by Nathaniel R
I thought Christopher Plummer would never die. Which is to say, I thought he wouldn't die for a long time yet. The last act of his career, running roughly from the one-two punch of his second Tony win in Barrymore (1997) and his much-praised Oscar-snubbed Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999) through his mischievously pleasing star turn as Harlam Thrombley the manipulative patriarch in the surprise hit Knives Out (2019), was like a gauntlet thrown down; dare to imagine the movies without me!
We'd rather not, thank you very much. But now we sadly must with the actor's death at 91 years of age...
"and introducing CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER" - his film Stage Struck (1958)
The Canadian actor took to the arts in high school and found work quickly as an actor afterwards. By the age of 23 he had already made his television and his Broadway debut. By 29 he had his first film role, fifth billed playing a young writer in Stage Struck (1958) and by 30 his first Tony nomination for a play called J.B. about a travelling circus.
Triple Cross (1966)
The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
Though he'd eventually win the Triple Crown of Acting (Emmy, Oscar, Tony), it was a long road to get there and it wasn't all rosy. His first Broadway show, for example, closed on opening night; you might consider it an omen of the career to come which began with enormous promise, but ended becoming more of a slow burn. The actor often spoke openly of his personal demons and his excessive drinking in the 1960s. It was the decade Hollywood was definitely toying with the idea of Plummer as Leading Man. In his memoir and in many talk show appearances he has been honest about how much he disliked his most titanic box office success as Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965). He was drunk through much of filming.
Plummer was famously drunk during the filming of Sound of Music, particularly the climax.
“I was a pampered, arrogant, young bastard spoiled by too many great theatre roles... My behavior was unconscionable.”
Movie stardom, at least in leading roles, didn't materialize as one might expect after headlining one of the biggest box office hits of all time. But the actor obviously conquered his demons -- and kept a great sense of humor about them as well as his prodigious talent -- and his film work and television work only got richer.
Plummer backstage at Cyrano in 1973
A decade later, awards bodies began to take notice. He won his first Tony Award for Cyrano on Broadway and the Emmy for the miniseries The Moneychangers in the mid Seventies.
with Richard Chamberlain in "The Thorn Birds"
The 80s were a relatively minor decade in his career though he popped up with frequency onscreen -- the blockbuster miniseries The Thorn Birds, and the fan-favourite romantic drama Somewhere in Time were two of the highlights -- and received another Tony nomination playing the scheming "Iago" opposite James Earl Jones in Othello.
But it was the final act of his career that will keep Christopher Plummer in hearts and minds forever. He cemented his World Class Thespian rep with a long run (on Broadway and on tour) as an earlier stage titan John Barrymore in the play Barrymore which came just before the 1999 whammy of his hugely memorable role in The Insider which he followed up with another Best Picture nominated key supporting part in A Beautiful Mind.
By the late Aughts Hollywood, after decades of strong work, the momentum was there and Hollywood was finally invested in honoring him. He nabbed his long delayed first Oscar nomination for The Last Station (2009).
as Hal (his Oscar-winning role) in "Beginners"
The following year Plummer won the Oscar, as so few actors actually do, for what was actually his career-best work. Great actors can find the truth in any character but they can elevate richly conceived characters like Hal, a newly out senior citizen in Mike Mills profound and lovely Beginners (2010) into the stuff of movie legend. (Aside: when we've said that gay actors should be cast in gay roles in recent years we only mean it in the sense of career-opportunity parity, of which there is precious little; obviously great actors can excel in many different types of roles.)
His Oscar for Beginners wasn't a "career" prize, though surely that helped wih the vote count, but a slam dunk win resulting from one of the world's greatest actors acing a role that was both perfect for him and a stretch simultaneously. In one of the loveliest and funniest Oscar acceptance speeches ever, Plummer began...
[to Oscar] "You're only two years older than me darling, where have you been all my life?! [To audience] I have a confession to make. When I first emerged from my mother's womb, I was already rehearsing my Academy thank you speech. It was so long ago, mercifully for you, I've forgotten it."
That speech and the last wonderfully vital 20 years of his career -- in which he kept topping himself dramatically and making Oscar history (Oldest acting winner of all time for Beginners / Oldest acting nominee of all time for All the Money in the World) all while laying on the devilish charm were a reminder of his inimitable gifts. He could conjure grand emotions and unmistakable gravitas even while playing delicate little notes; I'll never forget his beautifully open and curious imitation of house music in Beginners. His work remained vital and lively to the very last note, even while playing men approaching or planning for their own death.