Biography

Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was born in Toronto, Ontario. He is the only child of Isabella Mary (Abbott), a secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and John Orme Plummer, who sold securities and stocks. He is a great-grandson of John Abbott, who was Canada's third Prime Minister (from 1891 to 1892), and a great-great-great-grandson of Anglican clergyman John Bethune. He has Scottish, English, and Anglo-Irish ancestry. Plummer was raised in Senneville, Quebec, by Montreal.

Until the 2009 Academy Awards were announced, it could be said about Plummer that he was the finest actor of the post-World War II period to fail to get an Academy Award. In that, he was following in the footsteps of the late great John Barrymore, whom Plummer so memorably portrayed on Broadway in a one-man show that brought him his second Tony Award.

In 2010, Plummer finally got an Oscar nod for his portrayal of another legend, Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). Two years later, the first paragraph of his obituary was written when the 82-year-old Plummer became the oldest person in Academy history to win an Oscar. He won for playing a senior citizen who comes out as gay after the death of his wife in the movie Beginners (2010). As he clutched his statuette, the debonaire thespian addressed it thusly: "You're only two years older than me darling, where have you been all of my life?"

Plummer then told the audience that at birth, "I was already rehearsing my Academy acceptance speech, but it was so long ago mercifully for you I've forgotten it."

The Academy Award was a long time in coming and richly deserved.

Aside from the youngest member of the Barrymore siblings (which counted Oscar-winners Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore in their number), Christopher Plummer is the premier Shakespearean actor to come out of North America in the 20th century. He was particularly memorable as Hamlet, Iago and Lear, though his Macbeth opposite Glenda Jackson was -- and this was no surprise to him due to the famous curse attached to the "Scottish Play" -- a failure.

Plummer also has given many fine portrayals on film, particularly as he grew older and settled down into a comfortable marriage with his third wife Elaine. He thanked her from the stage during the 2012 Oscar telecast, quipping that she "deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for coming to my rescue every day of my life."

Like another great stage actor, Richard Burton, the younger Plummer failed to connect with the screen in a way that would make him a star. Dynamic on stage, the charisma failed to transfer through the lens onto celluloid. Burton's early film career, when he was a contract player at 20th Century-Fox, failed to ignite despite his garnering two Oscar nominations early on. He did not become a superstar until the mid-1960s, after hooking up with Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra (1963). It was Liz whom he credited with teaching him how to act on film.

Christopher Plummer never made it as a leading man in films. Perhaps if he had been born earlier, and acted in the studio system of Hollywood's golden age, he could have been carefully groomed for stardom. As it was he shared the English stage actors' disdain -- and he was equally at home in London as he was on the boards of Broadway or on-stage in his native Canada -- for the movies, which did not help him in that medium, as he has confessed. As he aged, Plummer excelled at character parts. He was always a good villain, this man who garnered kudos playing Lucifer on Broadway in Archibald Macleish's Pulitzer Prize-winning "J.B.".

Though he likely always be remembered as "Captain Von Trapp" in the atomic bomb-strength blockbuster The Sound of Music (1965) (a film he publicly despised until softening his stance in his 2008 autobiography "In Spite of Me"), his later film work includes such outstanding performances as the best cinema Sherlock Holmes--other than Basil Rathbone -- in Murder by Decree (1979), the chilling villain in The Silent Partner (1978), his iconoclastic Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), the empathetic psychiatrist in A Beautiful Mind (2001), and as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). It was this last role that finally brought him recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, when he was nominated as Best Actor in a supporting role.

Plummer remains one of the most respected and honored actors performing in the English language. He's won two Emmy Awards out of six nominations stretching 46 years from 1959 and 2005, and one Genie Award in five nominations from 1980 to 2004. For his stage work, Plummer has racked up two Tony Awards on six nominations, the first in 1974 as Best Actor (Musical) for the title role in "Cyrano" and the second in 1997, as Best Actor (Play), in "Barrymore".

Surprisingly, he did not win (though he was nominated) for his masterful 2004 performance of "King Lear", which he originated at the Stratford Festival in Ontario and brought down to Broadway for a sold-out run. His other Tony nominations show the wide range of his talent, from a 1959 nod for the Elia Kazan-directed production of Macleish's "J.B." to recognition in 1994 for Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land", with a 1982 Best Actor (Play) nomination for his "Iago" in William Shakespeare's "Othello".

He continues to be a very in-demand character actor in prestigious motion pictures. If he were English rather than Canadian, he'd have been knighted long ago. (In 1968, he was awarded Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor and one which required the approval of the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.) If he lived in the company town of Los Angeles rather than in Connecticut, he likely would have several more Oscar nominations before winning his first for "The Last Station".

As it is, as attested to in his witty and well-written autobiography, Christopher Plummer has been amply rewarded in life. In 1970, Plummer - a self-confessed 43-year-old "bottle baby" - married his third wife, dancer Elaine Taylor, who helped wean him off his dependency on alcohol. They live happily with their dogs on a 30-acre estate in Weston, Connecticut. Although he spends the majority of his time in the United States, he remains a Canadian citizen.

His daughter, with actress Tammy Grimes, is actress Amanda Plummer.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood

Rich smooth voice

Became a father for the first time at age 27 when his first [now ex] wife Tammy Grimes gave birth to their daughter Amanda Michael Plummer, aka Amanda Plummer, on March 23, 1957.

He was awarded the CC (Companion of the Order of Canada) in the 1968 Queen's Honours List for his services to drama.

Is the great-grandson of former Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Abbott.

His first paying role was in "Machina Infernale" (The Infernal Machine) by Jean Cocteau, in which he worked with another young Montreal actor, William Shatner. The two were reunited years later when they both appeared in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).

Schoolmates with jazz piano master Oscar Peterson.

He and his daughter Amanda Plummer both received Emmy Award nominations in 2005. She won, he did not.

Was actually born on December 13, 1929, although most publications usually state his birthday as December 13, 1927.

Is one of 115 people invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in 2007.

Has worked with both Obi-Wan Kenobis on film. Alec Guinness played his father in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), while Plummer later played father to Ewan McGregor in Beginners (2010).

He and daughter Amanda Plummer have both appeared in adaptation of Stephen King novels. Amanda appeared in Needful Things (1993), while Christopher appeared in Dolores Claiborne (1995).

Is the only actor from The Sound of Music (1965) to meet the real Maria Von Trapp in Vermont as a child.

Has played the title role in Hamlet at Elsinore (1964), appearing with Michael Caine, who played Hamlet's closest friend Horatio. Caine later said that he had never truly understood Hamlet until he saw Plummer playing the role.

Is one of four consecutive Oscar winners in the Best Supporting Actor category whose name begins with Chris, the other actors being Christian Bale and Christoph Waltz (who won twice).

Is one of 9 actors to have won the Triple Crown of Acting (an Oscar, Emmy and Tony); the others in chronological order are Thomas Mitchell, Melvyn Douglas, Paul Scofield, Jack Albertson, Jason Robards, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino and Geoffrey Rush.

Cites Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) as the film that has moved him to tears more often than any other during his lifetime.

Has appeared with Donald Sutherland in four films: Oedipus the King (1968), The Disappearance (1977), Murder by Decree (1979) and Ordeal by Innocence (1984).

Has appeared in two Best Picture Academy Award winners: The Sound of Music (1965) and A Beautiful Mind (2001).

Is one of 11 actors to have won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Critics' Choice Award, Golden Globe Award and SAG Award for the same performance. The others in chronological order are Geoffrey Rush for Shine (1996), Jamie Foxx for Ray (2004), Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote (2005), Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland (2006), Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men (2007), Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood (2007) and Lincoln (2012), Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008), Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009), Colin Firth for The King's Speech (2010) and J.K. Simmons for Whiplash (2014).

Is a cousin of actor Nigel Bruce. Bruce was best known for playing Dr. John Watson, and Plummer went on to play Sherlock Holmes.

His great-uncle (paternal grandmother's brother) was F.B. Fetherstonhaugh (Frederick Barnard Fetherstonhaugh), a patent lawyer and agent who founded the patent agency Fetherstonhaugh and Company.

Speaks English and French fluently, from his bilingual upbringing in Senneville, Quebec.

He was awarded the 1999 Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Lead Actor in a Play for "Barrymore" at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

[why he prefers playing evil characters] The devil is more interesting than God.

I'm bored with questions about acting.

[on Franchot Tone, who starred onstage with him in "The Petrified Forest"] His sense of humor, as one might guess, was seemingly self-deprecating, drawn always from this inexplicable inner torment. These vulnerable qualities were to make his Chekovian performances ("Uncle Vanya" and "A Moon for the Misbegotten"), both of whom I later saw, so memorable - a rare combination of lightness and poignancy... I saw in him someone I could perhaps one day aspire to; not the hidden sad, pained man that was part of Franchot but the part he couldn't conceal, no matter how hard he tried, the part that was refined, noble and infinitely kind.

[on working with Michael Langham] When I did "Henry V", he changed my life. Really owe my career to Michael.

[on the enduring appeal of The Sound of Music (1965)] Yeah, it drives me nuts. It has nothing to do with the movie, it's just a relentless pursuing of this film that goes on and on and I've gone on and on, far above and beyond it and then to be reminded of it, God almighty what is the matter with people?

[2011, a revised opinion on The Sound of Music (1965)] People were unnaturally sentimental about the film. So I always gave it a tough time. But a few years ago, I went to an Easter party and had to watch the damn thing with these kids. I was a prisoner! And then I thought, it's got everything - the lovely songs, the Nazis and the nuns and the kids. It's timeless and I'm grateful for it.

[on the ability to convey a sense of pathos] Very few people have it naturally - Chaplin, Brando. It's a gift. But you can learn how to fake it.

As T.S. Eliot measures his life with coffee spoons, so I measure mine by the plays I've been in. I'm too vague to measure any other way.

[a portion of his Oscar acceptance speech for Beginners (2010)] I would happily share this award with [Ewan McGregor] if I had any decency but I don't.

[on cell-phones ringing during a live performance] The only thing to do is to say something like "I'll get it." The audience gives you applause because they hate it too.

Television is certainly more skilfully handled [now] than it was then. There are certain things, like Sherlock (2010), which is enchanting and perfectly right for a younger audience. And the truly wonderful thing about it is that it is not disloyal to the original. There's a Conan Doyle feeling about it - something that Doyle would have written for this age. Benedict [Cumberbatch] is a superb actor. I love his beats. Those are rare things that happen marvelously in this medium.

The writing was superior [in the '50s]. But then we had all the best writers, Horton Foote and others, writing for this brash new medium. It was as exciting as hell. It was an adventure. Television has become a little glossy. A little too comfortable.

[observation, 2014] I'm thrilled to be around still, and I don't want to blow my horn, but I've done so many more parts than Barrymore ever got a chance to do. That Barrymore wasn't able - or willing to show his true range is one of the great missed opportunities of the theatrical stage. A terrible waste.