Peter O'Toole, 'one of the giants of film and theatre,' dies at 81

Peter O'Toole, 'one of the giants of film and theatre,' dies at 81

Oddly enough, he never won the Best Actor Oscar, despite eight nominations. You are probably wondering how he could have lost for Lawrence of Arabia. That performance would have won almost any other year, but he was unfortunate enough to go up against what it arguably the single most beloved male performance in all of cinema history - Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. Of course nobody gave much thought to the fact that O'Toole had lost because he was so young, so handsome and so talented that he would surely win many future Oscars. He never did.

In 1983 it seemed that he would triumph in middle age when he did his thinly disguised Errol Flynn impersonation in My Favorite Year, a performance both touching and hilarious, but that time he went up against Ben Kingsley's incredible evocation of Gandhi. Gandhi was a juggernaut that year, with eleven nominations and eight wins, so O'Toole again went home without the statue.

The Academy finally gave O'Toole a lifetime achievement Oscar a decade ago. Very few lifetimes were more deserving than his. He was brilliant from his youth to his old age. I would watch any movie if I saw O'Toole was in it, and I don't know if I can say that about any other performer. Even when he was overacting, which he sometimes did, his performances were always mesmerizing and just plain magical.