Christopher Plummer

Plummer made his Broadway debut in the 1954 play The Starcross Story. He received two Tony Awards, one for Best Actor in a Musical playing Cyrano de Bergerac in Cyrano (1974) and the other for Best Actor in a Play portraying John Barrymore in Barrymore (1997). His other Tony-nominated roles include in J.B. (1959), Othello (1982), No Man's Land (1994), King Lear (2004), and Inherit the Wind (2007).


Plummer made his film debut in Stage Struck (1958), landed his first starring role that same year in Wind Across the Everglades. He became a household name as a result of his role as Captain Georg von Trapp in the musical film The Sound of Music (1965) alongside Julie Andrews.^[5] During this time he starred in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Waterloo (1970), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975).


Plummer received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Beginners (2011); he was nominated for the same award for his performances in The Last Station (2009) and All the Money in the World (2017). His other notable films include The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), Somewhere in Time (1980), Malcolm X (1992), The Insider (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), The New World (2005), Syriana (2005), Inside Man (2006), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and Knives Out (2019).

Early life and education[edit]

Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer^[6] was born on December 13, 1929,^[7] in Toronto, Ontario.^[6] He was the only child of John Orme Plummer (1894–1977), 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]

Personal life[edit]

Plummer was married three times. His first wife was actress Tammy Grimes, whom he married in 1956.^[99] Their marriage lasted four years, and they had a daughter together, the actress Amanda Plummer.^[100] He was next married to Patricia Lewis, a journalist, 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 in Weston, Connecticut.^[101][102] Plummer had no children with either his second or his third wife.^[100]


Plummer's memoir, In Spite of Myself, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in November 2008.^[103] He was a patron of Theatre Museum Canada.^[104] He was a member of The Players social club in New York City.^[105]