It’s one of Hollywood’s great ironies that Christopher Plummer didn’t like the movie that made him a legend. He was an actor and had cut his teeth doing Shakespeare. “The sound of the music,” he thought, was a sentimental shock. And I wasn’t alone: the reviews at the time were terribly famous. Then, as a personal curse, it would go on to become a universally beloved classic. He had played Henry V and Hamlet, and yet Captain von Trapp, he said in 1982, followed him “like an albatross.”
But even Plummer, who died Friday at age 91, He lived long enough to soften a little. And why wouldn’t he? He was also able to enjoy something that so few actors do: a genuine third act with fantastic roles as the “60 Minutes” correspondent, Mike Wallace, in “The Insider,” by Michael Mann, a widower who later appears in life in “Beginners” by Mike Mills. and, more recently, a mystery writer murdered in Rian Johnson’s rogue “Knives Out”. He earned three Oscar nominations in a decade and, at age 82, would become the oldest actor to ever win an Oscar (for “Beginners”). He still has that title.
“You are only two years older than me, dear. Where have you been all my life? “He said at his Oscar in 2012.” When I first came out of my mother’s womb, I was already rehearsing my Academy’s speech of thanks. But it was a long time ago. , with mercy for you that I have forgotten ”.
Plummer, with an aristocratic air, plummer could have been an untalented leading man. With him he was a star in the spirit of a character actor, to whom he would later attribute his longevity.
“I am delighted to become a character actor quite soon. He hated being a leading man, “he told Vanity Fair in 2015.” You really start to worry about your jaw line. Please. “
Born in Toronto in 1929, Plummer was the grandson of Canadian Prime Minister John Abbott and fell into the theater at a very young age. Classically trained, he was a self-employed snob on stage and resisted for a time the appeal of the big screen. As if to prove his own point, his early films are not well remembered. Then came “The Sound of Music.” It didn’t help that he received the added blow that his singing voice would be dubbed into the final film.
“The only reason I did this bloody thing was to be able to do a musical on the movie stage!” He said. But he got a lifelong friendship with Julie Andrews.
He retired to the theater for a time, which would be a saying in his life. He won the Tony Awards for Cyrano and Barrymore and would even return to Shakespeare, as King Lear, later in life.
Throughout his six-decade career, his credits would be very diverse. He was on “Malcolm X” and “Must Love Dogs.” He was a Klingon in “Star Trek” and Tolstoy in “The Last Station”, Rudyard Kipling in “The Man Who Would Be King” and Captain Newport in “The New World”.
“For a long time I accepted parts that took me to attractive places in the world. Instead of filming in the Bronx, I’d rather go to the south of France, a crazy creature than me, “he told The Associated Press in 2007.” I sacrificed a lot of my career for more beautiful hotels and more attractive beaches. “
Plummer was also a legendary “hard-fisted” drinker, alongside friends with a similar inclination such as Jason Robards, Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole.
“Our intention was to do it if we were called men. We should drink as much as we can. And if we can still get through Hamlet the next day without a hitch, that made you a man, my son, “he told Terry Gross in 2008.” You wouldn’t be worth it if you couldn’t. “
A bit of Fernet-Branca tied with mint cream was her favorite to “pick me up” before going on stage after a particularly heavy night. But, he warned, follow one. Two or three and “you’re drunk again.”
He slowed down in recent years and would write about his own traps in his acclaimed memoirs “In Spite of Myself.” Plummer had decided he was going to “keep growing” because “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 have been updated. Since then, they have been first-class scripts, ”he told the AP at the time. “Not everyone is successful, but it’s worth it.”
In 2017, in the midst of the first revelations of #MeToo, it hit the headlines when it replaced a disgraced Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott’s “All the Money in the World,” just six weeks before the film. movie hit theaters. The eagerness not only reminded him of the energy of theater for him, but also proved professionally fruitful: the role gave him his third Oscar nomination.
And while he retained some of that charming arrogance to the end, Plummer was also a man capable of evolving, even on “The Sound of Music.”
“As cynical as I always referred to‘ The Sound of Music, ’” Plummer told Vanity Fair, “I respect it to be a bit of a relief from all the shots and car chases you see these days. It’s kind of wonderful and universal in the old days. “
Plummer came into his eighties worried about what he would be able to achieve, but a few years later he had put those worries aside.
“I am just enjoying myself. And in the 80s, I had another career. I am very happy about that. It has gone better than most other decades, ”he said in 2018. “I played everything in the theater. Of course, I would still like to do something more in the theater. But I’ve played all the big roles. And not too disconcerting. Now I want the same fantastic parts, if I can, on the screen. And so far yes. I played wonderful characters. “
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Follow AP Film writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr