Christopher Plummer,
CC (born December 13, 1929) is a
Canadian
theater, film and television actor. In a career that spans over five
decades and includes substantial roles in film, television, and
theater, Plummer is perhaps best known for the role of
Captain Georg von Trapp in
The Sound of
Music. His most recent film roles include the
Disney-
Pixar 2009 film
Up as Charles Muntz, the
Shane Acker production
9 as 1 and
The Imaginarium of Doctor
Parnassus as Doctor Parnassus.
Early life
Plummer
was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer in
Toronto
, Ontario
, Canada, the
son of Isabella Mary (née Abbott, granddaughter of Prime Minister
John Abbott) and John Plummer, who was
secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University
in Montreal, Quebec
.
Theatre
Plummer has played most of the great roles in classic repertoire.
He
appeared in a lauded production of King
Lear, directed by Jonathan
Miller and performed at Lincoln Center
. Plummer's performance as Lear garnered him
his sixth
Tony nomination.
He returned to
Broadway
in 2007 as
Henry Drummond in a revival of Inherit the Wind, winning a
Drama Desk Award nomination as well
as his seventh Tony
nomination.
Plummer returned to the stage at The
Stratford Festival of Canada in
August 2008 in a critically acclaimed performance as
Julius Caesar in
George Bernard Shaw's "
Caesar and Cleopatra" directed
by
Tony winner
Des
McAnuff; this production was videotaped and shown in
high-definition in Canadian cinemas on January 31, 2009 (with an
encore presentation on February 23, 2009) and broadcast on April 4,
2009 on
Bravo! in Canada.
Film
Plummer's eclectic career on screen began in 1958 when
Sidney Lumet cast him as a young writer in
Stage Struck. Since
then he has appeared in a vast number of notable films which
include
The Man Who
Would Be King,
The Fall of the Roman
Empire,
Jesus of
Nazareth,
The Return of the Pink
Panther,
Battle of
Britain,
Waterloo,
The Silent
Partner,
Dragnet,
Shadow Dancing,
Inside Daisy Clover,
Star Trek VI: The
Undiscovered Country,
Malcolm X,
Dolores Claiborne,
Wolf,
Twelve Monkeys,
Murder by Decree,
Somewhere in Time and
Syriana.
One of Plummer's most critically acclaimed roles was that of
television journalist
Mike
Wallace in
Michael
Mann's Oscar-nominated
The
Insider, for which he won Boston, Los Angeles, and
National Society of Film Critics Awards for 'Best Supporting
Actor'; he was also nominated for Chicago and Las Vegas Film
Critics Awards, as well as a
Satellite
Award. Predicions of an Oscar nomination circulated, but such
recogniton never came.
Other recent successes include his roles as Dr. Rosen in
Ron Howard's Academy Award winning
A Beautiful Mind,
Arthur Case in
Spike
Lee's 2006 film
Inside Man,
and the philosopher Aristotle in
Alexander, alongside
Colin Farrell. In 2004, Plummer played John
Adams Gates in
National
Treasure.
Owing to the box office success and continued popularity of
The Sound of
Music (1965), Plummer is perhaps best known for his
portrayal of
Captain Von
Trapp, a role he reportedly disliked.
Plummer has also done some voice work, such as his role of the
villainous Grand Duke of Owls in
Rock-a-Doodle, the antagonistic Charles
Muntz in
Up and the elder
leader 1 in the Tim Burton-produced action/sci-fi film
9.
Television
Among his television appearances, which number almost a hundred,
are the
Emmy winning
BBC production
Hamlet at
Elsinore, the five-time Emmy winning
The Thorn Birds, the
Emmy-winning
Nuremberg, the Emmy-winning
Little Moon of Alban and the
Emmy-winning
Moneychangers.
He co-starred in
American
Tragedy as
F. Lee Bailey (for which he received a
Golden Globe Nomination), and appeared in
Four Minute Mile,
Miracle Planet, and a
documentary by
Ric Burns' about
Eugene O’Neill. He received an Emmy
nomination for his performance in
Our Fathers and reunited with
Julie Andrews for a
television production of
On Golden Pond. He also played
Herod Antipas in the miniseries,
Jesus of Nazareth and
was the narrator for
The
Gospel of John.
He narrated the animated television series
Madeline as well as the animated television series
David the Gnome
Plummer has also written for the stage, television and the
concert-hall. Plummer and Sir
Neville
Marriner rearranged
Shakespeare’s
Henry V with Sir
William Walton’s music as a concert piece.
They recorded the work with Marriner's chamber orchestra the
Academy of St.
Martin in the Fields.
He
performed it and other works with the New York Philharmonic and symphony
orchestras of London
, Washington,
D.C.
, Cleveland,
Ohio
, Philadelphia
, Minneapolis
, Toronto, Vancouver
and Halifax
. With Marriner he made his Carnegie Hall
debut in his own arrangements of Mendelssohn’s incidental music to
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream.
Honours and Awards
Plummer
has won many honours in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United
States, and Austria
. He
was the first winner of Canada's
Genie
Award, for Best Actor in
Murder by Decree (1980) and
has received three other Genie nominations. Plummer has won two
Tony Awards (from seven nominations), and two Emmy Awards (six
nominations) in the United States, and Great Britain's
Evening
Standard Award.
In 1968 he was invested as
Companion of the Order of
Canada, Canada's highest civilian honour. In 2001 he received
the Canadian
Governor General's
Lifetime Achievement Award.
He was made an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts
at New York's Juilliard
School
and has received honorary doctorates from the
University of
Toronto
, Ryerson University
, McGill University, the University of Western Ontario
, the University of Ottawa
, and most recently the University of
Guelph
. Plummer was inducted into the American Theatre's Hall of
Fame in 1986 and into Canada's Walk of Fame
in Toronto in 1997.
His awards include the following:
Personal life
Plummer has been married three times. His first marriage, to Tony
Award-winning actress
Tammy Grimes, was
in 1956 and lasted for four years. The couple's daughter,
Amanda Plummer (born 1957), is an acclaimed
actress in her own right. Plummer was married to journalist
Patricia Lewis from May 4, 1962 until their divorce in 1967.
He and
his third wife, British dancer and actress Elaine Reginia Taylor,
have been married since 1970 and live in a 100-year-old converted
farm house in Connecticut
.
In a 2005 interview with
Entertainment Weekly Plummer
unpretentiously maintained that in their early days he and his
fellow actors didn't drink "because we had problems. We drank
'cause we adored it! We adored getting drunk, you a--holes! Don't
tell me that it isn't fun! I can't bear that.
Oh, you must have
had some awful childhood, that you drank like that. Nonsense!
Actually, I was taught as a child to drink. I came from a family
that loved wine. I was twelve, I think, when I was drinking wine
with dinner. I'm glad I had fun and lived in a fun time."
Plummer's memoir,
In Spite of Myself, was published by
Knopf Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in
November 2008.
Filmography
Upcoming
References
- New York Times, 12/19/08
-
http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679421627
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