Christopher Plummer, The Sound of Music star whose prolific, nearly 70-year career encompassed Shakespearean stage roles and major Hollywood movies, has died at 91. The Canadian-born actor died at his home in Connecticut alongside his wife, Elaine Taylor. No cause of death or any other specifics were given.
From his beginnings on the Canadian stage, including a long-running association with the Stratford Festival in Ontario where he played some of the world’s greatest theater roles, to his late-career movie triumphs that included winning an Oscar in 2012 at the age of 82, Plummer came to embody both the ideal of a classical stage star and a Hollywood character actor.
His role as the strict disciplinarian Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music was his most famous performance, one that followed him for much of his career. Though he expressed mixed feelings about the movie itself, sometimes humorously referring to it as “The Sound of Mucus” and “S&M,” he was happy to appear at screenings and cast reunions, including one at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2016.
During his long movie and TV career, he appeared in countless supporting roles that required a sense of gravity and intimidating authority. But it wasn’t until he was in his 70s that he started garnering critical acclaim, beginning with his acidic portrayal of 60 Minutes‘s Mike Wallace in the movie The Insider (1999).
Christopher Plummer received his first Academy Award nomination at the age of 80 for The Last Station, in which he played Leo Tolstoy. Two years later, he won the Oscar for Beginners for an uncharacteristically light-hearted performance as an octogenarian widower who comes out as gay.
His late-career renaissance continued with All the Money in the World, in which he replaced a scandal-ridden Kevin Spacey at the last minute in the role of billionaire J. Paul Getty.
On stage, Plummer’s career encompassed many of the great Shakespearean roles, from Hamlet to Prospero in The Tempest. He won two Tony Awards for his Broadway performances in Barrymore (1997) and Cyrano (1974), and continued acting on stage well into his 80s.
His survivors include his wife, Elaine Taylor, and his daughter, actress Amanda Plummer.
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