"If he'd been any more beautiful they would have had to have called it 'Florence of Arabia'. - Noel Coward.
He's one I'll miss. Acting in films almost to the end. Still has a few posthumous ones coming out.
One of his best later films is "Dean Spanley" (2008) an Anglo-Kiwi co-production filmed in England (and a little in NZ) by NZ director Toa Fraser with a mostly NZ crew. Also stars Sam Neill. For my money, one of the best NZ films ever made.
Based on an Irish humorous short novel poking fun at the English, Church of England etc.
Amazing that O'Toole's last film award was in the NZ Film and Television Awards where he won Best Supporting Actor in a Feature Film (also nominated for an Irish Film and Television Award and London Crtitics Circle Award).
Well-received movie - 85% rating over-all from all critics on Rotten Tomatoes site.
I grew up on stories of O'Toole - he was a boyfriend of one of my mother's best friends in Leeds after the war.
He grew up in Leeds after immigrating from Ireland aged one.
Staunch socialist in his youth (Communist Youth Theatre, Leeds) and traditional Catholic upbringing (an altarboy and climbed Croagh Patrick, St Patrick's holy mountain barefoot with my mother's friend Eileen and her brother in his youth. They traveled around Ireland on a donkey cart with crates of Guinness on the back).
A very generous fellow who never locked his house even when a well-known actor and let all sorts of waifs and strays stay in his house.
A complex personality - the hell-raising and brawls was one side of it - until he quit the boozing due to it's detrimental effect on his health about 1975. But reading was his main pursuit outside acting - had a huge library. Also loved cricket (keen player) and rugby.
I first saw him as a boy playing the dual roles of the Mad Earl and Jack the Ripper in the "Ruling Class" on TV in the mid-seventies before a rugby test while staying at the house of Irish NZers the Daly's, a school friend from our Catholic school in Nelson. Hugely inspiring!
