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It’s one of the great Hollywood ironies that Christopher Plummer didn’t like the movie that made him a legend. He was an actor of an actor and had cut his teeth doing Shakespeare. The Sound of Music, he thought, was a sentimental trap.
And he was not alone: the criticisms at that time were famous and terrible. Later, as a personal curse, it would become a universally loved classic. He had played Henry V and Hamlet and yet Captain von Trapp, said in 1982, was following him “like an albatross”.
But even Plummer, who died on Friday at the age of 91, lived long enough to soften a little. And why shouldn’t he?
He also enjoyed something very few actors do: a bona fide third act with fabulous roles as 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace in Michael Mann’s The Insider, a later-in-life widower in Mike Mills’ Beginners, and more recently. , a mystery writer murdered in Rian Johnson’s police novel Knives Out.
He earned three Oscar nominations in a decade and, at age 82, would become the oldest actor to win an Oscar (for beginners).
You’re only two years older than me, darling. Where have you been all my life? “She told her Oscar in 2012.” When I first came out of my mother’s womb, I was already rehearsing my Academy thank you speech. But it was so long ago, fortunately for you, I’ve forgotten “.
Handsome and elegant with an aristocratic air, Plummer could have been a leading man without the talent. With him he became a star with the spirit of a character actor, to whom he would later attribute his longevity.
“I am delighted to have become a character actor from the beginning. I hated being a leading man poncey, “he told Vanity Fair in 2015.” You really start to worry about your jaw. Please.”
Born in Toronto in 1929, Plummer was the great-grandson of Canadian Prime Minister John Abbott and fell in love with theater at a young age. Classically trained, he proclaimed himself a snob on stage and resisted the allure of the big screen for a time.
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 hit that his singing voice was going to be dubbed in the final film.
“The only reason I did this damn thing was so I could do a musical on stage in a movie!” he said. But he got a lifelong friendship with Julie Andrews from the deal.
He retired to the theater for a time, which would be a refrain throughout his life. He won Tony Awards for Cyrano and Barrymore and would even return to Shakespeare, as King Lear, later in his life.
Over the course of his six-decade career, his screen credits would prove wildly diverse. He was in Malcolm X and Must Love Dogs. He was Klingon in Star Trek and Tolstoy in The Last Station, Rudyard Kipling in The Man Who Could Be King, and Captain Newport in The New World.
“For a long time I accepted pieces 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 crazed creature than myself, “he told The Associated Press in 2007.” I sacrificed much of my career for nicer hotels and more attractive beaches.
Plummer was also a legendary “hard fist” drinker, along with similarly inclined friends like Jason Robards, Richard Harris, and Peter O’Toole.
“Our intention was that we should be if we were called men. We should drink as much as we can. And if we can still get over Hamlet the next day without a problem, that makes you a man, my son, “he told Terry Gross in 2008.” You were worth nothing unless you could. “
A bit of Fernet-Branca mixed with creme de menthe was his favorite “lift me up” before going on stage after a particularly heavy night. But, he warned, stick with one. Two or three and “you’re drunk again.”
He slowed down in later years and would write about his own antics in his acclaimed memoir In Spite of Myself. Plummer had decided that he was going to “keep breaking” as “retiring in any profession is death.” And he did, marking his turn in 1999’s The Insider as a turning point.
“So the scripts got better. I was updated! Since then, they have been first-class scripts, ”he told the AP at the time. “Not all are successful, but it is worth doing.”
In 2017, amid early #MeToo revelations, he made headlines when he replaced disgraced Kevin Spacey as J Paul Getty in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, just six weeks before the film hit theaters. cinemas.
The rush not only reminded him of the energy of the theater, but it was also professionally fruitful – the role earned him his third Oscar nomination.
And while he retained some of that charming swagger to the end, Plummer was also a man capable of evolution, even on The Sound of Music.
“As cynical as I ever was about The Sound of Music,” Plummer told Vanity Fair, “I respect that it’s a bit of a relief from all the shooting and car chases you see these days. It’s kind of a wonderful, old-fashioned universal. “
Plummer entered the 80s worried about what he could accomplish, but a few years later he had put those worries aside.
“I’m having so much fun. And in my 80s, I had another career. I am very happy about that. It’s been better than most of the other decades, ”he said in 2018.
“I played everything in the theater. I would still like to do something else in the theater, of course. But I have played all the great roles. And not too seedy. Now I want the same great parts, if I can, on the screen. And so far, yes. I’ve played wonderful characters. “
