Peter O'Toole

(July 10, 2012) Announced his retirement from acting.

Broke his hip while filming Venus (2006), but returned to work after only three weeks.

Was friends with fellow Irish actor Richard Harris. After Harris died, his family hoped that O'Toole would replace him as Professor Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), but the role went to Michael Gambon instead.

When he was named the recipient of a Special Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2003, he originally intended to turn it down feeling that the lifetime award signaled the end of his career. He wrote the Academy a letter stating that he was "still in the game" and would like more time to "win the lovely bugger outright." It was only after the Academy informed him that they were bestowing the award on him whether he came to collect it or not that he relented.

He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 2000 for Outstanding Achievement Award for his theatrical career.

Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#47). [1995]

Allegedly declined a knighthood for political reasons in 1987.

His performance as "Alan Swann" in My Favorite Year (1982) is ranked #56 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

He survived by giving up alcohol and, after serious medical treatment, returned to films with triumphant performances in The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982). His youthful beauty lost to time and drink, O'Toole has found meaningful roles increasingly difficult to come by, though he remained one of the greatest actors of his generation. He had two daughters, Pat and Kate O'Toole, from his marriage to actress Siân Phillips. He also had a son, Lorcan O'Toole, by model Karen Brown.

Both he and his fellow Irish actor (and close friend), the late Richard Harris appeared in versions of 'Gulliver's Travels': Harris played the 1977 film version Gulliver's Travels (1977) and O'Toole played the Emperor of Lilliput in the 1996 TV-film version Gulliver's Travels (1996), where Ted Danson played Gulliver.

In 1976 he underwent surgery to remove parts of his stomach and intestine, at the time attributed to his heavy drinking, but later disclosed to be stomach cancer. In the following year he almost died from a blood disorder. These two serious illnesses greatly affected his ability to work at that time.

He was offered the role of Grigori Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) but he turned it down. Tom Baker was eventually cast.

However, medical problems (originally thought to have been brought on by his drinking but which turned out to be stomach cancer) threatened to destroy his career and life in the 1970s.

Was the original choice to play King Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966) but Robert Shaw, who went on to receive a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance, was cast instead.

He worked with Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Ursula Andress and Burt Bacharach on both What's New Pussycat (1965) and Casino Royale (1967).

He was only one of six performers to be nominated for an Oscar twice for playing the same role in two separate films. He was nominated as Henry II in Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968). The other five are Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley in Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961) and The Color of Money (1986), Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I in Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), and Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa in Rocky (1976) and Creed (2015). Furthermore, O'Toole was the only one of these six who was nominated for playing the same character (at two different stages in his life) in films that were not a prequel or sequel to the other.

In 1963, he played Hamlet under Laurence Olivier's direction in the premiere production of the Royal National Theater. He continued successfully in artistically rich films as well as less artistic but commercially rewarding projects. He received Academy Award nominations (but no Oscar) for seven different films.

In 1962, he was chosen by David Lean to play T. E.

Lawrence in Lean's epic drama Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The role made O'Toole an international superstar and received him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

A leading man of prodigious talents, Peter O'Toole was raised in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, the son of Constance Jane Eliot (Ferguson), a Scottish nurse, and Patrick Joseph O'Toole, an Irish metal plater, football player and racecourse bookmaker. Upon leaving school, he decided to become a journalist, beginning as a newspaper copy boy. Although he succeeded in becoming a reporter, he discovered the theater and made his stage debut at age 17. He served as a radioman in the Royal Navy for two years, then attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates included Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Richard Harris. O'Toole spent several years on-stage at the Bristol Old Vic, then made an inconspicuous film debut in the Disney classic Kidnapped (1959).

From 1952 to 1954 he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art as a scholarship student.

While at RADA in the early 1950s he was active in protesting British involvement in the Korean War. Later in the 1960s he was an active opponent of the Vietnam War.

Was one of 13 actors to have received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of a real-life king. The others in chronological order are Charles Laughton for The Private Life of Henry VIII. (1933), Robert Morley for Marie Antoinette (1938), Basil Rathbone for If I Were King (1938), Laurence Olivier for Henry V (1944) and Richard III (1955), José Ferrer for Joan of Arc (1948), Yul Brynner for King and I, The (1956), John Gielgud for Becket (1964), Robert Shaw for A Man for All Seasons (1966), Richard Burton for Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), Kenneth Branagh for Henry V (1989), Nigel Hawthorne for The Madness of King George (1994), and Colin Firth for The King's Speech (2010).

He once said his actual date of birth went unrecorded, and that he may have been born in June 1932. However the Leeds City Council register of births, deaths and marriages proved that he was born on 2 August 1932 at St James University Hospital in Leeds.