News Analysis India

Tag: Christopher Plummer

  • A genteel actor loved equally by all

    Express News Service
    The late Christopher Plummer had seen it all. His old school Shakespearean groundwork had given him the tools for playing the principal characters who were flawed but commanded the stage with their heavy baggage and air of prominence. Iago. Hamlet. Macbeth. King Lear. It naturally gave way to characters who turned the attention towards them when they walked into a room. The ones who might not play the main part in a film but who are very much the centre of gravity. For Plummer, it stretched from The Sound of Music to Knives Out. 

    In one, he is the von Trapp patriarch who can go from drawing everyone into Edelweiss, to tearing a Nazi flag into tatters in the blink of an eye, and in another, he can be deceptive to a whole dysfunctional unit, having nurtured a healthy disregard for the concept of family. Plummer was one of those actors loved equally by all but never having inspired a campy adulation or irrational fandom, maybe his most identifiable Canadian trait of all. 

    The reality distortion field around Plummer is so strong in the Edelweiss sequence that it is hard to believe that the actor nursed a disdain for one of the biggest hits and most popular musicals of all time. In almost all his interviews, he was outspoken about his disinterest in The Sound of Music and repeating that the only memorable part of the film was working with Julie Andrews. We hear stories about actors and films like this all the time but rarely straight from the actor.

    Plummer is also known for having played several real-life figures. Be it the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo or Rudyard Kipling in The Man Who Would Be King and CBS’s Mike Wallace in The Insider. The Mike Wallace turn is particularly memorable and comes a full circle when considered that Plummer debuted in Sidney Lumet’s Stage Struck and Michael Mann’s The Insider is reminiscent of Lumet’s film Network, with Plummer’s Wallace caught between editorial integrity and corporate pressure. Integrity does come to mind when talking of Christopher Plummer, but he has had his share of roles of lesser men. The GIF image of Georg von Trapp splitting a Nazi flag into several pieces went viral hours after the news of actor’s death broke, but in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, he plays the unrelenting racist chaplain in Malcolm’s prison. 

    In 2021, it’s almost magical and comforting that a male celebrity passes at 91—and there aren’t horrible things to remember him by. Plummer was a replacement for Kevin Spacey in All the Money in the World (2017) as J Paul Getty (though director Ridley Scott claims Plummer was his original choice), and sexual misconduct allegations had surfaced against Spacey when the film was ready for release. Plummer was such a thorough professional that at almost 88, he was ready for a stressful nine-day re-filming schedule, with the studios wanting to keep the original release date. 

    Ironically, he played J Paul Getty, the rigid and ruthless richest man in the world at that time, who refuses to pay the ransom for his kidnapped grandson. Plummer was anything but Paul. He became the oldest actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for the role and earned Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. He may not prefer it, but the genteel Georg von Trapp remains closest to what Christopher Plummer the man embodied.

  • Oscar-winner Hollywood star Christopher Plummer dies

    By Associated Press
    NEW YORK:  Christopher Plummer, the dashing award-winning actor who played Captain von Trapp in the film “The Sound of Music” and at 82 became the oldest Academy Award acting winner in history, has died. He was 91.

    Plummer died Friday morning at his home in Connecticut with his wife, Elaine Taylor, by his side, said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager

    Over more than 50 years in the industry, Plummer enjoyed varied roles ranging from the film “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” to the voice of the villain in 2009′s “Up” and as a canny lawyer in Broadway’s “Inherit the Wind.”

    But it was opposite Julie Andrews as von Trapp that made him a star. He played an Austrian captain who must flee the country with his folk-singing family to escape service in the Nazi navy, a role he lamented was “humorless and one-dimensional.” Plummer spent the rest of his life referring to the film as “The Sound of Mucus” or “S&M.”

    “We tried so hard to put humor into it,” he told The Associated Press in 2007. “It was almost impossible. It was just agony to try to make that guy not a cardboard figure.”

    The role catapulted Plummer to stardom, but he never took to leading men parts, despite his silver hair, good looks and ever-so-slight English accent. He preferred character parts, considering them more meaty.

    Plummer had a remarkable film renaissance late in life, which began with his acclaimed performance as Mike Wallace in Michael Mann’s 1999 film “The Insider,” continued in films such as 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind” and 2009′s “The Last Station,” in which he played a deteriorating Tolstoy and was nominated for an Oscar.

    In 2012, Plummer won a supporting actor Oscar for his role in “Beginners” as Hal Fields, a museum director who becomes openly gay after his wife of 44 years dies. His loving, final relationship becomes an inspiration for his son, who struggles with his father’s death and how to find intimacy in a new relationship.

    “Too many people in the world are unhappy with their lot. And then they retire and they become vegetables. I think retirement in any profession is death, so I’m determined to keep crackin’,” he told AP in 2011.

    Plummer in 2017 replaced Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty in “All the Money in the World” just six weeks before the film was set to hit theaters. That choice that was officially validated in the best possible way for the film — a supporting Oscar nomination for Plummer, his third. In 2019, he starred in the TV suspense drama series “Departure.”

    There were fallow periods in his career — a “Pink Panther” movie here, a “Dracula 2000″ there and even a “Star Trek” — as a Klingon, no less. But Plummer had other reasons than the scripts in mind.

    “For a long time, I accepted parts that took me to attractive places in the world. Rather than shooting in the Bronx, I would rather go to the south of France, crazed creature than I am,” he told AP in 2007. “And so I sacrificed a lot of my career for nicer hotels and more attractive beaches.”

    The Canadian-born actor performed most of the major Shakespeare roles, including Hamlet, Cyrano, Iago, Othello, Prospero, Henry V and a staggering “King Lear” at Lincoln Center in 2004. He was frequent star at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada.

    “I’ve become simpler and simpler with playing Shakespeare,” he said in 2007. “I’m not as extravagant as I used to be. I don’t listen to my voice so much anymore. All the pitfalls of playing the classics — you can fall in love with yourself.”

    He won two Tony Awards. The first was in 1974 for best actor in a musical for playing the title role in “Cyrano” and his second in 1997 for his portrayal of John Barrymore in “Barrymore.” He also won two Emmys.

    Plummer was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer in Toronto. His maternal great-grandfather was former Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Abbott. His parents divorced shortly after his birth and he was raised by his mother and aunts.