One ironic result of the disaster of Macbeth, which made headlines around the world, was that it put O’Toole back into the international spotlight and turned him into a saleable commodity again. Hurriedly he was rushed over to Hollywood to help with the publicity push for The Stunt Man, which after over a year on the shelf had found a willing distributor and was earning rave notices. At first no one would touch it. ‘It didn’t fit into the wrapper that the distributors had prepared that they send their hamburgers out in,’ complains Rush. ‘They would always say when they saw the film, “What is it, is it a comedy, is it a drama, is it an action adventure? Is it a satire?” And of course I would say, “Yes! It’s all those things.” ‘ Rush was also under pressure from his financiers to re-cut the picture; it got so bad that he suffered a heart attack.
All this time O’Toole stood by the movie, remaining positive and always full of great ideas. When Rush sent him a copy of the poster art, of a devil figure sitting on a director’s chair looking through a camera, O’Toole called back to say that he took one look at the picture of this devil with that massive tail thrusting forward between his legs and his only comment was: ‘How did you know?’
The Stunt Man remains one of the best movies about making movies ever produced. By turns crazy, sophisticated, surreal and base, it is a thoroughly entertaining jigsaw puzzle that demands repeated viewings. The cast are uniformly excellent but this is O’Toole’s gig. He dominates every scene he’s in and brings to bear upon the role his enormous intelligence as an actor, sharp sense of humour and boundless energy. Also that quality that all great actors must have, an enormous sense of danger. It’s there in so many of O’Toole’s performances, this ability to keep an audience off balance.
O’Toole’s performance in The Stunt Man resulted in his sixth Oscar nomination for Best Actor. ‘Peter was staying at my house at the time of the Academy Awards,’ says Rush. ‘And he came out of his room that morning and said, “I am a movie star!” He was getting in the mood for the ceremony.’ He failed to win yet again, this time losing out to Robert De Niro for Raging Bull.
Cursing his luck, O’Toole took solace in a new relationship in his life. He and Trudie Styler had parted, though remaining on friendly terms. Since his separation from Siân, O’Toole hadn’t really been looking for a long-term relationship and certainly didn’t think he would marry again. ‘I love company. I’m very gregarious. But I love to be alone. Always have. It would take an exceptional woman. I have an open pair of arms and an open mind. And low expectations.’ On relationships he once told reporters that any woman contemplating marrying him ought to be led gently to a place of safety. It was during a recent stay in Hollywood, however, that O’Toole met Karen Brown Somerville, an American former model fifteen years his junior. They began dating.
After a tough few years things were beginning to look up on the professional front, too. He was preparing to start work on a film that would prove to be one of his most enjoyable and popular, a project that came his way through the generosity of his old RADA chum, Albert Finney. My Favorite Year was produced by Mel Brooks’ company and based on his own experiences as a young comedy writer on a TV show in the fifties when he was drafted in to keep Errol Flynn sober and out of trouble until he’d made his guest star appearance. To many, O’Toole seemed perfect casting for the role of a sozzled and faded Hollywood film star, but Brooks’ co-producer on the film, Michael Gruskoff, first sent the script to Finney. He got an unusual reply back. ‘Albert read it and said, “You’ve got the wrong guy, Michael. Peter would be better for this part than me.” ‘ Finney even made sure that a copy of the script made its way to O’Toole, who upon first reading it knew this was something he could have fun with.
O’Toole also took to Richard Benjamin, an actor making his debut as director, when they met in New York for talks. Benjamin recalled the very first day of shooting in Central Park. The light was fading and there wasn’t any energy in the scene, it was too slow, especially O’Toole. Then it hit him, he was now going to have to direct Peter O’Toole. As he walked over, all Benjamin could see was Lawrence of Arabia and Lord Jim and Henry II, and any second he was going to have to tell this legend to raise his game. ‘Peter, er, it’s really good, it’s all good, but—’ O’Toole interrupted. ‘You want it faster and funnier, is that it?’ Benjamin looked relieved. ‘That’s it. You’ve got it!’ After that Benjamin rarely had to do more than three takes with O’Toole. The only thing O’Toole insisted upon was not being called from his dressing room until he was absolutely required. ‘He just wanted you to be ready,’ said Benjamin. ‘And boy, he’d come out there and it was like howitzer shells.’
It was much the same with Mark Linn-Baker, a young actor from a largely theatrical background who had been chosen to play the writer given the task of looking after O’Toole’s matinee idol, Alan Swann. Baker had done a few small roles in films but this was his first lead and his relationship with O’Toole in many ways paralleled that of the characters they were playing. ‘Peter very kindly took me under his wing. He gave me pointers all along the way, just little practical points of craft that you don’t know till somebody tells you. Anything I know about film acting I learnt from what he told me and from watching him in those few months.’
Playing an Errol Flynn type swashbuckler, O’Toole was required to be fairly nifty in a couple of scenes with a rapier, so Gruskoff scheduled three two-hour fencing lessons. ‘Michael, we simply can’t do this,’ he said when told of the plan.
‘What do you mean?’
‘In order for me to pull this off I need at least ten lessons.’ He didn’t miss a single one.
However, O’Toole’s professionalism did come into question on of all days the singular occasion Mel Brooks showed up to watch filming. Ironically, the scene was Swann arriving late at the TV studio. The call time was 8 a.m. Brooks was there, Benjamin was there, the crew were setting up, but O’Toole was a no-show. ‘He must be a real Method actor,’ Brooks was heard to mutter. After an hour there was still no sign of him. ‘I’m going to his hotel and see what the hell is going on,’ Gruskoff told Brooks. When he arrived, the woman at the front desk told him that O’Toole had been on the phone for four hours with his daughters in London, there was some family problem he had to deal with. Finally a message came down that O’Toole didn’t want to see Gruskoff, he would see him later on the set. ‘At twelve o’clock he arrived,’ Gruskoff recalls. ‘The first thing he did was to come over and see me. “Gruskoff,” he said. “Sorry I’m late, but from here on in I’m carrying you on my back and we’re going to bring this movie home.” ’
Not everyone on the film was aware that O’Toole no longer drank, but one incident confirmed how even a drop of alcohol passing his lips could prove dangerous. There’s a scene in My Favorite Year where Swann wakes up in bed with a stewardess and immediately downs one of those airline-size mini-bottles of Scotch. A whole case of little bottles had been prepared, each one emptied of liquor, washed and re-filled with coloured water. Somehow a real bottle slipped through by mistake and, according to Mark Linn-Baker, who was on set at the time, ‘Peter got immediately sick.’ It was several hours before he was well enough to continue work.
There was caution too about just how much of the physical comedy O’Toole could manage, given his rather perilous state and frail frame. Quite a lot as it turned out, O’Toole was game for anything. In one scene he falls, dead drunk and rigid, against a bathroom wall so that his forehead strikes the tile. He did the take twenty times without complaint, thumping his head against the tile again and again. In another scene O’Toole and Baker gallop on horseback through Central Park. Before the first take O’Toole took Baker to one side. ‘Dear boy, there’s only two things to remember working on a horse. If I start to fall off, let go of me. The second thing is, if you start to fall off, let go of me!’ Two different animals had been brought in, a running horse and a horse that reared on command, the command being simply to brush one’s leg on its haunch. For the shot of them galloping over a bridge no one had seen fit to tell Baker they were using the rearing horse. ‘So we’re both on the horse, they’re getting ready for the shot, and I move my leg and the horse starts rearing and we’re falling off – and I let go. But we’re both still falling off. And as I’m falling my thought is, oh my God, I’ve killed Peter O’Toole! I land on my back on the ground. It looks like Peter has landed lightly on his feet and has a cigarette already lit and is staring down at me. “Dear boy, are you all right?” ’
When it opened, My Favorite Year did modest enough business but over the years has grown in reputation, something Gruskoff puts down to O’Toole’s performance. ‘He made the movie what it is – a semi-classic.’ It is a master class in physical comedy and timing. And met with near-universal acclaim. The doyen of American film critics Pauline Kael raved: ‘O’Toole is simply astounding. I can’t think of another major star, with the possible exception of Ralph Richardson, who would have the effrontery to bring this sly performance off.’
Early on the signs were clear that O’Toole would bag another Oscar nomination, and so it was. This time he lost out to Ben Kingsley for Gandhi. Gruskoff puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of backers MGM, a company then heading for bankruptcy. ‘You need money to win an Oscar, to put the ads in the trade papers, and MGM didn’t have the financial clout to compete with the other companies. Had they had the money Peter might have stood a better chance.’
Much of My Favorite Year was shot on location in New York, with interiors done in Hollywood. O’Toole had always preferred New York to Los Angeles and was beginning to spend more time there and so was eager to find some kind of representation in the city, having an agent back in London, Steve Kenis, and one in Hollywood. Johnnie Planco had been a successful agent since he joined the famed William Morris Agency in New York in 1972, staying there until 2000. In those twenty-eight years he became the youngest department head and senior vice-president in the agency’s history, representing among others Tom Hanks, Richard Gere, Rock Hudson, Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon and John Cassavetes. Planco was asked to drop by the set of My Favorite Year to meet O’Toole. Directed to his trailer, Planco knocked sharply on the door. No answer. He knocked again, then repeatedly until it was opened. ‘Yes,’ said O’Toole.
Planco introduced himself. ‘Yes,’ said O’Toole.
‘We talked about my dropping by to see you.’
There was another short pause. ‘Yes. Now’s not a good time,’ and with that the door was firmly closed. It was not a successful first encounter. ‘But then when I got to know him,’ says Planco, ‘I knew that’s exactly how he treated somebody he didn’t know. But then we took off like a rocket and he came to New York quite often.’
Very early on in their relationship Planco knew he was dealing with someone who was much more than a mere star. People like Robert De Niro can sit in a cafe and you’ll never notice them, but there are stars who when you meet them in real life are so much bigger than they are on the screen. ‘And Peter was one of those. He would just stand in the doorway, and every head in the room would whip around. It was the way he carried himself. And his voice. There was no sneaking him in and out of anywhere. He had it. And a lot of famous people don’t.’
O’Toole remained in America in the spring of 1982, having agreed to appear in a made-for-television movie entitled Svengali, a modern twist on the George du Maurier novel published in 1894 and which had been filmed several times, most memorably with John Barrymore. O’Toole plays a mercurial voice coach who discovers Zoe, a young singer (played by Jodie Foster), performing in a seedy night club and agrees to accept her as a student. There was nothing very original in the material, the real story for many was what was happening on location in New York. Svengali marked the first time Jodie Foster had stepped back into the limelight after she was the unwitting motive in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. When John Hinckley gunned down Reagan it was to prove his warped love for the actress, after becoming infatuated with her ever since she’d played a prostitute in Taxi Driver. Anthony Harvey, who O’Toole had insisted direct the film, recalls that press interest was intense. ‘We were always being followed in New York when we went from one location to another by reporters who longed to get some dirt on us. We were always running round corners trying to escape from them.’
The pair struck up a touching friendship on set, with O’Toole mischievously nicknaming the actress ‘midget’. ‘He gave her enormous encouragement,’ remembers Harvey. ‘And the chemistry between them was amazing. He had a gift for making people feel comfortable.’ By the end of filming Jodie wrote in an Esquire article that the making of Svengali had helped her fall back in love with acting. ‘It cured me of most of the insecurities. It healed my wounds.’
Inevitably in this type of ‘star is born’ scenario, the young artist falls in love with her teacher but the way in which the subject was approached, and in O’Toole’s performance, it never came across as offensive. ‘There he was with Jodie,’ says Harvey, ‘who was far younger than he was, and the love scenes he did with such enormous originality that you never felt this is a dirty old man. It was a very moving relationship between an older man and a young girl.’ Harvey also sensed a change in the older O’Toole, some fifteen years after they worked together on The Lion in Winter, a definite mellowing. ‘The anger was still there, of course, but there was a gentleness, an inner strength.’
After filming Svengali, O’Toole returned to the peace and isolation of Clifden where he quietly celebrated his fiftieth birthday with family and friends. He was in the process of converting some farm cottages near his property into homes for his daughters. Eventually, both Kate and Patricia would have homes nearby. ‘This is Zulu-style living,’ he was to call it. ‘The family lives in the same spot, but each family member has his own dwelling. I think it’s a very sensible arrangement. It keeps the family together but the fuck away from one another at the same time.’
At his house, O’Toole had put up a greenhouse and employed someone local to act as his gardener and odd-jobs man. One day this chap was standing there with O’Toole looking at this strange and wonderful plant. ‘Jesus, Peter, they’re mighty plants. What kind are they?’
‘Ah, they’re fantastic non-flowering tomato plants. They’re my pride and joy.’
They were in fact marijuana plants, O’Toole having been given some seeds by a friend. Unaware of this the gardener took special care of them when O’Toole went off filming, lovingly nurturing and fertilizing them. All hell broke loose on his return when he saw that the plants were now almost as tall as the house. Paul D’Alton was a friend of the family and was up at the house with a few other people the day O’Toole came back and recalls with humour his reaction. ‘He went absolutely mad. We thought this was great craic. I must have been seventeen or eighteen at the time, and Peter was yelling, “I can end up in fucking jail over this, you fuckers. You’ve got to get rid of it.” And we were literally putting it in bags and hiding it in people’s houses around the town. The whole town had dustbin bags full of the stuff. It was like Whisky Galore! hiding it from the authorities. People in the town still talk about it.’
Paul D’Alton attended school in England but during the holidays always came back to Clifden, where he worked in the bar and restaurant that his uncle Frank Kelly owned on the High Street. Frank Kelly was a great friend of O’Toole’s and it was through that association that D’Alton became a friend of the family, particularly with O’Toole’s youngest daughter Patricia, seeing as how they were the same age. D’Alton was one of the very few people allowed inside the inner sanctum of O’Toole’s Irish home, often just sitting around drinking beer, watching the actor and his uncle play snooker. Looking back now, D’Alton realizes how privileged he was to observe the private O’Toole, the real person behind the movie star as he relaxed and could be himself at home. He was surprised that O’Toole never liked to reminisce. At home the film-star persona was firmly switched off, and he felt free from any obligation to put on a ‘performance’. He wasn’t a great one for saying stuff like ‘The first time I met Orson Welles.’ Instead he talked about current events, sometimes rugby. O’Toole and Frank Kelly often read The Times together and discussed politics. ‘He was also a great lover of young people,’ says D’Alton. ‘He loved being surrounded by the young, he was very contemporary in that sense, he would know about the music of the time and things like that. He wasn’t an old luvvie sitting in a chair recalling his great Hamlet. Although he could be extremely luvvie-ish when he turned it on. But he wouldn’t be in real private company.’
O’Toole would drive into Clifden most days, usually to see Frank Kelly in his bar, and they’d sit in there and chain-smoke for hours shooting the breeze. ‘He was never hassled on the street or anything like that,’ confirms D’Alton. ‘It would mainly be the tourists who might come up and ask for an autograph.’ At other times you wouldn’t see him in town, he’d be holed up alone in his house not seeing anyone for days. ‘At times Peter could be intensely, almost pathologically private,’ says D’Alton. ‘At others, a ribald, daring attention-seeker. He arrived in town once with this London taxi. I said, “Peter, you’re supposed to be low key here, you’re driving around the place in a fucking London taxi!” And he said to me, “Well, darling, it’ll give the feckers a thrill.” And we were driving along sharing a joint in the back seat and him waving like the Queen Mother to the astonishment of tourists. There was a dual personality there.’ Many people identified this strange quirk in his personality. ‘He was a contradiction,’ says actress Amanda Plummer. ‘Private and then very gregarious, and then very private, isolated, and then totally out there.’
One summer Sting came to visit. O’Toole and Sting had got quite pally during the Macbeth run, with the rock star then married to Frances Tomelty, who played Lady Macbeth. He was to leave her, of course, to marry O’Toole’s former girlfriend Trudie Styler. Sting had rented a house in nearby Roundstone and was often seen roaring through Clifden on a vast motorbike on his way to see O’Toole. It was a holiday cut dramatically short when one lunchtime Sting barged breathless through the door of Frank Kelly’s bar shouting: ‘I have to go! I have to go! Where’s everybody? Where’s Peter?’ After a moment of what seemed like blind panic Sting was off, never to be seen again. His disappearance remained a mystery until O’Toole himself showed up that evening saying that Sting had upped and legged it back to England because he’d received death threats from the Provisional IRA. ‘Really?’ asked Kelly, somewhat sceptical. O’Toole broke into a wide grin. ‘Did they fuck, those feckers down in Roundstone couldn’t stand him so they ran him out!’ It was an admission that was met with resounding laughter from everyone in the bar. ‘IRA my arse!’ O’Toole roared.