Peter O'Toole and What He Ate on Film: In Memoriam
Food in the movies is one of our favorite things here at Bon Appétit (if it looks great in our little magazine, why not 30 feet tall?), so when one of the century's great actors shuffles off this mortal coil, we like to take a look back at what they contributed to the subgenre of Edible (and Potable) Cinema.
Peter O'Toole, who died Saturday, had a deserved reputation as one of the hell-raisingest drunks of the screen and stage. He was infamous for stepping out to any nearby pub during intermissions when working in the theater, or any time at all when working on film, and getting down as much scotch as humanly possible before he had to be back in front of an audience, often in the company of fellow (and late) dramatic drinkers like Richards Burton and Richard Harris.
But it was his latter-day role as the voice of Anton Ego, the cold, solitary, and cruel Parisian restaurant critic in 2007's Ratatouille, that launched him into the pantheon of Great Food Actors. No other film, or at least no other film in our cinematic recipe box, contains an entire restaurant review delivered with the emotion and depth of a Shakespearean monologue (of which O'Toole had delivered many in his day, twice as Hamlet).
O'Toole didn't play any other roles so focused on food in his long career, but he did, from time to time, eat (and more often drink) on-screen. Click through our slideshow to see O'Toole's other most memorable food scenes, and go ahead and watch some of the movies in full, if you've got the time.
1/6Lawrence of Arabia
This was the film that made O'Toole a star, and the film with which he's still most closely associated. It being a historical desert war epic, there isn't much chance for dwelling on feasts, but vast tracts of sand do have a way of focusing the mind on getting something to drink. Water, and the lack thereof, leads to the death of more than one man in the movie, and the scene where Lawrence, along with a Bedouin boy with whom he's just wandered across the Sinai peninsula without a compass, enters the officer's club at the British headquarters in Cairo filthy and in full Bedouin dress. His fellow officers, busy playing snooker while he organizes and helps to revolutionize the Middle East, are aghast at his appearance, and demand he leave. But he walks to the bar, grabs the bartender, and demands something very simple: two lemonades.
2/6Becket
O'Toole twice played Henry II, once opposite Katherine Hepburn in 1968's The Lion in Winter, but earlier with his friend Richard Burton, in 1964's Becket. With both Lawrence and a strong Shakespearean repertoire in his pocket, O'Toole ended up cast as countless historical adventurers and even more historical kings. So, unsurprisingly, he's enjoyed his fair share of raucous feasts. But this one takes the cake, both for the sheer size of the golden wine goblet that O'Toole gets to drink out of and the fight that erupts over dinner. The movie, and the play it's based on, is almost entirely fictional, but the scene might depict England's first-ever (though certainly not last) drunken fight with a fork.
3/6Caligula
Like we said, a lot of historical kings. Here, he plays the VD-riddled and power-mad (or possibly vice versa) Roman emperor Tiberius, living out the end of his life in an insane pleasure palace on the island of Capri. The movie's a bit of a stinker, unless you're a fan of stilted dialogue and seedy porn, but just look at that goblet!
4/6What's New, Pussycat?
Despite his penchant for the epic, O'Toole could kill it in comedy, too. He played the lead Lothario in Woody Allen's first movie, What's New, Pussycat? (which featured Tom Jones' song of the same name as its title track). There's a lot of manic driving, drinking, and general mayhem-sowing, but the opening scene, in which O'Toole discusses his rampant sex addiction with his groovy psychiatrist (played by Peter Sellers), contains this long pull from a bottle of gin, followed by O'Toole's line that, "look, I know you think this is crazy, but when the light hits me in a certain direction, I'm…handsome."
5/6The Last Emperor
O'Toole's career kept on going at almost the same pace from his early days as a loose-limbed, adventurous sex god to his later years, when he began to play more dignified British eminences grise. And in 1987, 25 years after Lawrence, he played the part of Reginald Johnston, the real-life Scottish tutor to the last emperor of China. Here, O'Toole is treated to lunch by the young emperor, and has to watch the procession of each plate being tasted by the imperial food taster before any of it can even approach the table. And, for a change from the typical tumblers of whiskey and golden goblets of wine (or mead, or what-have-you), we were treated to the sight of the aging actor deftly using a pair of chopsticks.
6/6Ratatouille
In the fifteen years between The Last Emperor and Ratatouille, O'Toole didn't touch much onscreen besides the occasional cup of tea (as Arthur Conan Doyle in Fairy Tale: A True Story) or yet another golden goblet (as Priam in the 2004 Iliad adaptation Troy), but the feast of Ratatouille made up for the long famine. You can watch the whole final scene here, and, whenever happy hour hits, wherever you might be, raise a glass to Peter O'Toole.
