Department of Failing At Actor Recognition: I always thought "Broadchurch" was the first thing I've seen Jodie Whittaker in. Yesterday, listening to her conversation with David Tennant, they bring up Peter O'Toole (with whom they both worked as young, unknown actors) and only then it finally dawns on me: a young Jodie W. played Jessie in Venus. And I loved that film! (rozk reviews it here beautifully. It was a great cinematic swan song for Peter O'Toole, as it turned out.) In my defense, Beth in Broadchurch is so very different from Jessie in Venus (besides the difference in age of actress, I mean) in character and circumstance. But the umistakable voice should have tipped me off.


Anyway, in the podcast, Jodie Whittaker shares some stories both amusing (one of the first things she, being born in 1982, said to him was "You were in King Ralph!", to which a disbelieving Peter O'Toole repeated "King Ralph?!?") and touching: as a young actress whose first movie this was, she was fascinated that he had handwritten notes all over his script pages about his character, what his beats and physical moves were in each scene, because she'd imagined for older actors it would get easier and they'd do all of this instinctively, and instead he showed her that this kind of work never ends and on the contrary more likely than not gets more intensely with age if you want to keep it fresh and don't want to replicate mannerisms etc. She says O'Toole had this deep professionalism while also being as larger than life as you'd want him to be, and that she couldn't have asked for a better introduction to what it means to be an actor. So, in honour of that, here's the trailer for Venus as well as the scene where Maurice (Peter O'Toole's character, an old actor) takes Jessie with him to a shooting set where he has a bit part. (The limo he takes her in is a bluff, he pulled some strings to impress her.)

Last night, just before I went to bed, I read that Peter O'Toole had died. It wasn't completely unexpected - I had a feeling he might not be well after his retirement from acting earlier this year - and he did get to be 81, but it was still one of those instances where someone whom you never knew personally but who through his profession has given you much in in your life is taken away, and you can't help but mourn.

The obituaries are pouring in, of course. This one is okay. But how do you sum up an actor anyway? Let alone a person? Richard Burton, who was close friends with O'Toole and preceded him in death by several decades, once said about him:

'He looked like a beautiful, emaciated secretary bird ... his voice had a crack like a whip ... most important of all you couldn't take your eyes off him( ...) Acting is usually regarded as a craft and I claim it to be nothing more except in the hands of the odd few men and women who, once or twice in a lifetime, elevate it into something odd and mystical and deeply disturbing. I believe Peter O'Toole to have this strange quality.'

Often both film and audience aren't kind to actors when they lose their youth, and actors, in turn, hide from the consequences of their inevitable aging. O'Toole was fearless about that, and rozk sums up the result in her review of his last great movie, Venus, beautifully here.

And there is an interview with the man himself in which he comes across as witty, self aware and blazingly alive.

Peter O'Toole has announced his retirement from acting (in very O'Toolian style), to which at his age he's more than entitled. But what with him having acted in two of my favourite films of all times (Lawrence of Arabia and The Lion in Winter), and still being splendid as late as three or so years ago in Venus, I'm a bit sad nonetheless. Also miffed that he never got an Oscar safe for the life time one, since I know he wanted the genuine article. (Sorry, Gregory Peck fans, he was fine as Atticus Finch, but O'Toole's Lawrence would have deserved more.) (And who won the year he was nominated for Venus anyway?)

Now given he's alive and hopefully well, a career retrospective would be a bit spooky, so I won't do it. Then again: back when I watched RTD's Casanova, in which David Tennant plays the young and Peter O'Toole the old Casanova, I came when discussing the miniseries across some younglings who wondered why David Tennant wears blue contact lenses in this film. When, you know, I would have thought it obvious that you do not make a legend of the theatre and screen with two of the most famous blue eyes around wear brown contact lenses, especially since Our David T., being a fanboy extraordinaire, was probably only too happy to do it. But lo and behold, said younglings had no idea who Peter O'Toole was. Why, said I, he's the ex of the Empress Livia and she left him for Ethan Rayne from Buffy! No, but seriously, a highlights of the decades post would be worth it, but right now my superstitious side warns me not to tempt fate. So, instead, something wherein Peter O'Toole is fairly low key, which he rarely was, but then he is talking with Orson Welles (who never was). It's the year 1963 (Annus Mirabilis indeed), O'Toole is playing Hamlet at the National, directed by Laurence Olivier, and Orson & Peter are talking to Huw Wheldon (the host of the program Monitor this conversation is part of) and an older actor named Ernest Milton. My favourite part is when Ernest Milton, being a nice old gentleman, says Hamlet abhorrs murder, and Welles & O'Toole team up to say OH NO HE DOESN'T, pointing to Hamlet's arranging the deaths of Guildenstern & Rosencranz (this being years before Tom Stoppard, mind), and adding Polonius for good measure. "Accident", cries Ernest Milton. Whereupon Peter corners him by pointing out that Hamlet has just left Claudius praying, thus knew the king was elsewhere, and Orson adds for good measure that it could have been anyone behind that curtain, Ophelia, Horatio, etc. Milton raises the insanity defends only to have Orson thundering that Hamlet isn't (earlier on, Welles said that the ultimate proof for Hamlet being rational is that he says "oh what an ass am I", which an insane man would never). So, here they are, young Peter, middle aged Orson, and poor old cornered Ernest Milton: