Celebrating Peter O'Toole

Celebrating Peter O’Toole

David Liu | 10 July 2012

With signature elegance and flair, Irish icon Peter O’Toole announced his retirement from the world of stage and screen today. ”It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back … I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell.”

In a 42-year span — bookended by his peerless turn as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia and his savvy personification of an elderly romantic in Venus — O’Toole earned eight Academy Award nominations, winning none. But the lack of individual Oscar recognition takes nothing away from what has been a screen career for the ages.

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O’Toole, through the years

”I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state of a small city.”
— T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

“And as for your youth, that withered flower, pressed between the pages of a hymn book since you were twelve years old, with its watery blood and stale, insipid scent, you can bid farewell without a tear. Your body, madam, was a desert that duty forced me to wander in alone.”
— Henry II of England, Becket (1964)

“You are an aristocrat, and I am a humble burglar.”
— Simon Dermott, How to Steal a Million (1966)

“The sky is pocked with stars. What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many.”
— Henry II of England, The Lion in Winter (1968)

“And suddenly they will ask,
What every child must ask:
‘Where did my childhood go?’”
— Arthur Chipping, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)

“Like every prophet I saw visions, I heard voices, I ran. The voices of St. Francis, Socrates, General Gordon and Timothy Leary, they all told me I was God.”
— Jack Gurney, The Ruling Class (1972)

“If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say, and a gentleman should always mean what he says.”
— Sir Reginald Johnston, The Last Emperor (1987)

“I am about to die and I know nothing about myself.”
— Maurice, Venus (Roger Michell, 2006)

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.”
— Anton Ego, Ratatouille (2007)