Plummer, Christopher, 1929-2021

Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer CC (December 13, 1929 – February 5, 2021) was a Canadian actor. His career spanned seven decades, gaining recognition for his performances in film, television, and stage. He made his Broadway debut in 1954 and continued to act in leading roles on stage playing Cyrano de Bergerac in Cyrano (1974), Iago in Othello, as well as playing the titular roles in Hamlet at Elsinore (1964), Macbeth, King Lear, and Barrymore. Plummer performed in stage productions, including J.B., No Man's Land, and Inherit the Wind.

Plummer was born in Toronto, Ontario, and grew up in Senneville, Quebec. After appearing on stage, he made his film debut in Stage Struck (1958), landed his first starring role that same year in Wind Across the Everglades, and won widespread acclaim for his performance as Captain Georg von Trapp in the musical film The Sound of Music (1965) alongside Julie Andrews.[1]

Plummer played numerous major historical figures, including Commodus in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington in Waterloo (1970), Rudyard Kipling in The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009), Kaiser Wilhelm II in The Exception (2016), and J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World (2017). His film credits also include Malcolm X (1992), A Beautiful Mind (2001), The New World (2005), Inside Man (2006), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Knives Out (2019), and The Last Full Measure (2019).

Plummer received various awards for his work, including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe Award,[2] a Screen Actors Guild Award,[3] and a British Academy Film Award.[4] He is one of the few performers to have received the Triple Crown of Acting,[5] and the only Canadian to accomplish this feat. In 2011, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the age of 82 for Beginners (2010), becoming the oldest person to win an acting award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (a distinction he held until being supplanted by 83-year-old Anthony Hopkins in 2021), and he also received an Oscar nomination at the age of 88 for All the Money in the World, making him the oldest person to be nominated in any acting category at the Academy Awards.

Plummer died at his home in Weston on February 5, 2021, at the age of 91. According to Taylor, he died two-and-a-half weeks after a fall that resulted in a blow to the head.[104][105][106] A statement released by the family announced that Plummer had died peacefully with Taylor by his side.[107]



Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was born on December 13, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario.[7] He was the only child of John Orme Plummer, who sold stocks and other securities,[8] and Isabella Mary Abbott, who worked as secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and was the granddaughter of Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Abbott.[9][10] On his father's side, Plummer's great-uncle was patent lawyer and agent F. B. Fetherstonhaugh.[8] Plummer was also a second cousin of British actor Nigel Bruce, known for portraying Doctor Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.[11]

Plummer's parents separated shortly after his birth, and he was brought up mainly by his mother in the Abbott family home in Senneville, Quebec, on the western tip of Montreal island. He spoke English and French fluently.[12][13] As a schoolboy, he began studying to be a concert pianist, but developed a love for theatre at an early age, and began acting while he was attending the High School of Montreal.[14][15] He took up acting after watching Laurence Olivier's film Henry V (1944).[16][17] He learned the basics of acting as an apprentice with the Montreal Repertory Theatre, where fellow Montrealer William Shatner also played.[17]

Plummer never attended university, something he regretted all his life.[18] Although his mother and his father's family had ties with McGill University, he was never a McGill student.[19]

In 1946, he caught the attention of Montreal Gazette's theatre critic Herbert Whittaker with his performance as Mr Darcy in a Montreal High School production of Pride and Prejudice. Whittaker was also amateur stage director of the Montreal Repertory theatre, and he cast Plummer at age 18 as Oedipus in Jean Cocteau's La Machine infernale.[20][21][22]

Plummer was married three times. His first wife was the actress Tammy Grimes, whom he married in 1956.[97] Their marriage lasted four years, and they had a daughter together, actress Amanda Michael.[98] He was next married to journalist Patricia Lewis from May 4, 1962, until their divorce in 1967. Three years after his second divorce, Plummer married actress Elaine Taylor on October 2, 1970. They lived together in Weston, Connecticut.[99][100] Plummer had no children with either his second or third wives.[98]