred Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence and was his most famous work

The charismatic actor – whose early life is something of a mystery – achieved instant stardom as Lawrence Of Arabia and went on to be nominated eight times for a best-actor Academy Award. However, he ended up with the unenviable record of being the most nominated actor never to win.

Following Lawrence Of Arabia, other nominations followed for Becket (1964), The Lion In Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favourite Year (1982).

In 2003 he was awarded an honorary Oscar, but initially refused to accept it on the grounds that he was not yet 80 years old – and might still win it for a movie role.

He duly received his eighth best-actor nomination for Venus, but failed again and finally accepted his honorary award.

The news of his death comes just one year after he formally retired from acting on the eve of his 80th birthday.

He declared it was time to ‘chuck in the sponge’, and said that his career on stage and screen had fulfilled him emotionally and financially – bringing ‘me together with fine people, good companions with whom I’ve shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits’.

He concluded: ‘It’s my belief that one should decide for oneself when it is time to end one’s stay.’

Despite this, he emerged from retirement this year to star in Katherine Of Alexandria, which is yet to be released.

O’Toole was raised in northern England and worked briefly as a journalist and then a radioman in the Navy during his National Service. He went on to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where his classmates included Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Richard Harris.

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.

He also attracted rave reviews in the 1990s in the lead role in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell.

Prodigious talent: Peter was considered one of the industry's most talented stars

The charmer with rage behind his ice blue eyes





By PETER LEWIS



For a poor Irish boy, Peter O’Toole’s rise to stardom was meteoric. But having risen like a rocket, he fell like one, nearly into oblivion. Only in his 60s did he recover some of his earlier standing as an actor.

His fame — or rather notoriety — as a hellraiser never deserted him, even after he had been on the wagon for years.

O’Toole would burst into a room carrying an open champagne bottle in one hand and an ebony cigarette holder in the other, with coat-tails flying impetuously.

Women melted at his tall, lean, good looks, and the pixieish air of mischief and sense of danger he created around himself.

In truth he was not a compulsive Don Juan. Early on, he fell for the Welsh actress Sian Phillips and when their 20-year marriage ended — to his chagrin — he formed no other romantic relationship that lasted.

Triumphant: Delighting theatre audiences in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell at the Old Vic

Another hit role: What's New Pussycat? starring Romy Schneider, Capucine, Paula Prentis, Ursula Andress and Peter O'Toole

n later years he reflected: ‘I’ve had enough of marriage. I don’t really like people making personal demands of me. Actually, I’m impossible to live with.’

His career’s highs and lows were his sudden appearance as a fully-fledged international star as Lawrence Of Arabia in 1962, and his notoriously ridiculed return to the stage as Macbeth in 1980, perhaps the biggest theatrical disaster to befall any actor of his time.

But his brilliance in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, in which he appeared intermittently through the Nineties, saved him from being written off as a has-been.

O’Toole and drink always seemed to be inseparable, but when he portrayed determinedly drunken journalist Bernard so convincingly, he had long been stone cold sober. The doctors who had removed much of his intestine had warned him that another drink would kill him.

O’Toole was nothing if not erratic. He could be charm itself, but without warning it would vanish with a flash of his ice-blue eyes. Wildness, rage and violent behaviour could take over.

His reputation as a roisterer began to outshine his reliability as an actor. His stage performances would suddenly inflate into old-fashioned hamming.

In films he was more under control. But, though he received eight Academy Award nominations, he never took home an Oscar (until, reluctantly, he accepted an honorary one in 2003).



Another memorable role: O'Toole starred in Under Milk Wood with Elizabeth Taylor