Peter O'Toole

by Robert Sellers

  After several weeks of toing and froing O’Toole pledged his commitment, in principle, to the project. He had also begun to make some demands of his own, primarily more money and a hand in the casting. He strongly objected, for example, to Michell’s choice of Ian Holm as Maurice’s friend Ian, whose great-niece he’s trying to seduce, preferring instead Paul Scofield. Since Scofield had already turned the film down that was a bit of a non-starter, besides, ‘We don’t want two Hamlets in the bloody film,’ thought Michell.

  O’Toole also voiced a preference for Penelope Wilton over Eileen Atkins, Michell’s preferred choice to play Maurice’s ex-wife. ‘This is slightly bollocks,’ Michell wrote in a diary that he kept throughout the production, which this chapter draws heavily upon, offering as it does a unique insight into the day-to-day experiences of working with O’Toole. In his view Penny Wilton was far too young for the role. ‘That presumably is Peter bigging himself down age-wise.’ The request was an early warning that O’Toole was looking to exert a greater influence over the film than his status merited, a film that he had yet to fully commit to doing. ‘My instinct is to tell him to bog off,’ Michell wrote.

  Out of the blue O’Toole requested another face-to-face meeting. Michell popped round to his local Morrison’s to buy a bottle of whisky and waited for O’Toole to waltz in. The evening was a long one. The two men talked for hours, O’Toole mostly about theatre in the fifties, his conversation liberally sprinkled with profanities as he ranted and rambled amusingly about some of his peers. ‘He is hilarious and funny and a rogue and lovable,’ Michell noted. ‘And terribly indiscreet about some of his contemporaries: Holm, “We called him Ian Gnome.” Atkins, “Spent the first thirty years of her career trying to persuade herself she had any talent at all.” And Osborne, “Couldn’t write shit on a shutter.” ’ By the end of the evening Michell had reached the opinion that O’Toole was ‘a big old eccentric luvvie who will either be marvellous or quite, quite ghastly.’

  Much got done that evening, yet O’Toole still voiced disapproval over the choice of Eileen Atkins, putting Michell in a tight spot since he’d already offered the role of the wife to the acclaimed actress. ‘Well, I am very sorry, dear boy. It’s either her or me, it’s as simple as that,’ O’Toole decreed. ‘He is so funny,’ wrote the director. ‘So alive, so right for Maurice that it fills me once again with courage and pleasure.’

  The Eileen Atkins issue disappeared when she took a job on Broadway. Michell offered the part to Vanessa Redgrave and this time O’Toole approved. ‘Big Van,’ he called her admiringly.

  In mid-September Michell received an encouraging email from O’Toole declaring his positive reaction to the redrafted script: ‘It’s expanded a touch but has been deepened not swollen. Your construction and pacing startlingly good. Characters alive. Facets galore. Human and real. I’m thrilled.’ There were a few reservations but O’Toole insisted these were minor. Michell breathed a huge sigh of relief, only to hear that O’Toole was spitting blood that his email was not replied to immediately. ‘I think he genuinely is crazed or massively old,’ Michell concluded. ‘It’s like dealing with a six-year-old and we haven’t even started on the hard bit yet.’

  More ghastly rumblings emerged, a precious attitude about doing a medical, hesitancy over the choice of the young actress to play the girl, vehement opposition to any rehearsal period (‘Feature film rehearsals I find not constructive. I relinquished amateur status more than half a century ago’), ongoing haggling about money and generally posturing in a massively unhelpful way. So much so in fact that Michell was left pondering, ‘Shall we fucking ditch him.’ It was a tempting thought. In his diary Michell expressed how he had scarcely encountered anything like it: ‘He is clearly under the illusion that he is a genius. Alas his last good film was twenty years ago. He is his own worst enemy and I am taking him on. Can I face it?’

  On 8 October another face-to-face meeting with O’Toole to discuss the script quickly spiralled into a series of grumpy standoffs. Kureishi was present, acting almost like a referee at times: ‘What I think Roger means is . . . What I think Peter’s worried about is . . .’ Most of O’Toole’s script points were well thought out and constructive, but on those Michell disagreed with he would explode, ‘I’m not asking for much!’ During what turned into another marathon meeting, the three men would be laughing, telling stories, gossiping and working well together, ‘then another dark squall would scud across the table and the raging fury be unleashed again’, wrote Michell.

  At the close of the meeting the possibility of Ian Holm playing Ian was once again raised. That did it for O’Toole. ‘You’re like a fucking barnacle!’ he shrieked. ‘You won’t let go!’ Michell was left to ponder just what it was about Holm that upset O’Toole so much. ‘He simply doesn’t like Ian. Or is jealous of him. Or feels he will steal the picture from him.’ Leslie Phillips was eventually cast.

  However difficult the meeting had been, Michell convinced himself that progress was being made. He was wrong. A few days later he received an email in which O’Toole took issue with many of the new changes made to the script. ‘Maurice’s spare, simple dialogue has sprouted bow ties and lumps of flab. Please be aware of altering what persuaded my interest in the first instance.’ This directly contradicted O’Toole’s earlier positive reaction to the changes. Michell was now at the end of his tether and wrote to Kureishi and his producer Kevin Loader. ‘Don’t see the point of juggling yoghurt with this mad fucker any longer. Can we please dump him and find a proper collaborator?’

  By the following morning Michell had calmed down, having managed to convince himself again how spectacular O’Toole could be in the part, only for another incident to drag him back into the depths of despair. The concept behind Maurice’s wardrobe was to use O’Toole as he really was, a scruffy, careless dandy; frail, often unshaven, slightly frayed at the edges. Michell chatted long and hard with O’Toole about this approach, to use minimal make up and for him to wear his own clothes, and it was all agreed. At the actor’s wardrobe fitting, however, O’Toole whipped out a notebook and began dictating his needs to the costume designer, Natalie Ward, which included handmade shirts and trousers, cravats and handmade suits, everything to be fashioned from silk or cashmere. Next he waved away any notion of attending the week’s rehearsal that Michell had planned, explaining that he would attend for just the one day.

  It was at this point O’Toole stopped answering his emails and became uncontactable by phone. It was also his intention to royally fuck off to Mexico for two weeks, ‘So he would return the day before rehearsals looking like Bob Monkhouse after his Florida holidays,’ complained Loader. Worse, they had still been unable to get him to sign a contract. Loader began to worry that O’Toole might have lost his bottle.

  Meanwhile Michell was contemplating the nuclear option, contacting Daniel Battsek, President of Miramax, about replacing O’Toole with John Hurt. Other names bandied around included Jim Broadbent, Michael Gambon, Michael Caine and Ian Holm. It was time to panic, with shooting due to begin in just over two weeks. Michell could now see only three things happening: Miramax advocating the parachuting in of Hurt, O’Toole caving in to all their demands or the film collapsing.

  In the end O’Toole caved in, apparently telling his London agent, Steve Kenis, ‘Oh, well, I knew I’d never win that battle with Roger.’ For all his fear and frustration Michell was relieved by the news. ‘No one else on our list was quite as good . . . no, as perfect, as O’Toole.’ Looking back today, Michell admits it was an overreaction wanting to replace him. Miramax would never have countenanced it anyway. ‘Battsek told us that O’Toole was key to the film, that he wasn’t going to fund the film without him.’ But an important lesson had been learnt, that unless Michell told O’Toole to go fuck himself every now and then, and really meant it, he risked the actor walking all over them. Still, Michell and Kureishi admitted to feeling intimidated by their star. ‘We feel him peering over our shoulders whilst whispering “Am
ateur!” into our shell-likes. We feel, in short, compromised as artists.’

  Just a few days later Michell was walking back from the National Gallery on a location recce, ‘When who did I see sailing benignly down the Strand, driven by Lucy, in their battered and battle-scarred white thunder-bus, but OT himself. The man, the miasmic spectre, the proverbial white elephant. Our eyes met momentarily and shifted: he thinking fuck I’m supposed to be in fucking Mexico and there’s that cunting director: me thinking fuck he’s supposed to be in fucking Mexico and there’s that cunting actor.’

  Now it was established O’Toole was back in the country, if he had ever left it, and that his complexion appeared unburdened by sunlight, Michell awaited his arrival on the Monday for the start of rehearsals. The first day passed off wonderfully with O’Toole in good spirits, full of enthusiasm and ideas. ‘Peter smiles and the room lights up,’ Michell wrote. ‘He laughs and giggles and wheezes and splutters, but is like a weather-cock, spinning in the breezes of his moods and anxieties.’ As rehearsals entered the third day Michell became even more impressed. ‘He goes from strength to strength. He has it all at his fingertips.’

  The first day of filming was due to begin at 6.15 in the morning; bets were on whether O’Toole would be a no-show. He did arrive, albeit late, and the first day was completed without incident. By day three everything was going to plan. ‘O’Toole getting more and more confident in us, and in me,’ wrote Michell. ‘And thus more adventurous and up for the risk and the fun of it. He really is marvellous, and funny and amazing . . . put simply, a star.’

  Michell can’t really fault O’Toole’s professionalism on the set, investing as he did totally in the no Hollywood frills, guerrilla-style shooting Michell liked doing. At his request a one-man shelter resembling one of those manhole marquees used by telephone engineers travelled with him from set to set, with a chair and a Calor-gas heater inside to keep him warm between takes. As for booze, O’Toole laid off it. Only once did he confess to Michell that he’d had a little snifter because he was freezing his nuts off shooting outside the British Library.

  The mornings were undoubtedly the worst, ‘when he is fractious and odd and insecure . . . and late,’ wrote Michell. ‘But then he bucks up and is up for anything. My respect for his gifts and his spirit grows every day. He takes ideas and notes ravenously, gets them instantly and throws back such astonishing and profoundly moving emotions that I am shocked as I squint into the tiny monitor in front of me.’

  O’Toole’s relationship with his fellow actors was equally complicated. After the first day of rehearsal he’d taken aside the actress chosen to play the teenage girl Jessie, newcomer Jodie Whittaker, and said to her, ‘Darling, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. You’re going to have to tone your accent down.’ This was totally against what Michell wanted from her. ‘How unnerving for an actress to be taken aside by a senior actor like that and given that kind of note,’ says Michell. ‘It’s almost unheard of.’ Michell told Jodie to carry on the way he’d instructed her. ‘In the end I think Jodie found him wearing.’

  Leslie Phillips also found the working relationship difficult, arriving at the conclusion that O’Toole was self-regarding and dominant. Phillips was almost ten years his senior and yet, in some ways, seemed a lot fitter. ‘As the weeks went on Leslie did get more and more exasperated with Peter,’ says Michell. ‘Particularly as Peter’s entourage got larger and larger, and Leslie’s entourage never started. I think Leslie found Peter infuriating. It was perhaps a bit of ego bouncing off each other. Peter would tease Leslie and sometimes tell him to just fuck off.’

  Of course, Michell faced the obvious difficulty of working with a cast made up almost entirely of near-octogenarians. The most pain-numbing scene was set in a cafe. ‘Richard Griffiths was a narcoleptic and would fall asleep during takes, through no fault of his own. Leslie would really battle to get through the scenes. And then Peter, who would sit there absolutely stoically knowing every one of his lines perfectly, if he said he was going for a slash, game over, because that would take an hour! So I’d be sitting at the back with my monitor basically throwing a noose over the rafter thinking, how the fuck am I going to get through this?’ Amazingly it all cut together in the finished picture.

  By the second week O’Toole was really hitting his stride and fearlessly engaged in it all, even happily improvising and relishing interaction with the public when out on location. ‘I am now utterly devoted to him,’ wrote Michell. ‘And very very lucky to have him around.’ After the moment when Maurice falls through the door into the art class where Jessie is modelling, O’Toole told Michell, ‘I loved doing my stunt. It made me feel young again. Just for a little moment, of course.’

  Naturally his energy levels did tend to flag towards the end of the day, sometimes early in the afternoon. Filming the scene where Maurice throws stones up at a window was a simple shot, but the conditions were cold and wet and when Michell called for another take the message came back that O’Toole was unwilling. Michell found him, ‘knackered and panting like an old seal, back pressed to a radiator, rheumy-eyed, buggered.’ Michell called it a day. ‘He is terrified of the cold and of getting a cold.’ Michell always knew when O’Toole was growing tired, he’d reel off his lines at rapid speed to get the scene finished.

  Filming wrapped for the Christmas break on 23 December. On 2 January Michell heard that O’Toole had taken a nasty fall at home on Boxing Day and cracked a hip. Doctors recommended a hip-replacement operation requiring almost a month’s rest, which put the film dangerously behind schedule. While in hospital O’Toole picked up a nasty chest infection and had to be put on a course of antibiotics. On 7 January he returned home for a period of quiet convalescence.

  By the end of the month the film was back up and running again but Michell was worried about his star, especially a nasty wheezing and gasping for breath; the infection he had caught in hospital had obviously not been fully eradicated. All went well the first day back until three in the afternoon when it was clear O’Toole couldn’t continue. ‘He collapsed into his horridly sinister medical chair and sat there fighting for breath, fighting to stay alive, clearly shitting himself, clearly struggling, eyes bulging, terrifying to behold.’ O’Toole was immediately sent home and it was agreed that a paramedic be on set for the remaining three weeks of the shoot.

  Over the next few days O’Toole improved slightly but remained very hit and miss. He tottered delicately to the set on sticks, fearful of any potential hazard, like a crease in a carpet, that might cause him to fall, and would occasionally go into paroxysms of spluttering, clearly in considerable pain. A harassed Michell wrote: ‘He is too fucking knackered and ill and slow and fragile. And I must finish the fucking film at all costs before he croaks or breaks another bit of himself or contracts MRSA.’ It had reached the point where O’Toole not only had a dedicated paramedic on standby, but a dresser, make-up man, shaver, face massager, his own car and driver, and a physiotherapist on loan from the MCC. When Leslie Phillips also began to develop various chest colds and the like, Michell felt it was like ‘a competitive geriatric ballet of attention-seeking conducted in the slowest motion known to man’.

  By the final week Michell had grown weary of O’Toole’s irascibility, the endless waiting around, his ever-expanding entourage, and was now willing the end of the shoot. Like all true stars O’Toole had found a way of making the entire film revolve around him and Michell resented the daily ritual of sitting with him in the morning in his dressing room laboriously taking him through the day’s work, shot by shot, while the crew stood outside anxiously waiting. ‘He’s a cunt. But a cunt with a lion’s heart, and that great ferocious rage shines through his performance in the most surprising and glorious way.’

  O’Toole could often be difficult on set, as we have observed, and take against some of his fellow performers such as Sophia Loren and the understudy in Pygmalion, but for the most part directors and colleagues enjoyed the O’Toole experience.
So what made Michell’s encounter with him so very different? Venus was O’Toole’s first leading role in a film of substance for almost twenty years and the fear of failure must have been enormous, enough to put him on edge right from the start. There was also the realization that with Maurice he would have to reveal more of himself than he had ever done before on screen, which must have caused him some anxiety. Maurice is as close as we’ve ever got to seeing the real Peter O’Toole. There was such a vulnerability in that character which O’Toole the man never dared show.

  As the end of filming drew nearer everyone on the crew had their own private intimations of mortality, O’Toole especially. When Michell began to describe how he intended to shoot Maurice’s death scene, a long panning shot around to the sea, O’Toole burst into tears. ‘He really is the most disarming old gruff.’ When it was all a wrap O’Toole’s relief that it was all over was palpable. ‘God knows what reserves of strength and will power and bloody mindedness he has burrowed into to get through these last three weeks. The acting has benefitted hugely: frailer, more uncertain, and yet raging at the weakness and the mortality.’ For a few moments both men sat outside in the winter sunshine then O’Toole shook Michell’s hand. ‘Mission accomplished,’ he said and walked way.

  When they met again that June for the dubbing session Michell thought O’Toole looked ‘sprightly and fit’. He was cheerful, too, and during clips of the film was either roaring with laughter or pummelling and stroking Michell with affectionate approval. Then, having agreed to promote the film, O’Toole backed out at the last minute from attending the Toronto Film Festival, blaming an attack of ‘gastric nasties’. He did, however, show up for a gala screening as part of the London Film Festival that October.