Christopher Plummer

Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer (December 13, 1929 – February 5, 2021) was a Canadian actor. His career spanned seven decades, gaining him recognition for his performances in film, stage, and television. His accolades included an Academy Award, two Tony Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards, making him the only Canadian recipient of the "Triple Crown of Acting". He also received a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award, as well as a nomination for a Grammy Award.

Plummer began his acting career in Ottawa and followed this with stage roles in Canada, the U.S. and Bermuda. He made his Broadway debut in the 1954 play The Starcross Story. He received two Tony Awards, one for Best Actor in a Musical playing Cyrano de Bergerac in Cyrano (1974) and the other for Best Actor in a Play portraying John Barrymore in Barrymore (1997). His other Tony-nominated roles include J.B. (1959), Othello (1982), No Man's Land (1994), King Lear (2004) and Inherit the Wind (2007).

Plummer made his film debut in Stage Struck (1958), and landed his first starring role that same year in Wind Across the Everglades. He became a household name with his role as Captain Georg von Trapp in the musical film The Sound of Music (1965) alongside Julie Andrews. During this time he starred in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Waterloo (1970) and The Man Who Would Be King (1975).

Plummer received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing an elderly gay man in the comedy-drama Beginners (2011); he was nominated for the same award for his portrayals of Leo Tolstoy in the drama The Last Station (2009) and J. Paul Getty in the crime thriller All the Money in the World (2017). He is also known for his roles in The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), Somewhere in Time (1980), The Man Who Planted Trees (1987), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Malcolm X (1992), The Insider (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), The New World (2005), Syriana (2005), Inside Man (2006), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Knives Out (2019).

Early life and education

Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was born on December 13, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario. He was the only child of John Orme Plummer (1894–1977), who sold stocks and other securities, and Isabella Mary Abbott, who worked as secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and was the granddaughter of Canadian prime minister Sir John Abbott. On his father's side, Plummer's great-uncle was patent lawyer and agent F. B. Fetherstonhaugh. Plummer was also a cousin of Canadian classical pianist Janina Fialkowska and a second cousin of British actor Nigel Bruce, known for portraying Doctor Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.

Plummer's parents separated shortly after his birth, and he was brought up mainly by his mother in the Abbott family home in Senneville, Quebec, on the western tip of the Island of Montreal. In addition to English, he spoke French fluently. As a schoolboy, he began studying to be a concert pianist, but developed a love for theatre at an early age, and began acting while he was attending the High School of Montreal. He took up acting after watching Laurence Olivier's film Henry V (1944). He learned the basics of acting as an apprentice with the Montreal Repertory Theatre, where fellow Montrealer William Shatner also played.

Plummer never attended university, something he regretted all his life. Although his mother and his father's family had ties with McGill University, he was never a McGill student.

In 1946, he caught the attention of Montreal Gazette's theatre critic Herbert Whittaker with his performance as Mr. Darcy in a Montreal High School production of Pride and Prejudice. Whittaker was also amateur stage director of the Montreal Repertory theatre, and he cast Plummer at age 18 as Oedipus in Jean Cocteau's La Machine infernale.

Career

1948–1964: Early roles and theatre debut

Plummer made his professional acting debut in September 1948 with Ottawa's Stage Society, in The Rivals, followed by a full season of roles, a new production every two weeks, providing him with valuable experience. Plummer moved to Montreal, where he performed roles as an apprentice artist with the Montreal Repertory Theatre alongside fellow apprenticing actor William Shatner. In 1952, he starred in a number of productions at the Bermudiana Theatre in the City of Hamilton, in the British colony of Bermuda where he was seen and recruited by an American producer, although he was reluctant to leave Bermuda. Edward Everett Horton hired Plummer to appear as Gerard in the 1953 road show production of André Roussin's Nina, a role originated on Broadway by David Niven in 1951. Plummer made his Broadway debut in January 1953 in the Diana Morgan play The Starcross Story, a show that closed on opening night after a plagiarism lawsuit shut down the production. Plummer acted opposite Mary Astor and Margaret Bannerman.

His next Broadway appearance, Home is the Hero, lasted 30 performances from September to October 1954. He appeared in support of Broadway legend Katharine Cornell and film legend Tyrone Power in The Dark Is Light Enough, which lasted 69 performances from February to April 1955. The play toured several cities, with Plummer serving as Power's understudy. Later that same year, he appeared in his first Broadway hit, opposite Julie Harris (who won a Tony Award) in Jean Anouilh's The Lark. After this success, he appeared in Night of the Auk, which was not a success, He appeared as Jason opposite Dame Judith Anderson in Robinson Jeffers' adaptation of Medea at the Theatre Sara Bernhardt in Paris in 1955. The American National Theatre and Academy production, directed by Guthrie McClintic, was part of Le Festival International. Also in 1955, he played Mark Antony in Julius Caesar and Ferdinand in The Tempest at the American Shakespeare Festival (Stratford, Connecticut). He returned to the American Shakespeare Festival in 1981 to play the title role in Henry V.

Plummer made his Canadian television debut in the February 1953 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation production of Othello, starring Lorne Greene as the Moor. His American television debut was also in 1953 on a Studio One episode entitled "The Gathering Night", as an artist who finds success just as his eyesight begins to fail him. He also appeared throughout the 1950s on both dramatic showcase programs like The Alcoa Hour, General Electric Theater, Kraft Television Theatre, and Omnibus and episodic series. In 1956, he appeared with Jason Robards and Constance Ford in an episode entitled "A Thief There Was" of CBS's anthology series Appointment with Adventure. Plummer made his debut at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1956, playing the title role in Henry V, which subsequently was performed that year at the Edinburgh Festival. He played the title role in Hamlet and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night at Stratford in 1957. The following year, he played Leontes in The Winter's Tale, Bardolph in Henry IV, Part 1, and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. In 1959, Plummer appeared in Elia Kazan's successful Broadway production of Archibald MacLeish's Pulitzer Prize-winning play J.B.; Plummer was nominated for his first Tony for Best Actor in Play. (J.B. also won Tonys for Best Play and for Kazan's direction.)

He appeared in the live television drama Little Moon of Alban with Julie Harris, for which he received his first Emmy Award nomination. He also appeared with Harris in the 1958 television adaptation of Johnny Belinda and played Torvald Helmer to Harris' Nora in a 1959 television version of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. Plummer starred in the television adaptations of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story (1959), George Bernard Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1960), Jean Anouilh's Time Remembered (playing the role of Prince Albert originated by Richard Burton on Broadway), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1962).

In April 1961, he appeared as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He also appeared with the RSC in May 1961 in the lead role of Richard III. He made his London debut on June 11, 1961, playing King Henry II in Jean Anouilh's Becket with the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre, directed by Peter Hall. The production later transferred to the Globe for a December 1961 to April 1962 run. For his performance, Plummer won the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor. At the Stratford Festival, he played Philip the Bastard in King John and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. In 1962, he played the title roles in both Cyrano de Bergerac and Macbeth, returning in 1967 to play Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra. Plummer appeared less frequently on Broadway in the 1960s as he moved from New York to London.