Artwork by Shahin Gholizadeh
NEW YORK TIMES: Peter O’Toole, an Irish bookmaker’s son with a hell-raising streak whose performance in the 1962 epic film “Lawrence of Arabia” earned him overnight fame and established him as one of his generation’s most charismatic actors, died on Saturday in London. He was 81. Blond, blue-eyed and well over six feet tall, Mr. O’Toole had the dashing good looks and high spirits befitting a leading man — and he did not disappoint in “Lawrence,” David Lean’s wide-screen, almost-four-hour homage to T. E. Lawrence, the daring British soldier and adventurer who led an Arab rebellion against the Turks in the Middle East in World War I. The performance brought Mr. O’Toole the first of eight Academy Award nominations, a flood of film offers and a string of artistic successes in the ’60s and early ’70s. […] Mr. O’Toole threw himself wholeheartedly into what he called “bravura acting,” courting and sometimes deserving the accusation that he became over-theatrical, mannered, even hammy. His lanky, loose-jointed build; his eyes; his long, lantern-jawed face; his oddly languorous sexual charm; and the eccentric loops and whoops of his voice tended to reinforce the impression of power and extravagance. Burton called him “the most original actor to come out of Britain since the war,” with “something odd, mystical and deeply disturbing” in his work. Some critics called him the next Laurence Olivier. As a young actor, Mr. O’Toole displayed an authority that the critic Kenneth Tynan said “may presage greatness.” In 1958, the director Peter Hall called Mr. O’Toole’s Hamlet in a London production “electrifying” and “unendurably exciting” — a display of “animal magnetism and danger which proclaimed the real thing.” He showed those strengths somewhat erratically, however; for all his accolades and his box-office success, there was a lingering note of unfulfilled promise in Mr. O’Toole. MORE
FRESH AIR: “I have a host of memories which I see very clearly,” actor Peter O’Toole told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in 1993. “And though I’m very aware of the tricks of memory, I’m also aware of the concrete nature of these brilliantly lit pictures in my mind. They’re ineradicable.” O’Toole, who died Saturday at the age of 81, was instrumental in making many “brilliantly lit pictures” for movie lovers during his decades-spanning career. Nominated for eight Oscars, the tall, blond, blue-eyed actor captivated audiences, on-screen and onstage. O’Toole grew up in northern England during World War II and began his acting career after two years in the Royal Navy. He became best-known for his starring role in the 1962 film epic Lawrence of Arabia. “I can’t imagine anyone whom I’m less like than T.E. Lawrence,” O’Toole admitted, but he suspects director David Lean wanted “someone who could act it rather than be it.” O’Toole’s other roles ranged from the three angels in John Huston’s The Bible to a washed-up, drunken movie star in the comedy My Favorite Year. He starred in the historical dramas Becket and The Lion in Winter. When he spoke with Fresh Air, he had just published a memoir about his early life, called Loitering with Intent. MORE