Christopher Plummer

Christopher was a great-grandson of John Abbott, who was Canada's third Prime Minister (from 1891 to 1892), and a great-great-great-grandson of Anglican clergyman John Bethune. He had Scottish, English, and Anglo-Irish ancestry. Plummer was raised in Senneville, Quebec, near Montreal. Aside from the youngest member of the Barrymore siblings (which counted Oscar-winners Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore in their number), Plummer was the premier Shakespearean actor to come out of North America in the 20th century. He was particularly memorable as Hamlet, Iago and Lear, though his Macbeth opposite Glenda Jackson was -- and this was no surprise to him due to the famous curse attached to the "Scottish Play" -- a failure. Like another great stage actor, Richard Burton, early in his career Plummer failed to connect with the screen in a way that would make him a star. Dynamic on stage, he didn't succeed as a younger leading man in films. Perhaps if he had been born earlier, and acted in the studio system of Hollywood's golden age, he could have been carefully groomed for stardom. As it was, he shared the English stage actors' disdain -- and he was equally at home in London as he was on the boards of Broadway or on-stage in his native Canada -- for the movies, which did not help him in that medium, as he has confessed. As he aged, Plummer excelled at character roles. He was always a good villain, this man who garnered kudos playing Lucifer on Broadway in Archibald Macleish's Pulitzer Prize-winning "J. B. ".

Christopher Plummer was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer on December 13, 1929 in Toronto, Ontario. He was the only child of Isabella Mary (Abbott), a secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and John Orme Plummer, who sold securities and stocks.

He cited Jean Renoir's war drama La Grande Illusion (1937) as the film that moved him into tears more often than any other during his lifetime.

Both he and his daughter, Amanda Plummer, have played in Jean Anouilh's "The Lark", he appeared on Broadway (1955) and she appeared in Stratford (2005).

Became a father for the first time at age 27 when his first [now ex] wife Tammy Grimes gave birth to their daughter Amanda Michael Plummer, aka Amanda Plummer, on March 23, 1957.

Plummer won two Emmy Awards out of seven nominations stretching 46 years from 1959 and 2011, and one Genie Award in six nominations from 1980 to 2009.

His other Tony nominations show the wide range of his talent, from a 1959 nod for the Elia Kazan-directed production of Macleish's "J. B.

Had worked with both Obi-Wan Kenobis on film. Alec Guinness played his father in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), while Plummer later played father to Ewan McGregor in Beginners (2010).

He will also likely always be remembered as Captain Von Trapp in the atomic bomb-strength blockbuster The Sound of Music (1965), a film he publicly despised until softening his stance in his autobiography "In Spite of Me" (2008).

(In 1968, he was awarded Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor and one which required the approval of the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. ) If he lived in the company town of Los Angeles rather than in Connecticut, he likely would have several more Oscar nominations before winning his first for "The Last Station". As it is, as attested to in his witty and well-written autobiography, Plummer was amply rewarded in life.

Had appeared with Susannah York in four films: The Battle of Britain (1969), Lock Up Your Daughters! (1969), Conduct Unbecoming (1975) and The Silent Partner (1978).

In 1970, Plummer - then a self-confessed 43-year-old "bottle baby" - married his third wife Elaine Taylor, a dancer, who helped wean him off his dependency on alcohol. They lived happily with their dogs on a 30-acre estate in Weston, Connecticut.

For his stage work, Plummer has racked up two Tony Awards on six nominations, the first in 1974 as Best Actor (Musical) for the title role in "Cyrano" and the second in 1997, as Best Actor (Play), in "Barrymore".

Had played the role of King Herod in two adaptations made forty years apart: the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and the animated comedy The Star (2017).

He admitted in an interview that he took the role of the Emperor of the Galaxy in the space opera Starcrash (1978) so he could visit Rome for free.

Legendary actor Christopher Plummer, perhaps Canada's greatest thespian, delivered outstanding performances as Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), the chilling villain in The Silent Partner (1978), the iconoclastic Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), the empathetic psychiatrist in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the kindly and clever mystery writer in Knives Out (2019), and as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009).

His first paying role was in "Machina Infernale" (The Infernal Machine) by Jean Cocteau, in which he worked with another young Montreal actor, William Shatner. The two were reunited years later when they both appeared in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).

He and daughter Amanda Plummer have both appeared in adaptation of Stephen King novels. Amanda appeared in Needful Things (1993), while Christopher appeared in Dolores Claiborne (1995).

" to recognition in 1994 for Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land", with a 1982 Best Actor (Play) nomination for his "Iago" in William Shakespeare's "Othello".

Was one of 14 actors to have won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Critics' Choice Award, Golden Globe Award and SAG Award for the same performance. The others in chronological order are Geoffrey Rush for Shine (1996), Jamie Foxx for Ray (2004), Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote (2005), Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland (2006), Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men (2007), Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood (2007) and Lincoln (2012), Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008), Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009), Colin Firth for The King's Speech (2010), J.K. Simmons for Whiplash (2014), Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant (2015), Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour (2017).

He was awarded the Edwin Booth Lifetime Achievement Award by The Players (1997).

He was awarded a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto, Ontario in 1998 (charter member).

He was awarded the 1999 Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Lead Actor in a Play for "Barrymore" at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

On April 22, 2002, he was awarded the first Jason Robards Award for Excellence in Theatre by the Roundabout Theatre. His The Sound of Music (1965) co-star Julie Andrews was among those in attendance.

Surprisingly, he did not win (though he was nominated) for his masterful 2004 performance of "King Lear", which he originated at the Stratford Festival in Ontario and brought down to Broadway for a sold-out run.

He and his daughter Amanda Plummer both received Emmy Award nominations (2005). She won, he did not.

Was one of 115 people invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in 2007.

Christopher Plummer's mother Isabella was a secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University after her divorce from John Orme Plummer who sold stocks in Toronto and never lived in Montreal. In his memoir "In Spite of Myself" (2008), he writes that his mother was doubly disgraced for an upper-class woman in the 1930s, being both divorced and having to go out of work. This explains why he was born in Toronto, and grew up in Montreal. He and his father did not meet until Christopher was age 17.

Until the 2009 Academy Awards were announced, it could be said about Plummer that he was the finest actor of the post-World War II period to fail to get an Academy Award. In that, he was following in the footsteps of the late great John Barrymore, whom Plummer so memorably portrayed on Broadway in a one-man show that brought him his second Tony Award.

It was this last role that finally brought him recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, when he was nominated as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, one of three Academy Award nominations he received in the 2010s, along with All the Money in the World (2017) (as J.

Paul Getty) and Beginners (2010); he won for the latter role.

In 2010, Plummer finally got an Oscar nod for his portrayal of another legend, Lev Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). Two years later, the first paragraph of his obituary was written when the 82-year-old Plummer became the oldest person in Academy history to win an Oscar.

He won for playing a senior citizen who comes out as gay after the death of his wife in the movie Beginners (2010). As he clutched his statuette, the debonaire thespian addressed it thus: "You're only two years older than me darling, where have you been all of my life?"Plummer then told the audience that at birth, "I was already rehearsing my Academy acceptance speech, but it was so long ago mercifully for you I've forgotten it. " The Academy Award was a long time in coming and richly deserved. Plummer gave many other fine portrayals on film, particularly as he grew older and settled down into a comfortable marriage with his third wife Elaine. He continued to be an in-demand character actor in prestigious motion pictures. If he were English rather than Canadian, he would have been knighted.

In 2012, he became the 21st performer to have received the Triple Crown of Acting: the 1974 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical ("Cyrano") and the 1997 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play ("Barrymore"), the 1977 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series (Arthur Hailey's the Moneychangers (1976)) and the 1994 Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance (Madeline (1989)), and the 2012 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (Beginners (2010)).

At age 82, he was the oldest person to receive an Academy Award. At age 88, he became the oldest person ever to be nominated for an acting Academy Award for All the Money in the World (2017).

As of 2018, had appeared in four films that were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award winners: The Sound of Music (1965), The Insider (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Up (2009). The Sound of Music (1965) and A Beautiful Mind (2001) both won Best Picture.