CBC
Christopher Plummer, Sound of Music star and oldest actor to win an Oscar, died at the age of 91
Christopher Plummer, one of the greatest Canadian actors to ever grace the stage and screen, has died. Plummer died Friday morning at his Connecticut home – two and a half weeks after falling – with his wife Elaine Taylor by his side, said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager. “Chris was an exceptional man who deeply loved and respected his job with great old manners, self-deprecating humor and the music of words,” Pitt said in a statement to CBC News. “He was a national treasure who enjoyed his Canadian roots deeply.” His art and humanity touched all of our hearts and his legendary life will last for generations to come. He will be with us forever. “In a career that spanned six decades, Plummer was nominated three times for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards, and won once at 82 for Beginners, a film about a widower who begins to live his life as a dying gay man Cancer. He also won two Tony Awards out of seven nominations and took home two Emmys. He became one of the great classic actors of modern times without attending a prestigious theater school, London’s West End and Canada’s Stratford and Shaw Festivals. There were few Shakespeare roles he did not take on, a list that included Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Iago, Henry V, Antony, Mercutio, and Prospero. “The man is extraordinary, he has so many Pages, he’s pretty remarkable. When you share a stage with him, it’s really magical, “actor Gordon Pinsent told CBC in 2011 when Plummer received Stratford’s Lifetime Achievement Award. On-screen Plummer appeared as Captain von Trapp alongside the UK stage and film star Julie in 1965 Andrews, in the film that was the top hit movie of all time for several years, The Sound of Music, a role he was known to be ambivalent about. “What did I play with all these kids? Children and dogs steal scenes, “Plummer told CBC in a documentary two years after the film was released, which he often jokingly called The Sound of Mucus, or S and M. WATCH | Plummer discusses The Sound of Music in CBC’s TBA: Plummer, However, he also said he had “great memories” of the film and that he had a lifelong friendship with Andrews, who once said that working with her was like “having a Valentine’s Day”. “The world has one “I am a consummate actor today and I have lost a valued friend,” Andrews said in a Reuters statement on Friday. “I appreciate the memories of our work together and all the humor and fun we have over the years The film got him almost more work than he could do on the West End and Broadway stages and in television films and miniseries of the 1970s and 1980s. He then experienced a late-life renaissance in film with acclaimed appearances on The Insider, A Beautiful Ghost, Novice, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In 2019 he starred as a murdered crime novelist in Rian Johnson’s Whodunnit Knives Out – one of his last film roles. Born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer in Toronto on December 13, 1929, the descendant of John Abbott, Canada’s third prime minister. Plummer’s parents separated not long after he was born, and he was raised in Montreal in relative privilege by his mother and her extended family. Years later he saw his father only once. His love of acting on stage was cemented by playing Mr. Darcy in a Montreal High School production of Pride and Prejudice. He further developed his stage arts at the Ottawa Repertory Theater and learned to use his baritone voice in CBC radio plays. Beginnings on Broadway Plummer landed in New York in 1953, performed on Broadway and supported stars like Tyrone Power and Julie Harris. He took over the direction of Elia Kazan. His reputation grew so much that he was called back to Canada to portray Henry V under the big tent in the final year of the Stratford Festival in 1956, and returned the next year to usher in their new indoor theater as Hamlet. Plummer received his first Tony nomination for his appearance in JB, a play written in free verse in 1958 by American poet / playwright Archibald MacLeish. He then went to London, where he appeared in productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company together with Vanessa Redgrave, Ian Holm and a young Judi Dench until the 1960s. When the curtain fell at the end of the show, Plummer often kept company with heavyweight night owls like Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. “You’ve given a great deal of your own personality with only the reward of applause at the end, but it’s not enough to fill the rest of the night,” he told CBC of that need to “stun”. CLOCK | Plummer discusses singing and working with Julie Andrews: Plummer’s profile would be sharpened by The Sound of Music and an internationally televised production of Hamlet, the only modern production of the play at Elsinore Castle in Denmark. However, in the late 1960s, his personal life was not in good shape. He had been through two marriages and had made no effort in several years to contact his only child, Amanda, from his first marriage. “I was a lousy husband and an even worse father,” he admitted in his 2008 autobiography, despite me. Plummer beamed with pride years later when his daughter earned praise for her own acting but was quick to reject her talent. Plummer cut down on his drinking and a 1970 marriage to Elaine Taylor would last; The couple took root in Connecticut for several decades. CLOCK | “One of the most respected actors,” says William Shatner, “He’s never lived in Canada – the taxes were outrageous, he said – but Plummer, a companion of the Order of Canada and recipient of the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award, kept coming back. ” back for a variety of roles as the country’s film and television industries began to flourish. There would be films for large and small format Canadian productions including Murder by Decree, Silent Partner, Riel, and Ararat, as well as the Counterstrike television series and children’s meals like his Emmy-award-winning language work in Madeline. Plummer lived from moving from screen work to theater and scored his first Tony in 1974 in a musical version of Cyrano. “You have to be absolutely ruthless if you’re sure how to handle the big roles or they’ll do it.” with you, “he said of his approach in an interview with the National Theater Museum decades later. UHR | Plummer receives a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Canadian Screen Awards: After an Emmy win for the 1976 TV series The Money Changers was Plummer was more in demand for television movies and miniseries like The Thorn Birds than for meaty movie roles. He turned down reports of clashes with Oscar winner Glenda Jackson during her 1988 Macbeth stage run to sell tickets, but it was true that he had a healthy ego and had an occasional reputation for being difficult. “We Shouldn’t Retire” After some early hiccups in the early days, his two-person play Barrymore hit Broadway in early 1997. Plummer won the Tony and Drama Desk -Actor John Barrymore awards reflected at the end of life, while Plummer became more in demand for film roles, on appearances in Dolore s Claiborne and 12 Monkeys was followed in 1999 by a portrayal of journalist Mike Wallace in the film The Insider, which won him the National Society of Film Critics’ award. Plummer was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station in 2010, and two years later won the role of Hal Field, who starred as a gay man after the death of his wife, Beginner. He stared at the golden statue on the stage in Los Angeles and quipped, “You’re only two years older than me, darling, where have you been all my life?” CLOCK | Plummer accepts the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor: Plummer was nominated by the Academy for the third and final time for Best Supporting Actor in 2018 for playing billionaire J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World, based on the true story of the Kidnapping and the ransom of Getty’s grandson. It was cast after actor Kevin Spacey was ousted from role on a string of sexual misconduct allegations. The film was mostly finished and had already aroused Oscar craze when the then 87-year-old Plummer stepped in. He shot all of his scenes in nine days. Plummer told the New York Times in 2014 that he found it sad when people waited their entire lives to retire and then found no purpose at the end of their working lives. “We shouldn’t retire. Not in our job. There is no such thing,” he said. “We want to fall dead on the stage. That would be a nice theater way.”
