Peter O’Toole
By O’Toole was a major part of both one of my most sublime experiences at the movies and one of the most ridiculous. Seeing Lawrence of Arabia at the Cinerama was, if anything, better than could have been anticipated. And “I’m not an actor! I’m a movie star!” notwithstanding, he really was as spectacular as the context demanded. With respect to his later profit-taking years, as a freshman a friend and I walked into a midnight repertory screening of Caligula completely cold — “Peter O”Toole! John Gielgud! Malcolm McDowell! Rome! Looks great!” (In retrospect, walking into a movie knowing nothing about it because of McDowell and O’Toole’s names on the poster is like taking a flyer on a movie because if Nic Cage and Michael Caine are in it how bad can it be, but we were not aware of their longstanding indiscriminate script approval policy at the time.) As Ebert famously said, it “is not good art, it is not good cinema, and it is not good porn.”
Like a lot of actors, he had a lengthy career coda without enough good roles, but he’ll be always remembered for his great ones. And even if he wasn’t onscreen, his perfect work in Ratatouille gave him a career capper worthy of his gifts.