O’Toole, Peter (1932-2013), was an Irish-born stage and screen actor. His best-known role in motion pictures was that of T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). O’Toole was nominated eight times for the Academy Award for best actor—the most Oscar acting nominations without a win. In 2003, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded O’Toole an honorary Academy Award for having “provided cinema history with some of its most memorable characters.”
In 1959, O’Toole played a soldier in the play The Long and the Short and the Tall, for which he won the Actor of the Year award. He achieved one of his greatest successes as Hamlet in the National Theatre’s opening production in London in 1963.
Other films in which O’Toole appeared include The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960), Becket (1964), How to Steal a Million (1966),The Night of the Generals (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Murphy’s War (1971), The Ruling Class (1972), Zulu Dawn (1978), The Stunt Man (1980), The Antagonists (1981), My Favorite Year (1982), Club Paradise (1984), The Last Emperor (1987), Rebecca’s Daughters (1991), Troy (2004), Lassie (2005), and Venus (2007). He also provided the voice for the food critic Anton Ego in the animated film Ratatouille (2007).
Seamus Peter O’Toole was born on Aug. 2, 1932, in Galway, Ireland. He made his professional acting debut with the Bristol Old Vic Company in 1955. He was married to actress Sian Phillips from 1959 to 1979. O’Toole wrote two autobiographies, Loitering with Intent (1993) and The Apprentice (1996). He retired from acting in 2012. O’Toole died Dec. 14, 2013.
