Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer, CC (December 13, 1929 - February 5, 2021) was a Canadian-American actor whose career had spanned seven decades, which began with his film debut in Stage Struck.
Biography[]
Plummer was born on December 13, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario. He is the only child of John Orme Plummer, who sold stocks and securities, and his wife Isabella Mary (née Abbott), who worked as secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and who 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 is also a second cousin of British actor Nigel Bruce, known for portraying Doctor Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.
Plummer's parents divorced shortly after his birth, and he was brought up largely by his mother in the Abbott family home in Senneville, Quebec, outside of Montreal. He speaks both English and 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 attended McGill where he also took up acting, after watching Laurence Olivier's film Henry V. In 1946, he caught the attention of Montreal Gazette's theatre critic Herbert Whittaker with his performance as Mr Darcy in the 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
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 1960, 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.
In 2002, he appeared in a lauded production of King Lear, directed by Jonathan Miller. The production successfully transferred to New York City's Lincoln Center in 2004. He returned to the stage at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival 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. Plummer returned to the Stratford Festival in the summer of 2010 in The Tempest as the lead character, Prospero (also videotaped and shown in high-def in cinemas), and again in the summer of 2012 in the one-man show, A Word or Two, an autobiographical exploration of his love of literature. In 2014, Plummer presented A Word or Two again, at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles.
Plummer's film career began in 1958 when Sidney Lumet cast him as a young writer in Stage Struck. That same year, Plummer played the lead in Nicholas Ray's film Wind Across the Everglades.
He did not appear on screen again for six years until he played Roman emperor Commodus in Anthony Mann's epic The Fall of the Roman Empire.
His next film, the Oscar-winning The Sound of Music, made cinematic history, becoming the all-time top-grossing film, eclipsing Gone with the Wind.
He was in Inside Daisy Clover, then played World War Two agent Eddie Chapman in Triple Cross and had a support role as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in The Night of the Generals. Plummer was cast to replace Rex Harrison for the film adaptation of Doctor Dolittle. This decision was later reversed, but Plummer was nonetheless paid $87,500 for signing the contract. At the same time, Plummer was performing in the stage play The Royal Hunt of the Sun and his whole Dolittle participation was so brief that Plummer never missed a performance.
Plummer had the title role in Oedipus the King (1968) and The High Commissioner (1968), playing an Australian in the latter. Plummer was one of many stars in Battle of Britain (1969) and was Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969).
Plummer had the lead in a musical, Lock Up Your Daughters and was the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo (1970). The Pyx (1973) was his first Canadian film.
Plummer appeared in The Man Who Would Be King (playing Rudyard Kipling), The Return of the Pink Panther, Aces High, The Silent Partner, International Velvet, Murder by Decree (playing Sherlock Holmes), Somewhere in Time, Eyewitness, Dragnet, Shadow Dancing, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Malcolm X, Wolf, Dolores Claiborne, 12 Monkeys, Syriana, Must Love Dogs, The New World, The Lake House and Remember. In 2019, he starred as murder mystery writer Harlan Thrombey in Rian Johnson's mystery film Knives Out.
One of Plummer's most critically acclaimed roles was that of television journalist Mike Wallace in Michael Mann's biographical film The Insider, for which he was honoured with several critics' awards for Best Supporting Actor, though a corresponding Academy Award nomination did not materialize.
Other successes include his roles as Dr. Rosen in Ron Howard's Academy Award-winning A Beautiful Mind, Arthur Case in Spike Lee's film Inside Man, and the philosopher Aristotle in Alexander, alongside Colin Farrell. In 2004, Plummer played John Adams Gates in National Treasure.
Plummer has also done some voice work, such as his role of Henri the pigeon in An American Tail, 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/science fiction film 9. He also served as the narrator in Philip Saville's film The Gospel of John.
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.
In 1958, 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.
He also starred in the television adaptations of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story, 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 1964, his performance of the Gloomy Dane in the BBC production Hamlet at Elsinore garnered his second Emmy nomination. Another notable play in which he appeared was the 1974 adaptation of Arthur Miller's After the Fall, in which he played Quentin (a part originated on Broadway by Jason Robards) opposite Faye Dunaway's Maggie.
He appeared in almost 100 television roles, including appearances as Herod Antipas in Jesus of Nazareth, the five-time Emmy Award-winning The Thorn Birds, the Emmy-winning Nuremberg, the Emmy-winning Little Moon of Alban and the Emmy-winning The Moneychangers (for which he won his first Emmy Award as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series).
He co-starred in American Tragedy as F. Lee Bailey (for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination), and appeared in Four Minute Mile, Miracle Planet, and a documentary by Ric Burns about Eugene O'Neill. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his performance in Our Fathers and reunited with Julie Andrews for a television production of On Golden Pond. He was the narrator for The Gospel of John. He also co-starred with Gregory Peck in The Scarlet and the Black.
He narrated the animated television series Madeline, for which he received an Emmy Award, as well as the animated television series The World of David the Gnome.
At the age of 89, he appeared in a leading role in Departure, a 2019 Canadian-British TV series by Global for NBC Universal about the disappearance of a Trans-Atlantic flight.
Plummer has also written for the stage, television and the concert-hall. He 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, Philadelphia, Chicago, 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.
In 2000, he reprised his role from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in the video game Star Trek: Klingon Academy. In 2011, he provided the voice of Arngeir, leader of the Greybeards, in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
lummer married three times. His first wife was the actress Tammy Grimes, whom he married in 1956. Their marriage lasted four years, and they had a daughter together, the actress Amanda Plummer.
Plummer was next married to journalist Patricia Lewis from May 4, 1962, until their divorce in 1967. Three years after his second divorce, Plummer married actress Elaine Taylor on October 2, 1970. Plummer and Elaine lived together in Weston, Connecticut. Plummer had no children by either his second or third marriages.
Plummer's memoir, In Spite of Myself, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in November 2008. Plummer was a patron of Theatre Museum Canada. He was a member of the Players Club in New York City
On February 5, 2021, Plummer died at his home in Weston, Connecticut, aged 91. According to his wife, Elaine Taylor, he died from a blow to the head resulting from a fall. His family released a statement announcing that Plummer had died peacefully with Taylor at his side.
Filmography[]
Animation Dubbing[]
Animated Series[]
- The World of David the Gnome (1985-1986) - Narrator
Animated Films[]
- The Gnomes' Great Adventure (1987) - Old Man, Narrator (Miramax Dub)
- Light Years (1987) - Metamorphis
- The Legend of Sarila (2013) - Croolik
External Links[]
- Christopher Plummer on the Internet Movie Database
- Christopher Plummer at Anime News Network's encyclopedia