'Lawrence of Arabia' actor Peter O'Toole dies at age 81

By Andrew Osborn

LONDON (Reuters) – Stage and screen star Peter O’Toole, the lanky actor of regal bearing and piercing blue eyes who shot to fame in the title role of the epic film “Lawrence of Arabia,” has died at age 81 after a long illness, his agent said on Sunday.

The eight-time Oscar nominee, who survived a bout with stomach cancer in the 1970s but whose health had been damaged by years of heavy drinking and chain-smoking, died in a London hospital on Saturday, Steve Kenis, his agent, told Reuters.

“Peter O’Toole’s family announced today that very sadly Peter died yesterday, peacefully in hospital. He had been ill for some time,” Kenis said in a statement.

Appearing in dozens of films during a career spanning six decades, O’Toole is best remembered for his breakout role in David Lean’s 1962 blockbuster “Lawrence of Arabia” starring as T.E. Lawrence, the eccentric British army officer who fought with Arab irregular troops against Ottoman Turkish rule in World War One.

The film earned O’Toole the first of eight Academy Award nominations as best actor in a leading role.

Nearly a half-century later, O’Toole gained a new following among cable television viewers for his portrait of Pope Paul III, the Roman Catholic pontiff at odds with Britain’s King Henry VIII in the historical drama series “The Tudors.”

In between, O’Toole delivered seven more Oscar-nominated performances, along the way becoming one of just a handful of actors to earn Academy Award bids by playing the same character in two different films – portraying King Henry II in “Becket” (1964), co-starring Richard Burton, and in “The Lion in Winter” (1968), opposite Katharine Hepburn.

He also garnered Oscar nods for his work in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (1969), “The Ruling Class” (1972), “The Stunt Man” (1980), “My Favorite Year” (1982) and once more in “Venus” (2006).

The most-nominated actor never to win the award, he eventually and reluctantly accepted an honorary Oscar in 2003.

Before doing so, he composed a hand-written open letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Later describing his ambivalence at accepting the honorary statuette, he wrote: “I was enchanted but said that as I was still in the game and might yet win the lovely bugger outright, would the Academy please defer the honour until I am 80?”

Believed to have been born in Ireland, O’Toole grew up in England and trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) where he was in the same class as Albert Finney.

His striking blue eyes, tousled brown hair and 6-foot-3-inch (1.9 metre) frame made him an instant hit with women when he began his stage career in 1954.

He initially made waves on stage in several key Shakespearean roles, including an acclaimed turn as “Hamlet,” and launched his film career in 1960 with small parts in a handful of pictures, including “Kidnapped” and “The Day They Robbed the Bank of England.”

A SWAGGERING ROMANTIC

“Lawrence of Arabia” established him as a major screen actor. But living down his performance in the epic film became somewhat of a problem, and for most of the 1970s O’Toole found he was playing nothing but the swaggering romantic lead.

In 1980, he made a humiliating return to the Shakespearean stage in London after a 20-year absence.

O’Toole’s blood-soaked Macbeth at the Old Vic theatre provoked outright laughter from the audience and made front-page news for its sheer awfulness.

For the next few years, O’Toole found it difficult to be taken seriously as a stage actor.

Making a comeback in the 1980s, he also gave up drinking. Years of abdominal pain and almost continuous consumption of alcohol had led to a diagnosis of pancreatitis and a warning that liquor would soon kill him.

A supporting role as the kindly but bemused English teacher in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 Oscar-winning film ““The Last Emperor” showed the public a new side to the hell-raiser they had come to expect.

A year later, at the age of 56, he won rave reviews for playing his old Soho drinking pal in the play ““Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell” in a part that seemed to mirror his own misfortunes.

He had announced he was retiring only last year.

“It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back,” O’Toole said in a statement.

“It’s my belief that one should decide for oneself when it is time to end one’s stay.”

Michael Higgins, the president of Ireland, was one of the first to react to his death.

“Those who saw him play leading roles on the screen from Lawrence in 1962, or through the role of Henry II in Becket, and The Lion in Winter, or through the dozens of films, will recognise a lifetime devoted to the art form of the camera,” Higgins said in a statement.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a tweet that “Lawrence of Arabia” was his favourite film, hailing O’Toole’s performance in it as “stunning.”

Daughter Kate O’Toole thanked the public for what she described as an outpouring of love for the late actor.

She asked for her family to be allowed to grieve in private, saying in the same statement it would organise a memorial service “filled with song and good cheer” in due course.

O’Toole leaves behind children Kate and Patricia from his failed marriage with Welsh actress Sian Phillips, and Lorcan, his son from a relationship with Karen Brown, a former girlfriend.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall, Steve Gorman and Mohammad Zargham)

'Lawrence of Arabia' actor Peter O'Toole dies at age 81