Christopher Plummer

He also loved classic literature, opera, classical music, world travel, golf, tennis, and art.

He was a man of many interests

Christopher Plummer on Desert Island Discs

His book is hilarious

I love him as Mike Wallace in The Insider

Very smart man. He was a bit of an asshole when he started out as a young actor and was scornful of getting cast as Captain von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," which he referred to as "the Sound of Mucus," and he compared the prospect of working with Julie Andrews to being clobbered with a valentine... but then when he discovered what a nice and hardworking colleague she was, he quickly came to adore her and was lifelong friends with her, and then when he saw how people were so moved by the film he expressed great pride in having worked on it (he realized how much the movie changed people's lives).

He was a superb actor, and gave incredible late-life performances in The Insider, Beginners, The Last Station, and All the Money in the World.

He remains at this writing the only Canadian to have won the so-called "Triple Crown of Acting" (Emmy, Oscar, and Tony).

Did he ever work with Eric Porter?

OP, you have omitted your favourite word 'great'.

R5 Very true! By the time of Sound, he did nothing but very serious classics and felt he was too good for it. Until he wasn't.

R6 yes. In the film The Fall of the Roman Empire with Porter, Stephen Boyd, Alec Guinness, James Mason, and Miss Sophia Loren

Thank you, R8.

R3 That memoir is full of stupidity, bad decisions, lusting after young girls and alcoholism.

Had a crush on him when I was younger

My parents saw many, many, many Broadway shows over the decades. One of my mother's most me memorable evenings was attending Shakespeare's "Othello" with Plummer as Iago opposite James Earl Jones' Othello.

I do think he was a rather selfish young man, whose maturity arrived later in life. His marriage to Tammy Grimes and the second marriage were short-lived... I don't he much of a relationship with his only child, Amanda.

He should have won the Academy Award for playing Mike Wallace in The Insider.

R12 YES! I heard that was the best production of Othello ever.

Dianne Wiest was Desdemona. Kelsey Grammer was Cassio.

He didn't know how to say no.

He appeared in TWO HUNDRED and SIXTY films over his career.

15 good films and lots and lots of time-wasting bilge

A captain with seven children. What's a fearsome about that?

He’s a secret gay obviously.

Amazing actor

I have seen at least 50 actors play Hamlet on film and stage. His Hamlet is by far the best and most underrated and unknown of them all.

He’s a secret gay obviously.

R19 Are you talking about Hamlet at Elsinore from 1965 with this cutey?

He was married to the divine Tammy Grimes and they produced a weirdo--Amanda Plummer.

Tammy Grimes was rather camp, wasn't she? A younger Beatrice Lillie.

Her career was disastrous after he left her.

Plummer didn't know whether he wanted a theatrical wife or not. So he was obliged to pickup mistresses.

He was a member of Katherine Cornell’s repertory company and was admonished for missing rehearsals. He wrote in his memoir that he wondered if it would be a good time to ask for an advance on his salary.

R19........Yup

He was ALMOST very good-looking.

But NOT quite good enough!

Hot Daddy. When he spanks Louisa or Brigeeta or whoever the the fuck it was. Ugh, such authority.

[quote] he spanks Louisa and Brigeeta

Sadist!

One of them fought back which is why he has that scar on his chin.

I had a fierce crush on him when I first saw The Sound of Music at age 9, despite our thousand year age difference.

He had the world at his feet in 1965. He starred in the biggest money-maker of all times.

But an astute observer would have noticed there was something odd just a year later. He appeared in a tiny cameo in an absurd melodrama called 'The Night of the Generals'. It starred the ranting Irishman O'Toole playing a psychopath and that amateur non-actor Sharif playing a dark-haired marshmallow. They were surrounded by a slew of proper Englishmen pretending to be Chermans.

Why did Plummer bother to appear in this two minute cameo? Was he wanting to get away from nutty Tammy?

Gee. No one knows ANYTHING about Plummer and without this Bio Troll pasting Wikipedia we would never have heard of him.

In another vein, Julie Andrews used to refer to him in writing as "Christopher Plumber." I can't give my source.

I actually had no idea he was Canadian - I always assumed he was European. He has that way about him.

He dumped me for a nun. A fucking NUN!.

You forgot dykey nun.

I used to get him confused with Max Von Sydow. Why?

Both tall and stolid.

Plumber more grandiose and conventionally handsome.

Von Sydow was willing to play character parts; Plummer insisted on star parts.

I'm always amused at the OP's cutting-and-pasting of second-hand material from ancient sources.

[quote] He worked with luminaries such as Edward Everett Horton and Ruth Chatterton

Only the elderest of eldergays would describe Ruth Chatterton as a luminary.

[quote]I actually had no idea he was Canadian - I always assumed he was European. He has that way about him.

Well, same difference. Especially given that he was from one of the first families of Montréal--his grandfather was the granddaughter of Sir John Abbott, one of the first prime ministers of Canada, who lived in one of the great Victorian mansions on Sherbrooke Street (see photo).

This is Boisbrisant, the great manor house on Montreal's Senneville Island where Christopher Plummer would spend time with his grandparents when he was growing up.

*Sorry: "Boisbriant," nor "Boisbrisant"

He said that every man wanted Eleanor Parker in 1965 until Julie Andrews came along.

I liked him in Knives Out

More deets on the old fashioned manners, please. What does that mean - Victorian? How so?

R43 Yes. He was raised by his grandfather, the son of Sir John Abbott. Abbott was Canada's third Prime Minister.

But what do those manners entail, r44?

R45 Victorian and Edwardian manners, such as standing up when a lady enters the room or standing up to shake someone's hand.

Plummer is one of those types that seem to be from a different era all together. They have this intimate knowledge of events and people that occurred long before they were born.

Christopher Lee also comes to mind.

He said his perfect Saturday night was spending it in a great book with a scotch next to the fire while opera/classical music is playing in the background.

Victorian and Edwardian manners, such as standing up when a lady enters the room and not bringing your whore to the dinner table.

R45 does that explain it?

[quote] his grandfather was the granddaughter of Sir John Abbott

Come again, R38?

Yeah, r48 - decent people were doing that through at least the 60s, so he must be talking about something else. I want to know what exactly was so notable and anachronistic etiquette-wise that he was doing in the 30s, which was still very regimented as far as calling cards and “At Home” days for fraus.

No offense, but you don’t sound like you know.

[quote] He said his perfect Saturday night was spending it in a great book with a scotch next to the fire while opera/classical music is playing in the background.

Plummer wa a liar.

Look at his smutty memoirs which are full of lusting after young girls and alcoholism.

R51 Well damn, look up Victorian and Edwardian manners for men yourself if you are so concerned about it.

He liked Sarah Vaughan

Poor actor and part-time Jew.

I'm a thousand times better at both.

Here's a great souvenir of Plummer -- recorded for an O'Neill documentary, and not (to my knowledge) a role that he ever played onstage (great though he would have been in it):

Chris wonderful. A little on the hammy side at 2:07 and a little beyond, but he got back into it in the Booth section and rest of the scene.....But then Larry....ah, Larry. Too bad we only have the DVD version of his great Tyrone, cause to see him on stage, as I did in the at role over 50 times, was an acting lesson never to be forgotten.

One of the last actors with the Mid-Atlantic accent

I knew he was Canadian, but I always took him to be one of those pretentious actors who prefers the theatuh and eventually settles down in Europe somewhere.

When he died recently, I wasn't surprised to learn that his wife was English but it shocked me that they had resided in Connecticut for the past 50 years.

Granted, CT is the richest state per capita income, but someone who used to talk shit about THE SOUND OF MUSIC didn't strike me as one who would live in the U.S.

Truly a beautiful man.

He says he likes Sadness (and I think he may be already a little drunk)

Daughter Amanda has always seemed odd and...damaged, especially as she's gotten older.

Super talented, but something's off there. She's won all sorts of acting awards long ago: Tony, Emmy, Golden Globe, but doesn't have the big, steady career.

Though she's had recent episodic gigs, she hasn't worked enough regularly acting in projects that pay well to live any kind of life, and one has to wonder if Dad worked so much to at least partly keep up both his daughter and his ex-wife, who really only did theatre and was totally nuts and alive and not working for a long time until she died.

There's a lifestyle to be maintained, and it's not like Tammy Grimes could've been a Walmart Greeter.

He was incandescently hot in the era of TSOM. But his stumbles down the path of skirt chasing and alcoholism seem basic at best.

Doppelgänger to Henry Wilcoxon.

He was a Trekkie who had his Saturn award nominated role as a Shakespeare spouting ship captain tailor made for that franchises sixth film.

He was a brilliant villain in the classic Chris Lemmon thriller LaserHead.

Well, this is sad. I didn’t even know he was dead and I had thought I was keeping up.

He was a good actor and easy on the eyes. I’ll miss him, now that I realize I should have been missing him for the last two years.

The Sound of Music is one of the first movies I remember seeing (yes, I'm an Elder Gay...) and I don't think I knew it at the time, but I had a MAJOR crush on Christopher Plummer. He was SO hot in SOM.

The folk dancing scene in TSOM is just pure sex and seduction. I hope Kurt paid attention because Daddy-Geog knew what he was doing and what he wanted to do later with Maria! Even the Baroness knew and it made her wet.

Funny interview

Here is his acceptance speech

[quote] Victorian and Edwardian manners, such as standing up when a lady enters the room and not bringing your whore to the dinner table.

Then where do you dump her when it's time for dinner?

His first feature film has disappeared. It's never shown on my TV.

The fascinating Joan Greenwood has the second female lead (one of her only two American film) but I guess the film overall was sunk by the first female lead.

R73 why was it bad?

^ Unfortunately the film was built around Susan Strasberg as the ingenue who was "stage struck".

Everyone tells me that Susan Strasberg was terrible— especially as the film was remake of one of Katharine Hepburns' 1930s hits.

It was directed by Sidney Lumet and I would have thought that Christopher Plummer, Joan Greenwood and Herbert Marshall could have kept this remake from sinking like a forgotten stone.

R75 Susan Strasberg? That is a name who didn't get out of the 1960's

Was he also a prominent HOMOSEXUAL?

He was a brilliant actor, but he had a streak of cruelty in him a mile wide.

Here comes a major Mary moment. SOM is probably my favorite film of all time. I absolutely love it. And when I heard he died, I spontaneously burst into tears. I absolutely loved him in that movie.

R79- He was kinda dreamy in that movie ESPECIALLY when he was singing Edelweiss

R77 No, be he was so classy that he could have been.

[quote]15 good films and lots and lots of time-wasting bilge

I love some of that bilge. He's the best thing about Dragnet.

Check out The Silent Partner (1978). He plays a menacing bank robber. Entertaining movie for the clothes and office furniture alone.

I honestly don't think he's gay. He's just not the Teddy Roosevelt version of masculinity, and Americans have trouble with that as much as they have trouble with race.

Canadian Dainty.

For years and years, I thought Plummer was a Brit. Then a few years ago, I read that he was born in Muhntreeahl. Eh?

His serial killer-esque interpretation of The Captain is very odd. He looks like he could go Bryan Kohberger on the family at any minute.

R86, he's Canadian Dainty.

In her book Home Work Julie Andrews writes that during the filming of SOM he spent nearly every night in the hotel bar into the wee hours. It was a concern.

Plummer was a drinking buddy with Peter O'Toole. Yet Plummer aged so much better than them.

R23: Tammy wasn't camp as Bea was, although they appeared together on Broadway in High Spirits in 63-64. Tammy flew as Elvira and Bea was Madame Arcati. After divorcing Plummer, Tammy had many successes on Broadway. She was too eccentric a talent to succeed in the movies and on TV. However, in Can't Stop the Music she's a camp caricature of herself. Used to know a woman who went to Stephens Junior College with Tammy and she said she sounded like that way back then! Move over Glynis Johns and Betsy von Furstenberg.

He was hammy

because I may never get my own thread....

He did The Night of the Generals for a Rolls Royce

But I say, R93, what about me? I deserve my own thread!

He appeared in so much trash but one of his most delightful was heard rather than seen.

R96 Yes! I love his Henry V too!

That Othello with him and James Earl Jones was hardly "the best ever." Jones basically played the title role from the neck up, Plummer wound up stealing the show, and Wiest was out of her depth. Grammer was quite good, but Cassio is hardly a difficult role.

R98 I have never heard that before. I know Iago usually steals the show.

Did you see the production?

James Earl Jones is immensely fat. Of course he "basically played the title role from the neck up".

He played the bulk of the night sitting down in a comfy Venetian Chair.

James Earl Jones was not fat in 1982

Didn’t great great grand father, one of Canada's early prime ministers spearhead atrocities against indigenous people ?

[quote] spearhead

Yes, dear. Spears

[quote] transitive verb. : to serve as leader or leading element of.

[quote] transitive verbs

Plummer drinks the wine during the dinner. Plummer drinks the brandy after the dinner.

R105 Please, he was a scotch man.

I saw him in a production of My Fair Lady - wonderful man

R107 who did he play?

A friend of mine, now deceased, was heavily cruised by an inebriated Christopher Plummer in a Greenwich Village bar back in the late 1950s.

My friend was tempted, but was involved in a serious relationship at the time, so he did not accept Plummer’s invitation to return to his apartment, a decision my friend regretted for the rest of his life.

R83 Isn't his character kind of trans - he wore a lot of make-up. I supposed in todays terns the character could be described as sexually fluid or something.

R108 Plummer played the old sot Alfred Doolittle. He didn't need much make-up.

Nope, he didn’t

R109 I don't believe that for a minute

R113, Of course you don’t, this is DL.

R15, IMDB states he appeared in 216 films/TV. What's your source?

He didn't know how to say no.

11 movies in 12 months in 1991.

The memoir says all those dollars went to his liquor merchant

He was a big wine drinker

Drunk and gay, what could go wrong?

Plummer was a plonker.

A what?

A plonker is "A foolish, inept, or contemptible person."

R121 I think Plummer was more self aware

It was Canada and he was Canadian and his family were Canadian.

It wasn't a "manor house." It was a "big house."

Christ.

Jesus Christus!

Plummer was one of the most talented actors ever. He also had a lot of pain and struggle throughout his life. Despite that, he had a good heart, which is hard to encounter in Hollywood. At a time when gay people were oppressed beyond belief, they identified with his struggles and he theirs.

He has the face of a Nazi

[quote] he had a good heart

His good heart lasted 90 years but his liver died many years ago.

Anybody see his DICK?

Tammy Grimes did.

He played an excellent Commodus.

Madness and Sexiness combined

R126, oh, really?

Anybody know what his relationship with his daughter Amanda was like?

R99, yes I did see that OTHELLO production.

One of the sexiest men ever to live.

Very smooth and ready

Did he shave his hole?

All the better to Plummer him

He loved scotch

HIs daughter is the very crazy, very unattractive actress Amanda Plummer. By all accounts she's crazy as a bedbug. And I don't thing she's ever played any role where she wasn't crazy or mentally challenged.

I also highly recommend his memoir. It's dense but a terrific read...really captures that bygone era in New York (but also London and the early days of the Canadian Stratford Festival). Watching Plummer onstage was magical. His 'Barrymore' was worthy of every accolade it received.

R140 He is also very witty

Yes, his Barrymore play and performance was much better than the one done by Nicol Williamson the previous year.

Is there a way to watch his Barrymore?

I need to see more

He did a tv presentation of "After the Fall" with Faye Dunaway. I'd really like to see that.

Wow, what a team!

R139 Amanda has her father's face much more than her mother's.

He was also great in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opposite Daniel Craig

What was his relationship with his daughter, Amanda like? She’s disturbed right

Best fucking Hamlet ever. See it on YouTube

R51 Here is a blog describing table manners in the Gilded Age

[quote]He was a bit of an asshole when he started out as a young actor and was scornful of getting cast as Captain von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," which he referred to as "the Sound of Mucus,"

The irony is that, presumably because he looked down on the role and the script, I think his performance is all the worse for it. His delivery of some of the dialogue is VERY affected and actorish, whereas if he had trusted the material more, his performance would have been far more natural. As it is, he has some very strong scenes and moments but there's also a lot of pretentious overacting, IMHO.

As a lad, I loved him in murder by decree with his deadly scarf.

R152 I think his aloofness and stiffness were perfect for the Captain

R154, it's not aloofness and stiffness, it's overacting and very affected, unnatural delivery of some of the dialogue, which is not the same thing. Some of his lines have such an affected delivery that the character almost comes across as gay, which really doesn't fit in very well with the plot.

R155 I disagree with you

I too got him confused with Max Von Sydow and now I'm disappointed that he wasn't in Needful Things with his daughter

Apparently, R155. But I'm very surprised you can watch that performance and not feel that some of it is very affected and overacted.

[quote]Madea

I loved his work with Tyler Perry!

I always wondered 🤔 about him

I watched Dracula 2000, man he will do anything

He has a lot of fun!

The house.

He was a true beauty when he was young. He was also great in a weird little movie called "Remember" when he was old.

The Charlie Rose Interview

R10- He lusted after young BOYS as well.

I saw that Othello. I thought it was lousy except for Plummer who gave one of the greatest performances I've seen. He was great in Barrymore as well. It had to have been filmed.

One of the great regrets of my theatergoing was not seeing Cyrano.

I don't find him at all affected or hammy in SOM.

He seems incredibly charming and funny but I bet deep down there's a mean streak like Olivier.

I saw Amanda in A Taste of Honey off Broadway. She was wonderful. Had her parents' talent but not their looks. She was probably ignored by both of them pursuing their careers and it fucked her up good.

I would bet my bottom dollar he was bi.

He IS Christopher Plummer!

Amazing talent. Loved him.

Must Love Dogs

I saw Amanda in "Agnes of God" on Broadway in '82 and she was haunting and mesmerizing. I agree that she didn't inherit her father's good looks, but, oddly enough, she looks very much like him. Weird.

He once told a reporter he didn't understand how his wife of 50 plus years, Elaine, could put up with "an old ham like."

He was self aware of his hamminess and his pretentious, and he had fun playing the part.