The Paper's reporter Cheng Xiaojun
On February 5, local time, the family of legendary Hollywood actor Christopher Plummer confirmed to the media that he died at his home in Weston, Connecticut, AT the age of 91. Two weeks ago, he had fallen at home and hit his head, and although he had been recuperating for a long time, he eventually had many complications due to his advanced age.
Even famous actors have different fates. The ideal is the role that you most recognize and get the most people to appreciate; the most ironic is that you are the most despised role, and get the most affirmation. Christopher Plummer's life is the latter.
The average viewer will remember him as the handsome but unsmiling Colonel Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, and I believe that the titles of most of the world's media obituaries will also bring this movie. However, for his loyal fans, he will remember that the Sound of Music is "a mess, a cry", rather than "S&M" or "The Sound of Mucus". They were fascinated by his brash and sharp personality, as well as his passion for unleashing his whole body and mind on stage and on screen. For a long time in Plummer's seventy-year career he had been rebelling against a predetermined standard, lost in it, and silent about it. When Shaohua is no longer and his white hair is full of mirrors, he finally wins the hard-won reward of his original intention.
The Sound of Music crew
"That damn movie, follow me like a shadow"
Christopher Plummer was born on December 13, 1929 in Toronto, Canada, and was originally named Arthur Plummer. Shortly after his birth, his parents divorced. Plummer jr. followed her mother back to her mother's upbringing in Montreal, Quebec, so she was fluent in French and English from an early age. Plummer's mother's grandfather, who had been prime minister of Canada, belonged to the local magnate family, and his mother also admired the aristocratic way of life that was already weakening at that time. Later, he recalled, perhaps it was this background of growth that "made me want to get bad, rude, and more wanted to explore secrets than to find doors."
Plummer learned piano since childhood, has a high degree of playing skills, and once wanted to become a pianist. Among his high school classmates was Oscar Peterson, who later became a jazz master. However, Plummer was greatly moved by the "Henry V" (1944) starring Lawrence Oliver and aspired to become a stage actor. After graduating from high school, Plummer resolutely gave up the opportunity to continue his studies and directly entered the Montreal Theater Company to study while acting, and at the age of eighteen, he already had the opportunity to officially perform on stage. In the following ten years, he was mainly active in Canada and the American stage including Broadway, acting in various Shakespeare dramas such as "Hamlet", and occasionally appeared on the TV screen, and his handsome appearance, straight appearance and solid actor basic skills have left a deep impression on many people in the industry.
In 1958, appreciated by the film director Sidney Lumet, Plummer debuted on the screen in Stage Struck, starring as the second male. In the years that followed, though, Plummer's main focus remained on theatre. In 1961, he took to the stage in London for the first time, and his superb acting skills even conquered the discerning British critics. In 1964, plummer, who had been on the big screen for many years, played the Roman Emperor Commodus in Anthony Mann's The Fall of the Roman Empire; in the same year, the British BBC filmed a special television version of Hamlet to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, and Plummer was invited to play the Danish prince and was nominated for an Emmy Award.
Of course, what really made Plummer stand on the top of the screen and become a global household name was "The Sound of Music", which began to be released in March 1965. The film broke the highest box office record in film history previously held by "Gone with the Wind", breaking the box office record in a total of 29 countries and regions around the world, and also won a total of ten Academy Award nominations, and finally won five awards including best picture and director, while film interludes such as "Doraemon", "Lonely Shepherd" and "Edelweiss" are still sung everywhere and have endured for a long time.
Plummer himself, however, did not appreciate The Sound of Music. Even when often asked by the media about the film, he has made no secret of how the sensational old story made him feel sick to his stomach, and even deliberately missed the crew gathering event for the fortieth anniversary of the film's release. He was reluctant to even mention the film's full title, so much so that he often used the abbreviation "S&M" as a pronoun, which was full of fun.
I think that in order to sing the male protagonist Colonel Von Trapp in several singing sections in the film, Plummer did a lot of singing training, full of thought that his loud singing voice finally had a place to play. As a result, after the filming was completed, the producers were still not confident enough in their singing voices, and hired professional singers to do dubbing. Seeing that his previous efforts were all in vain, Plummer was furious, and it is no wonder that he has never had a good word about the film history classic he participated in.
"That kind of sour role is the hardest for me, especially my voice and body performances, which I was trained to play Shakespeare." In a 1982 interview with People magazine, Plummer said, "To play a bad role like von Trapp, you need to mobilize all the skills you know to fill the void of the character itself. That damn movie, followed me like a shadow. ”
"I'm not a difficult person to get along with"
Regardless of my likes and dislikes, the popularity of "The Sound of Music" has made Plummer a hot star in the European and American film industry, and various films have followed. In the 1960s and 1970s, he starred in Triple Cross (1966), The Night of the Generals (1967), Battle of Britain (1969), Waterloo (1970), And The Return of the Pink Panther (1970). Hits such as 1975, The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Somewhere in Time (1980), while not starring, often impressed audiences with their supporting roles.
At the same time, his outspoken personality, alcoholic habits and chaotic relationships are also well known.
In 1967, in an interview with the CBC, he explained the reasons for his alcoholism: "When night falls, a great sense of loss strikes. You gave your all on stage, in exchange for a round of applause after the curtain fell. Even if the applause was thunderous, it would not be enough to fill the rest of the night. He admits that he will not try to please people anymore, "I am not a difficult person, and I will only become difficult when I meet people who lack professionalism." ”
In 1971, he was replaced by Anthony Hopkins for the cast, who was scheduled to star in Coriolanus, which was scheduled to be rehearsed at the National Theatre, because the crew members were unhappy with his bad temper.
By the 1980s, plummer's film productions had declined, and he had spent more time and energy on stage. In 1991, he starred in the series of movies "Star Trek 6: City of the Future" as the main villain General Zhang, which was eye-catching. Since then, he has successively participated in "Malcolm X", "Werewolf Life and Death Love", "Twelve Monkeys", "Beautiful Mind", "Alexander the Great" and other excellent works, and the quality of film selection has rebounded significantly.
Plummer had three marriages in his lifetime, and his only daughter, actor Amanda Plummer, was born in her first marriage with the famous stage actress Tammy Grimes. But what really kept him away from alcohol and bad temper was her third wife, Elaine Taylor. In his Oscar acceptance speech, he said, "Because of saving every day of my life, my wife Elaine, who has suffered for many years, deserves a Nobel Peace Prize." ”
As he grew older, Plummer's attitude toward The Sound of Music changed somewhat. "I've turned the page," he said in a 2019 interview with The Guardian, "I really couldn't understand how it was so popular at the beginning." Have those people never seen a movie? Don't know how to distinguish between good and bad movies? But after all these years, I also want to understand. All in all, I'm still grateful for the film, the great director Robert Wise, and the heroine Julie Andrews, who have been close friends for so many years. ”
Stills from Beginner
"Why haven't I met you before?"
In 2012, in his eighties, he won the 84th Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his gay father role in "Beginners", setting a record for the oldest award-winning actor in Oscar history. At the moment of standing on the awards stage, Plummer, holding a small golden man, quipped wittily: "You are two years older than me, why haven't I met you before?" ”
In February 2012, Christopher Plummer won the 84th Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for Beginners. Visual China figure
It is true that Plummer has participated in a number of films in the past few decades, including some remarkable masterpieces, but the first time he was nominated for an Oscar was in 2010, when he was over eighty years old — his role as the Russian literary hero Tolstoy in "The Last Station" is really a bit late. In fact, as early as 1999, he played the third male in Michael Mann's "The Insider" (The Insider), and won the Best Supporting Actor Award of many film critics associations in the United States, originally everyone was optimistic that Plummer could impact the Oscars for the first time in his life, but he did not even get the nomination, which made many people inside and outside the industry feel aggrieved.
After 2018, Plummer, who was nearly ninety years old, replaced Kevin Spacey in "All the Money in the World" as the rich but miserly paul Getty. With this role, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor again, setting a record for the oldest of the nominated actors. In fact, the director Ridley Scott originally intended him to play the role, but considering Plummer's age, it was later decided to find Kevin Spacey. Who expected, shortly after the film was released, it encountered negative news exposed by the Spacey sex scandal, the producer decided to find another person to re-shoot, seeing that the time was pressing, the old and strong Plummer was not afraid, and he was ordered to memorize the lines fiercely, and finally completed the reshoot work on time.
Stills from The World of Money
In the past few years, he loves his acting career and has not slowed down the pace of work. Plummer has participated in several film and television works such as "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath" and "The Last Attempt", and even during the epidemic last year, he still completed the dubbing work of the Sino-US co-production animation "Heroes of the Golden Masks". In his memoirs published in 2008, he wrote: "Just as T.S. Eliot measured his life with a coffee spoon, I measured my life in the roles I played." "There's no retirement in the actor's line." He also said in a 2014 interview with The New York Times, "Death also has to die on the stage, that is the best curtain on an actor's life." ”
Stills from "Blade Out of the Sheath"
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu
Proofreader: Ding Xiao