Christopher Plummer, the Canadian-born Shakespearean actor who starred in films like “The Sound of Music” and “Beginners”, died on Friday morning at his Connecticut home. He was 91 years old.
“Chris was an extraordinary man who deeply loved and respected his profession with great old-fashioned manners, self-deprecating humor and the music of words,” said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager for 46 years. “He was a national treasure that deeply appreciated his Canadian roots. Through his art and humanity, he touched all of our hearts and his legendary life will last for all generations to come. He will be with us forever. “
An imposing theatrical presence with a well-cultivated and resonant voice, which critic John Simon once remarked, “in his suede mode, he can polish mirrors”, Plummer became best known for playing Captain von Trapp in the Oscar-winning musical ” The Sound of Music. ” He also won an Oscar in 2012 for his supporting role in the movie “Beginners”, becoming the oldest actor to win the Oscar for supporting actor.
He had a long and acclaimed career on stage, with two Tony awards. In the films, he was also known for “The Insider”, “12 Monkeys”, “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” and “A Beautiful Mind” and contributed voices for “Up”, “An American Tale” and the Series TV channel “Madeline”.
His first serious critical acclaim came for his rebel-with-a-cause interpretation of “Henry V” at the Stratford Festival in 1956. He triumphed like Iago alongside James Earl Jones in “Othello” on Broadway in the early 1980s, also as in “Macbeth” with Glenda Jackson. Other highlights include “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” and a revival of “No Man’s Land” by Harold Pinter alongside Jason Robards. He won his first Tony award in 1974 for the musical “Cyrano” and a second in 1996 for “Barrymore”, based on the life of actor John Barrymore.
In his later years, he scored in character and supporting roles, including his highly regarded interpretation of “60 Minutes” journalist Mike Wallace in Michael Mann’s film “The Insider” and as Franklin Delano Roosevelt on HBO’s “Winchell,” directed by Paul Mazursky. He won an Emmy for the miniseries “The Moneychangers” and another for the narration of the children’s special “Madeline”.
Born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer in Toronto, he grew up in Montreal, where he studied at Jennings Private School. He made his stage debut in a 1948 production of “Cymbeline” at the Canadian Repertory Theater in Ottawa, followed shortly after by a CBC television production of “Othello”. After migrating to New York in the early 1950s, he worked extensively on live television on shows such as “Kraft Television Theater”, “Hallmark Hall of Fame”, “Producers’ Showcase”, “Appointment With Adventure” and “Omnibus” .
His Broadway debut was alongside Katharine Cornell in “The Starcross Story”, 1954. The following year, Judith Anderson was her co-star in the Parisian production of “Medea”, and he appeared as the Earl of Warwick with Julie Harris the same year in a New York production of “The Lark” by Jean Anouilh. He also appeared in Archibald Macleish’s “JB”, directed by Elia Kazan.
Critics, however, first realized when he starred in the Stratford Festival’s “Henry V” production in 1956. He was the first Canadian chosen by Tyrone Guthrie to lead a production, he once told the Los Angeles Times. Before Plummer’s turn, Stratford featured mainly English actors like Alec Guinness and James Mason. “From that time on, my name was above the title,” he said.
He went on to play these roles “Hamlet” (1957) in an acclaimed British TV production and, in Stratford, Sir Andrew Aguecheek in “Twelfth Night”, Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” (1958) and Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet ”in 1960.
Crossing the lake, he made his London debut in “Becket” in 1961 as Henry II, a role that earned him the London Evening Standard Award.
Plummer’s film debut was on Sidney Lumet’s “Stage Struck” in 1958. But 1965’s “The Sound of Music” was his most viewed film, although he had little respect for “The Sound of Mucus” as the called, and his voice was dubbed for musical numbers. He worked continuously during the period in films such as “The Fall of the Roman Empire”, “The Night of the Generals” and “Inside the Clover Daisy”, but called most of them “horrible”.
He felt a little better with the 1968 production of “Oedipus Rei” and the film version of “The Royal Hunt in the Sun”.
In the mid-1960s, he once told Ageless magazine, he had two failed marriages and his drink was out of control. But with the help of his third wife, former British actress Elaine Taylor, he has resurrected his career. In 1973, he conceived and directed an evening of Shakespeare’s love songs entitled “Lovers and Madmen”, opposite Zoe Caldwell, and the following year he won a Tony for the musical “Cyrano”. He scored as Rudyard Kipling in John Huston’s film “The Man Who Would Be King” (1975) and as Sherlock Holmes in the 1980 film “Murder by Decree”. During that time, he won an Emmy in the NBC miniseries “The Moneychangers” (1976) and starred in Paul Newman’s TV production of “The Shadow Box” in 1980. He also lent his voice to the children’s series “Madeline”, winning another Emmy and the animated feature “An American Tail”.
When Plummer returned to Broadway in 1982, New York Times critic Walter Kerr dubbed his Iago “quite possibly the best single Shakespeare performance that originated on this continent in our time”. He traveled the country in a 1988 production of “Macbeth” with Jackson, and appeared in character roles in films such as “Dragnet”, “12 Monkeys”, “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” (for which he lent a air of Shakespeare) and “Dolores Claiborne”. He also worked continuously on television films, including cable efforts like “Harrison Bergeron” (1995), “We the Jury” and “Skeletons”. For three years in the early 90s, he starred in the American network series “Counterstrike”.
In place of John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, Plummer worked with Robards on the 1994 Broadway reassembly of “No Man’s Land” and two years later scored one of his greatest stage triumphs on “Barrymore”, for which he received a Tony as a lead actor. in one piece.
The actor ended the century as TV journalist Wallace in “The Insider” with Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. Variety said: “Plummer offers enormous satisfaction in a reliable portrait of the celebrated journalist who is rude, cunning, arrogant when he needs to be and always extremely intelligent – except for one crucial moment.”
Plummer played in the new millennium with a bunch of telepathic appearances, including a revisit of “On Golden Pond” on CBS in 2001, in which he teamed up with “Sound of Music” co-star Julie Andrews. There was also “The Dinosaur Hunter”, “Possessed”, “Leo’s Journey”, “Night Flight”, “Agent of Influence” and “American Tragedy” from 2000, CBS retelling of the OJ Simpson trial, in which he played F. Lee Bailey.
His small-screen work continued over the decade with Showtime’s “Four Minutes” and “Our Fathers,” which investigated the Catholic Church’s conspiracy to silence sexual abuse and earned Plummer an Emmy award.
Over the decade, Plummer showed no signs of slowing down, marking his name in the credits for more than 20 photos. He appeared on “Cold Creek Manor”, “National Treasure”, “Must Love Dogs”, “Syriana” and “Inside Man”, but also flexed his acting muscles in period photos, including “The New World” and “Alexander de Terrence Malick “,” in which he played the philosopher Aristotle. He was involved in romantic dramas like “Closing the Ring” and “The Lakeside”, and received critical acclaim by taking on the lead role of Flash Madden in “Man in the Chair” 2007.
One of Plummer’s most memorable roles of the decade involved only his voice. In the animated film by Pixar, to shake the tears, “Up”, he played Charles Muntz, an old man with the mission of making his late wife’s dream come true. He also contributed his voice to “My Dog Tulip” and “9.”
When the first decade of 2000 ended, Plummer appeared in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” as the doctor himself, but it was his role as author Leo Tolstoy in “The Last Station” that earned him an Oscar supporting actor nomination. Plummer plunged into other genres – including action – in photos like “Priest” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”, but surprised and delighted critics like Hal, an elderly man with cancer and a father who recently came out of the closet, in “Beginners ”2010, for which he won an Oscar.
In 2015, the actor received critical praise for his role as the long-suffering manager of the old rock star played by Pacino in the film by director and screenwriter Dan Fogelman, Danny Collins.
Plummer was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for his role as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott’s “All the Money in the World”. He replaced Kevin Spacey after Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct, completely remaking his scenes just a month before the film’s release in December 2017. Plummer most recently appeared on Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” in 2019 and on the Canadian series of Peacock’s import “Departure”.
He has been married three times, the first to actress Tammy Grimes, the second to journalist Patricia Audrey Lewis.
Plummer leaves his third wife, actress and dancer Taylor, and a daughter with Grimes, actress Amanda Plummer.