It’s one among the good Hollywood ironies that Christopher Plummer didn’t just like the film that made him a legend
It’s one among the good Hollywood ironies that Christopher Plummer didn’t just like the film that made him a legend. He was an actor’s actor and had cut his teeth doing Shakespeare. “The Sound of Music,” he thought, was sentimental shlock. And he wasn’t alone — reviews at the time were famously terrible. Then, sort of a personal curse, it might continue to become a universally beloved classic. He’d played Henry V and Hamlet and yet Captain von Trapp, he said in 1982, followed him around “like an albatross.”
But even Plummer, who died Friday at the age of 91, lived long enough to melt a touch. And why wouldn’t he? He also needs to enjoy something that so few actors do: a real third act with terrific roles as “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace in Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” a widower who comes out later in life in Mike Mills’ “Beginners” and, last, a slain mystery writer in Rian Johnson’s whodunnit “Knives Out.” He got three Academy Award nominations in one decade and, at age 82, would become the oldest actor to ever win an Oscar (for “Beginners”). He still holds that title.
“You’re only two years older than me, darling. Where have you ever been all my life?” he said to his Oscar in 2012. “When I first emerged from my mother’s womb, I used to be already rehearsing my Academy many thanks speech. But it had been goodbye ago, mercifully for you, I’ve forgotten it.”
Dapper and dashing with an aristocratic air, Plummer could are a number one man without the talent. With it, he was a star with a personality actor’s spirit, which he later would attribute to his longevity too.
“I’m thrilled that I became a personality actor quite early. I hated being a poncey actor,” he told lifestyle in 2015. “You start to stress about your jawline. Please.”
Born in Toronto in 1929, Plummer was the good grandson of Canadian Prime Minister John Abbott and fell for the stage at a young age. Classically trained, he was a self-proclaimed snob about the stage and resisted the allure of the large screen for a time. As if to prove his point, his first few films aren't well-remembered. Then came “The Sound of Music.” It didn’t help that he got the added blow that his voice was getting to be dubbed within the final film.
“The only reason I did this bloody thing was so I could do a musical on stage on film!” he said. But he did get a lifelong friendship with Julie Andrews out of the deal.
He retreated to stage for a time, which might be a refrain through his life. He won Tony Awards for Cyrano and Barrymore and would even get to travel back to Shakespeare, like Lear, later in life.
Over his six-decade career, his screen credits would prove wildly diverse. He was in “Malcolm X” and “Must Love Dogs.” He was a Klingon during a “Star Trek” and Tolstoy in “The Last Station,” Kipling in “The Man Who Would Be King” and Captain Newport in “The New World.”
“For an extended time, I accepted parts that took me to attractive places within the world. instead of shooting within the Bronx, I might rather attend the south of France, crazed creature than I'm,” he told The Associated Press in 2007. “I sacrificed tons of my career for nicer hotels and more attractive beaches.”
Plummer was also a legendary “hard-fisted” drinker, alongside similarly inclined friends like Jason Robards, Richard Harris, and Peter O’Toole.
“We intended that we should always be if we're to be called men. We must drink the maximum amount as we will. And if we will still get through Hamlet subsequent day without a hitch, that made you a person, my son,” he told Terry Gross in 2008. “You weren’t worth anything unless you'll .”
A little Fernet-Branca laced with creme de menthe was his preferred “pick me up” before happening stage after an especially heavy night. But, he warned, stick with one. Two or three and "you’re drunk again.”
He bogged down in later years and would write on his antics in his acclaimed memoir “Despite Myself.” Plummer had decided that he was getting to “keep crackin’” since “retirement in any profession is death.” And he did, marking his turn in “The Insider,” from 1999, as a turning point.
“Then the scripts improved. I used to be upgraded! Since then, they’ve been first-class scripts,” he told the AP at the time. “Not all successful, but worth doing.”
In 2017 within the thick of the primary #MeToo revelations, he made headlines when he replaced a disgraced Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott’s “All the cash within the World” just six weeks before the film was set to hit theaters. Not only did the push recall the energy of stage for him, but it also proved professionally fruitful: The role got him his third Oscar nomination.
And although he retained a number of that charming arrogance to the top, Plummer was also a person capable of evolving, even about “The Sound of Music.”
“As cynical as I always was about ‘The Sound of Music,’” Plummer told life style, “I do respect that it's a touch of relief from all the gunfire and car chases you see lately. It’s kind of wonderfully, old-fashionedly universal.”
Plummer entered his 80s worried about what he’d be ready to accomplish, but a couple of years in he had put those worries aside.
“I’m enjoying myself considerably. And in my 80s, I had another career. I’m very happy about that. It’s gone better than most other decades have,” he said in 2018. “I played everything within the theater. I still would like to try to do something else within the theater, of course. But I’ve played all the good parts. And not too shabbily. Now I would like an equivalent great part, if I can, on the screen. then far, yes. I’ve played marvelous characters.”
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