Peter O'Toole - Personal Life

Personal Life

In a BBC Radio interview in January 2007, O'Toole said that he had studied women for a very long time, had given it his best try, but knew "nothing." In 1959, he married Welsh actress Siân Phillips, with whom he had two daughters: award-winning actress Kate (b. 1960) and Patricia. Peter and Sîan were divorced in 1979. Phillips later revealed in two autobiographies that O'Toole had subjected her to mental cruelty — largely fuelled by drinking — and was subject to bouts of extreme jealousy when she finally left him for a younger lover.

O'Toole and his girlfriend, model Karen Brown, had a son, Lorcan Patrick O'Toole (born 14 March 1983, when O'Toole was fifty years old). Lorcan, now an actor, was a pupil at Harrow School, boarding at West Acre from 1996.

Severe illness almost ended his life in the late 1970s. Owing to his heavy drinking and a digestive defect from birth, he underwent surgery in 1976 to have his pancreas and a large portion of his stomach removed, which resulted in insulin-dependent diabetes. In 1978 he nearly died from a blood disorder. He eventually recovered and returned to work, notably in The Stuntman (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982), both of which brought him Academy Award nominations. He also appeared in 1987's much-garlanded The Last Emperor. The late eighties and nineties brought fewer film roles but more work for television as well as the occasional stage performance.

He resided on the Sky Road, just outside Clifden in Connemara in County Galway, Ireland, from 1963, and at the height of his career maintained homes in Dublin, London, and Paris (at The Hotel Ritz, which was where his character supposedly lived in the film How to Steal a Million). Currently, he makes his home solely in London.

While studying at RADA in the early 1950s he was active in protesting against British involvement in the Korean War. Later, in the 1960s, he was an active opponent of the Vietnam War.

He played a role in the creation of the current form of the well known folksong "Carrickfergus" which he related to Dominic Behan, who put it in print and made a recording in the mid-1960s.

He is perhaps the only one of his "London" acting contemporaries not to be knighted. However, according to London's Daily Mail, he was offered a knighthood or honorary knighthood in 1987, but turned it down for personal and political reasons.

In an interview with National Public Radio in December 2006, O'Toole revealed that he knows all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets. A self-described romantic, O'Toole regards the sonnets as among the finest collection of English poems, reading them daily. In the film Venus, he recites Sonnet 18, "Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day." O'Toole has written two memoirs. Loitering With Intent: The Child chronicles his childhood in the years leading up to World War II and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1992. His second, Loitering With Intent: The Apprentice, is about his years spent training with a cadre of friends at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The books have been praised by critics such as Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times, who wrote: "A cascade of language, a rumbling tumbling riot of words, a pub soliloquy to an invisible but imaginable audience, and the more captivating for it. O'Toole as raconteur is grand company." O'Toole spent parts of 2007 writing his third installment. This book will have (as he described it) "the meat," meaning highlights from his stage and filmmaking career.

O'Toole is a noted fan of rugby union, and used to attend Five Nations matches with friends and fellow rugby fans Richard Harris, Kenneth Griffith, Peter Finch and Richard Burton. (O'Toole, Harris and Burton have a combined 17 Oscar nominations.) He is also a lifelong player, coach and enthusiast of cricket. O'Toole is licensed to teach and coach cricket to children as young as ten.

O'Toole has been interviewed at least three times by Charlie Rose on The Charlie Rose Show. In the 17 January 2007 interview, O'Toole said that Eric Porter was the actor who had most influenced him. He also said that the difference between actors of yesterday and today is that actors of his generation were trained for "theatre, theatre, theatre." He also believes that the challenge for the actor is "to use his imagination to link to his emotion" and that "good parts make good actors." However, in other venues (including the DVD commentary for Becket), O'Toole has also credited Donald Wolfit as being his most important mentor. In an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 11 January 2007, O'Toole said that the actor he most enjoyed working with was Katharine Hepburn, his close friend; he played Henry II to her Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter.

O'Toole remains close friends with his Lawrence of Arabia co-star Omar Sharif and his RADA classmate Albert Finney.

O'Toole is a fan of Sunderland A.F.C., as he told Chris Evans on an episode of TFI Friday, dated Friday, 11 October 1996. The allegiance has lapsed, according to an article at the Salut! Sunderland website. Coincidentally, however, the mother of T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, was born in Sunderland.

Although he lost faith in organised religion as a teenager, O'Toole has expressed positive sentiments regarding the life of Jesus Christ. In an interview for The New York Times, he said 'No one can take Jesus away from me...there’s no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such as peace.' Earlier in the interview, he announced 'I am a retired Christian'. Nevertheless, O'Toole played Samuel in One Night with the King, about Esther, in 2006.