48 Fun Facts About Peter O'Toole

Peter O'Toole shot to international fame playing which real-life figure in David Lean's 1962 epic?

T. E. Lawrence was a far smaller man than his screen self: O'Toole, at 6 ft 2 in, stood some nine inches taller than the officer he played.

As of 2025, which actress shares O'Toole's record for most acting Oscar nominations without a win?

Glenn Close matched his eight losing nominations in 2021; two years earlier she had been the predicted winner for The Wife, only to see Olivia Colman take the prize.

Which English king did O'Toole play in both Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968)?

Henry II brought him two Oscar nominations four years apart: after the young king of Becket, he played the monarch at 50 while still only 35 himself.

In Pixar's Ratatouille (2007) O'Toole voiced which character?

Anton Ego, the food critic, arrives ready to savage the restaurant, until one bite of Remy's ratatouille sends him back to his mother's kitchen and he writes a glowing review.

Who presented O'Toole with his Academy Honorary Award in 2003?

Meryl Streep handed it over after he had first asked the Academy to hold off until he was 80, saying he was still in the game and might yet win one outright.

O'Toole's birth certificate from Leeds says he was born there in 1932, but he believed he might have been born where?

Connemara was the family's version of his birth, and from the 1960s he kept a home in that corner of County Galway and carried an Irish passport as well as a British one.

At which English regional theatre did O'Toole make his name in the 1950s, playing dozens of roles?

The Bristol Old Vic took him on straight from RADA, and stories of his Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger there soon spread well beyond the city.

Why did the Abbey Theatre's drama school in Dublin turn the young O'Toole away?

He could not speak Irish, so the Abbey turned him away, and he took up a scholarship at RADA in London instead.

Which two future stars were O'Toole's classmates at RADA?

Albert Finney and Alan Bates trained beside him in what he called 'the most remarkable class the academy ever had', though he recalled that 'we were all considered dotty'.

Which actor passed a screen test for O'Toole's 1962 desert role but refused to sign producer Sam Spiegel's long contract?

Albert Finney was David Lean's first choice; Marlon Brando also said no, preferring Mutiny on the Bounty, before the role fell to the little-known O'Toole.

Noël Coward joked that if O'Toole had been any prettier in his 1962 epic, the picture would have had what title?

Florence of Arabia was Coward's teasing tribute to the blond, blue-eyed newcomer, whose looks, one critic later wrote, were no small part of the film's appeal to young fans.

Who beat O'Toole to the Best Actor Oscar for his 1962 desert epic?

Gregory Peck won for To Kill a Mockingbird, though the epic itself took Best Picture; oddly for so long a film, not one woman in it has a speaking part.

Which actor played Thomas Becket opposite O'Toole's king in Becket (1964)?

Richard Burton and O'Toole were both nominated for Best Actor for the film and both lost to Rex Harrison, an early entry in the long run of Oscar near-misses the two friends shared.

Who played Eleanor of Aquitaine opposite O'Toole in The Lion in Winter (1968)?

Katharine Hepburn, 25 years his senior, played his wife and won her third Best Actress Oscar for it, sharing the award in a tie with Barbra Streisand.

O'Toole's 1969 Oscar-nominated role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips was in a musical adaptation co-starring which singer?

Petula Clark played the music-hall singer who marries his shy schoolmaster; the pairing won him a Golden Globe, though the Oscar went to John Wayne.

In The Ruling Class (1972), O'Toole's paranoid schizophrenic Earl of Gurney first believes he is whom?

Jesus Christ is who the 14th Earl thinks he is, sleeping upright on a cross, until a 'cure' leaves him secretly convinced that he is Jack the Ripper instead.

In Man of La Mancha (1972), O'Toole played Don Quixote and which other role, opposite Sophia Loren?

Miguel de Cervantes tells the knight's story to fellow prisoners while awaiting the Inquisition; O'Toole's songs had to be dubbed by a tenor, and the film flopped.

In How to Steal a Million (1966), O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn steal a forged statuette attributed to which artist?

Cellini is the supposed sculptor of a Venus really carved by the heroine's grandfather, so she has it stolen from the museum before scientific tests can expose the family's forgeries.

Which comedian wrote his first produced screenplay for O'Toole's 1965 farce What's New Pussycat?

Woody Allen also made his acting debut in it. O'Toole's part was first meant for Warren Beatty, whose way of greeting girlfriends on the phone inspired the title.

In the notorious Penthouse-funded Caligula (1979), O'Toole played which Roman emperor?

Tiberius was his part in a film whose producer, Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, later slipped back into the studio to shoot hardcore scenes the director had not wanted to film.

In The Stunt Man (1980), O'Toole was Oscar-nominated for playing what kind of character?

A ruthless film director is the part: Eli Cross descends from the sky on a camera crane and hires a fugitive as his stunt double. The Oscar went to Robert De Niro for Raging Bull.

In My Favorite Year (1982), O'Toole's drunken swashbuckler Alan Swann is widely seen as a portrait of which real star?

Errol Flynn is the model for Swann, a faded screen hero who panics on learning the TV show is live; the part brought O'Toole a seventh Oscar nomination, lost to Ben Kingsley.

Who beat O'Toole to Best Actor on his eighth and final nomination, for Venus (2006)?

Forest Whitaker won for playing Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, so Venus, Hanif Kureishi's tale of an ageing actor smitten with a young woman, left O'Toole with eight nominations and no win.

In Venus, O'Toole's ageing actor recites a Shakespeare sonnet that compares its subject to what?

A summer's day, from Sonnet 18, was his own pick: he told NPR he had argued for an old favourite over the obscure ones, and that he knew every sonnet by heart.

In The Last Emperor (1987), O'Toole played Reginald Johnston, who was what to the young Puyi?

His Scottish tutor was a real man: Reginald Johnston's memoir Twilight in the Forbidden City fed the film, and he retired to a small Scottish island where he flew Puyi's Manchukuo flag.

Which king did O'Toole play in the 2004 epic Troy?

Priam, king of Troy, steals into the Greek camp to beg Achilles for the body of his son Hector, the scene that put O'Toole face to face with Brad Pitt.

O'Toole won a Primetime Emmy for playing Bishop Pierre Cauchon in a 1999 CBS miniseries about whom?

Joan of Arc was condemned at a trial that Cauchon ran as judge, so O'Toole's only Emmy came for playing the bishop who sent a future saint to the stake.

Which actor played the young Casanova in the 2005 BBC serial in which O'Toole played the older one?

David Tennant played the young seducer for most of the serial, whose writer, Russell T Davies, went on to cast him as the Doctor in Doctor Who soon afterwards.

In which TV drama did O'Toole play Pope Paul III, who excommunicates Henry VIII?

The Tudors brought him in for its second season, where his papacy not only casts the king out of the Church but backs a failed plot to assassinate Anne Boleyn.

In which play did O'Toole take the title role for the National Theatre's very first production in 1963?

Hamlet, directed by Laurence Olivier, launched the company, but its star was 'sick with nerves': to know what it is to be really lonely, he said, 'try playing Hamlet'.

O'Toole's 1980 London performance in which Shakespeare play famously earned some of the worst reviews of his career?

Macbeth had audiences laughing in the wrong places, yet the more furiously the critics savaged it, the more steadily the tickets sold.

O'Toole won a Laurence Olivier Award for playing which hard-drinking Spectator columnist in a 1989 play?

Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell took its title from the notice the magazine ran when its columnist was too drunk to file.

O'Toole was married from 1959 to 1979 to which Welsh actress?

Siân Phillips, later famous as Livia in I, Claudius, met him when she played his sister in a touring play that never reached London; they had two daughters, Kate and Pat.

O'Toole was offered a knighthood but turned it down in objection to the policies of which prime minister?

Margaret Thatcher's policies were his stated reason. A few years earlier he had greeted Sir John Gielgud on the Caligula set by asking what a knight of the realm was doing in such a film.

Which English football club did O'Toole support, inheriting the loyalty from his father?

Sunderland was where his father had once worked in the shipyards; O'Toole said his bond with the club faded when it left Roker Park for the Stadium of Light.

Major surgery in the mid-1970s forced O'Toole to all but give up what?

Alcohol had been half his legend, but after surgeons removed much of his stomach he stopped drinking almost completely on medical advice, though he carried on smoking.

O'Toole's two volumes of memoir share what title?

Loitering with Intent runs to two volumes, The Child and The Apprentice, on his boyhood and his RADA years; drafts of a third, on his career, were found unfinished among his papers.

O'Toole is credited with helping shape the modern form of which Irish folk song, which he passed to Dominic Behan?

Carrickfergus owes two of its verses to him: Behan said he learned them from the actor, then recorded the song in 1965 under another title, The Kerry Boatman.

O'Toole's archive of scripts, letters and props was placed in 2017 at the Harry Ransom Center in which US state?

Texas took the papers for its university at Austin; film had already immortalised his work, said his daughter Kate, and the archive keeps the private thoughts behind it, among them correspondence with Marlon Brando and Paul Newman.

O'Toole's first film role, in Disney's 1960 Kidnapped, saw him doing what opposite Peter Finch?

Playing the bagpipes was his whole scene: as Rob Roy's son he draws swords on Finch's Alan Breck, then settles the quarrel with a piping contest instead, and wins.

Which actor did O'Toole cite in the Becket DVD commentary as his most important mentor?

In a Charlie Rose interview he named Eric Porter as his greatest influence instead.

In which branch of the forces did O'Toole do his national service, as a signaller?

The Royal Navy gave him his push: a skipper asked what he secretly longed to do, and when he said poet or actor, told him he would regret it for life if he never tried.

Which role in The Merchant of Venice made the 27-year-old O'Toole the star of Stratford's 1960 season?

Shylock, played as a tall, bearded figure, so gripped the house that his Portia, Dorothy Tutin, stepped aside at the final curtain to salute a new star.

What was the name of the production company O'Toole ran with the producer Jules Buck?

Keep Films made many of his own pictures, usually with American partners, among them Becket and The Ruling Class, which brought him his fifth Oscar nomination.

Which Joseph Conrad novel became a 1965 epic with O'Toole in the lead?

Lord Jim took him to Cambodia for three months of location filming that he remembered as a nightmare, and after his desert triumph the film was judged a failure.

Which Irish labour leader did O'Toole play in the RTÉ miniseries Strumpet City?

James Larkin was the union leader at the heart of the 1913 Dublin Lockout, the backdrop to the story; RTÉ's seven-part series went on to be shown abroad as well as at home.

Which magazine ranked O'Toole's 1962 desert role the greatest screen performance of all time?

Premiere put it first among its 100 greatest film performances in 2006, although back in 1963 the Academy had handed the Best Actor Oscar to someone else.

In which 1984 film did O'Toole play the wizard Zaltar?

Supergirl cast him as the wizard who lets young Kara see the device that powers her city; the film bombed and brought him a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Actor.