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    The Artists We Lost in 2021, in Their Words

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    This year, as pandemic deaths ebbed and flowed, a distinctive, eternal beat — that of artist’s deaths — played on as usual, bringing its own waves of collective grief. Some, such as Cicely Tyson and Stephen Sondheim, held the spotlight for generations. Others, like Michael K. Williams and Nai-Ni Chen, left us lamenting careers cut short. Here is a tribute to just a small number of them, in their own words.Cicely TysonAssociated Press“I’m not scared of death. I don’t know what it is. How could I be afraid of something I don’t know anything about?”— Cicely Tyson, actress, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)Melvin Van PeeblesMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“I want people to be empowered and also have a damn good time.”— Melvin Van Peebles, filmmaker, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“I want my steps to speak.”— Liam Scarlett, choreographer, born 1986 (Read the obituary.)“I remember my childhood often, I remember a lot of the past. But when it comes to music, I always look forward.”— Nelson Freire, pianist, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)Bob AvianKarsten Moran for The New York Times“When my parents went out, I would push back the furniture, clear an open space, turn on the record player and leap around the apartment.”— Bob Avian, choreographer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“School was a crashing bore and a terrible chore, until one day when I was cast as the girl with the mandolin in ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”— Carla Fracci, dancer, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“As I grew up in Kyoto, the wood of the Buddhist statues, trees, the grain of the wooden pillars, the patterns on the floor, the stones in the gardens, the bamboo, trees and plants in Kyoto are all a part of me — and as I read a script, I borrow from all these things.”— Emi Wada, costume designer, born 1937“I still feel sky-deprived when in the forested places. Many, many people born to the skies of the plains feel that way.”— Larry McMurtry, novelist, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Ed AsnerWally Fong/Associated Press“My father told me, ‘You didn’t make a success as a student, you’re not going to make a success as an actor.’ I said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’”— Ed Asner, actor, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Olympia DukakisAbramorama“I came to New York with $57 in my pocket.”— Olympia Dukakis, actress, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Charlie WattsEvening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“When I first went to New York with the Stones, the first thing I did was to go to Birdland. And that was it. I’d seen America. I mean, I didn’t want to see anywhere else.”— Charlie Watts, drummer, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Jacques D’AmboiseJohn Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images“Spread me in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”— Jacques D’Amboise, dancer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“If you have a leading character, they should be in a hurry. You can slow it down when you’re shooting, but it helps in the writing: Even if they’re not moving, they’re thinking about moving on, or getting away from the scene they’re in.”— Robert Downey Sr., filmmaker, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Joe AllenJim Cooper/Associated Press“I always said I lacked ambition — but that does not mean I was lazy.”— Joe Allen, theater district restaurateur, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t assume an audience’s interest. I assume the opposite.”— Charles Grodin, actor, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Jerry PinkneyJoyce Dopkeen/The New York Times“I solve problems — visual problems.”— Jerry Pinkney, children’s book illustrator, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Larry KingAlberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images‘‘If you’re combative, you never learn.”— Larry King, TV host, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Anna HalprinSam Falk/The New York Times“I started to teach people how the body actually works. I looked at the skeleton. I did human dissection. I did all these things to understand the nature of movement, not just my movement.”— Anna Halprin, choreographer, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)“I’m not interested in the intentions of artists; I’m interested in consequences.”— Dave Hickey, art critic, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)Nai-Ni ChenStephanie Berger for The New York Times“My thirst for expressing myself, both East and West, could only happen through creating my own company.”— Nai-Ni Chen, choreographer and dancer, born 1959 (Read the obituary.)Virgil AblohDavid Kasnic for The New York Times“When I studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, it was the humanities classes that I had put to the side that ultimately started me on this path of thinking about creativity in a much more cultural context — not designing for design’s sake, but connecting design to the rhythm of what’s happening in the world.”— Virgil Abloh, designer, born 1980 (Read the obituary.)Yolanda LópezAlexa Treviño“Those of us who make images must always be very conscious about the power of images — about how they function — especially in a society where we are not taught our own history.”— Yolanda López, artist, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)“You’re more anarchic onstage than you are anywhere else.”— Helen McCrory, actress, born 1968 (Read the obituary.)Michael K. WilliamsDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times“The characters that mean the most to me are the ones that damn near kill me. It’s a sacrifice I’ve chosen to make.”— Michael K. Williams, actor, born 1966 (Read the obituary.)bell hooksKarjean Levine/Getty Images“We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor.”— bell hooks, writer and scholar, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)Norm MacdonaldMargaret Norton/NBC, via Getty Images“Making people laugh is a gift. Preaching to them is not a gift. There are people who can do that better. Preachers.”— Norm Macdonald, comedian, born 1959 (Read the obituary.)“The thing that everybody thinks is going to work will not. The thing that nobody thinks will work will.”— Elizabeth McCann, theater producer, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)“The success of my books is not in the characters or the words or the colors, but in the simple, simple feelings.”— Eric Carle, author and artist, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“I think children want to read about normal, everyday kids.”— Beverly Cleary, author, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)Young DolphPaul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated Press“My whole thing is about giving these folks the real.”— Young Dolph, rapper, born 1985 (Read the obituary.)“I try to use words that fit a pattern, that are musical and expressive, but do not sound mechanical. Above all it should have a speech rhythm that is like the rhythms that the audience would speak.”— Carlisle Floyd, composer, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)“Birds were the first composers. They like to sing in spring. Purely serving of the beauty — that’s what we try to do.”— Louis Andriessen, composer, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Cloris LeachmanAssociated Press“I don’t have a lot of trappings, I think, in my personality. I’m just a simple person, with a silly bone.”— Cloris Leachman, actress, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)“I’m a witness of my time, you know, of a history.”— Hung Liu, artist, born 1948 (Read the obituary.)“Technology is changing the way people work. With electronic mail, the internet, teleconferencing, people are starting to ask, ‘What is a headquarters or office environment?’”— Art Gensler, architect, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Christopher PlummerTom Jamieson for The New York Times“I’ve made over 100 motion pictures, and some of them were even good. It’s nice to be reborn every few decades.”— Christopher Plummer, actor, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“After you see your work, you always want to go right back and do it all over again.”— Lisa Banes, actress, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“I think of the art as dead when it leaves my studio. I don’t even own it anymore. Installing in a museum or a show that’s coming up, I’m not allowed to touch my own work ever. It just seems strange to me. If somebody puts me in front of my drawings, I’d put more text in it. It’s never finished, but none of my work is ever finished.”— Kaari Upson, artist, born 1970 (Read the obituary.)SophieFrazer Harrison/Getty Images For Coachella“I don’t have the need to bring any more clutter into the physical world. And I like the fact that musical data is weightless and spaceless in that way.”— Sophie, pop producer and performer, born 1986 (Read the obituary.)Etel AdnanFabrice Gibert, via Galerie Lelong & Co.“My paintings are not usually titled. Art should make people dream, and when you have a title, you condition the vision.”— Etel Adnan, author and artist, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Michael NesmithMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“We’re a couple of old men, but we sound the same when we play this music — and it nourishes us the way it nourishes you.”— Michael Nesmith, musician, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)“We always put music first and marriage second. One night after dinner, for instance, I was going to do the dishes and Jerry said, ‘Forget the dishes. Let’s practice. I’ll do the dishes later.’”— Dottie Dodgion, drummer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Jessica WalterDove and Express, via Hulton Archive/Getty Images“Even my ‘leading ladies’— you know, in air quotes — were characters. They were not Miss Vanilla Ice Cream. They weren’t holding the horse while John Wayne galloped into the sunset.”— Jessica Walter, actress, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)“The last note, the high last note — it must say something.”— Edita Gruberova, soprano, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)DMXChad Batka for The New York Times“I’m going to look back on my life, just before I go, and thank god for every moment.”— DMX, rapper, born 1970 (Read the obituary.)Stephen SondheimFred R. Conrad/The New York Times“Life is unpredictable. It is. There is no form. And making forms gives you solidity. I think that’s why people paint paintings and take photographs and write music and tell stories that have beginning, middles and ends — even when the middle is at the beginning and the beginning is at the end.”— Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist, born 1930 (Read the obituary.) More

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      Christopher Plummer’s Robust Final Act Crowned a Noble Career

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)Obituary10 Movies to StreamAn Appraisal of the ActorA Look Back at ‘The Sound of Music’Review of His MemoirAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn AppraisalChristopher Plummer’s Robust Final Act Crowned a Noble CareerAt home in the footlights, he knew the power of charm and every trick of the stage trade. But even after a celebrated “King Lear,” there was more to play.Christopher Plummer as the title character in Jonathan Miller’s 2004 production of “King Lear” at Lincoln Center Theater.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPublished More

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      Christopher Plummer, Actor From Shakespeare to ‘The Sound of Music,’ Dies at 91

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)Obituary10 Movies to StreamAn Appraisal of the ActorA Look Back at ‘The Sound of Music’Review of His MemoirAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChristopher Plummer, Actor From Shakespeare to ‘The Sound of Music,’ Dies at 91His performance as Captain von Trapp in one of the most popular movies of all time propelled a steady half-century parade of television and film roles.Christopher Plummer as Capt. Georg von Trapp in “The Sound of Music.” It was his best-known film, but for years he disparaged the role as an “empty carcass.”Credit…Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesFeb. 5, 2021Christopher Plummer, the prolific and versatile Canadian-born actor who rose to celebrity as the romantic lead in perhaps the most popular movie musical of all time, was critically lionized as among the pre-eminent Shakespeareans of the past century and won an Oscar, two Tonys and two Emmys, died on Friday at his home in Weston, Conn. He was 91. His wife, Elaine Taylor, said the cause was a blow to the head as a result of a fall.The scion of a once-lofty family whose status had dwindled by the time he was born, Mr. Plummer nonetheless displayed the outward aspects of privilege throughout his life. He had immense and myriad natural gifts: a leading man’s face and figure; a slightly aloof mien that betrayed supreme confidence, if not outright self-regard; an understated athletic grace; a sonorous (not to say plummy) speaking voice; and exquisite diction.He also had charm and arrogance in equal measure, and a streak both bibulous and promiscuous, all of which he acknowledged in later life as his manner softened and his habits waned. In one notorious incident in 1971, he was replaced by Anthony Hopkins in the lead role of “Coriolanus” at the National Theater in London; according to the critic Kenneth Tynan, who at the time was the literary manager of the National, Mr. Plummer was dismissed in a vote by the cast for crude and outrageous behavior.For years, until he came to share the widely held opinion of his best-known film — the beloved 1965 musical “The Sound of Music,” in which he starred as the Austrian naval officer Georg von Trapp opposite Julie Andrews — as a pinnacle of warmhearted family entertainment, Mr. Plummer disparaged it as saccharine claptrap, famously referring to it as “S&M” or “The Sound of Mucus.”In 1964 Mr. Plummer starred in “Hamlet at Elsinore,” a television production filmed at Kronborg Castle in Denmark. He is seen here in rehearsal with Jo Maxwell Muller as Ophelia.Credit…London Daily Herald“That sentimental stuff is the most difficult for me to play, especially because I’m trained vocally and physically for Shakespeare,” Mr. Plummer said in a People magazine interview in 1982. “To do a lousy part like von Trapp, you have to use every trick you know to fill the empty carcass of the role. That damn movie follows me around like an albatross.”Mr. Plummer as Captain von Trapp with Julie Andrews as Maria and their harmonious children in “The Sound of Music.”Credit…20th Century Fox Film CorporationMr. Plummer’s résumé, which stretched over seven decades, was at least colossal, if not nonpareil, encompassing acting opportunities from some of dramatic literature’s greatest works to some of commercial entertainment’s crassest exploitations. He embraced it all with uncanny grace, or at least professional relish, displaying a uniform ease in vanishing into personalities not his own — pious or menacing, benign or malevolent, stern or mellow — and a uniform delight in delivering lines written by Elizabethan geniuses and Hollywood hacks.He played Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, Mark Antony and others of Shakespeare’s towering protagonists on prominent stages to consistent acclaim, and he starred in “Hamlet at Elsinore,” a critically praised 1964 television production, directed by Philip Saville and filmed at Kronborg Castle in Denmark, where (under the name Elsinore) the play is set.But he also accepted roles in a fair share of clinkers, in which he made vivid sport of some hoary clichés — as the evil bigot hiding behind religiosity in “Skeletons” (1997), for example, one of his more than 40 television movies, or as the somber emperor of the galaxy who appears as a hologram in “Starcrash,” a 1978 rip-off of “Star Wars.”One measure of his stature was his leading ladies, who included Glenda Jackson as Lady Macbeth and Zoe Caldwell as Cleopatra. And even setting Shakespeare aside, one measure of his range was a list of the well-known characters he played, fictional and non, on television and in the movies: Sherlock Holmes and Mike Wallace, John Barrymore and Leo Tolstoy, Aristotle and F. Lee Bailey, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Alfred Stieglitz, Rudyard Kipling and Cyrano de Bergerac.‘Simply Stupendous’Mr. Plummer’s television work began in the 1950s, during the heyday of live drama, and lasted half a century. He starred as the archbishop in the popular 1983 mini-series “The Thorn Birds,” appeared regularly as an industrialist in the 1990s action-adventure series “Counterstrike,” and won Emmy Awards — in 1977 for portraying a conniving banker in the mini-series “Arthur Hailey’s The Moneychangers,” and in 1994 for narrating “Madeline,” an animated series based on the children’s books.In the movies, his performance in “The Sound of Music” as von Trapp, a severe widower and father whose heart is warmed and won by the woman he hires as a governess, propelled a parade of distinctive roles, more character turns than starring parts, across a formidable spectrum of genres. They included historical drama (“The Last Station,” about Tolstoy, and “The Day That Shook the World” about the onset of World War I); historical adventure (as Kipling in John Huston’s rollicking adaptation of “The Man Who Would Be King,” with Sean Connery and Michael Caine); romantic comedy (“Must Love Dogs,” with John Cusack and Diane Lane); political epic (“Syriana”); science fiction (as Chang, the Klingon general, in “Star Trek VI”); and crime farce (“The Return of the Pink Panther,” in which, opposite Peter Sellers’s inept Inspector Clouseau, he played a retiree version of the debonair jewel thief originally portrayed by David Niven).Mr. Plummer won a belated Oscar in 2012 for the role of Hal, a man who enthusiastically comes out as gay after a decades-long marriage and the death of his wife, in the bittersweet father-son story “Beginners.”“Simply stupendous,” Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote of that performance, in one of many prominent reviews that treated it as a triumphant valedictory. At 82, he was the oldest person ever to win an Academy Award in a competitive category.“You’re only two years older than me, darling,” Mr. Plummer said, addressing the golden statuette during his acceptance speech. “Where have you been all my life?”Mr. Plummer and Ewan McGregor in the film “Beginners.” Mr. Plummer’s performance as a man who enthusiastically comes out as gay after a decades-long marriage and the death of his wife earned him an Oscar in 2012 for best supporting actor.Credit…Focus FeaturesA dozen or more of his roles came after his 75th birthday, among them the thriller “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2011); “Barrymore” (2011), a screen version of the stage show for which he earned his second Tony Award in 1997 for his tour de force portrayal of the actor John Barrymore; the Rian Johnson whodunit “Knives Out” (2019); and the fact-based drama “The Last Full Measure” (2019), starring William Hurt.In 2017 he starred as J. Paul Getty, the billionaire who refuses to pay a ransom for his kidnapped grandson, in the Ridley Scott movie “All the Money in the World,” a role he stepped into at the last minute to replace Kevin Spacey, who had been accused of sexual misconduct. His formidable performance, described as “so dominating, so magnetic and monstrous” by the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, earned him an Oscar nomination.“I’m not a superstar — thank God,” Mr. Plummer said in an interview with The Times in 1982. “Christ, to be a superstar must be extremely tiring and limiting.“I prefer being half-recognized on the street and getting good tables in restaurants,” he added. “Unfortunately, the really good, smashing parts do not always come my way because they go to the first tier of superstars who are bankable.”As accurate as that self-assessment was, it pertained only to the movies. Onstage, with a fierce intelligence, exemplary control of his body and voice, and a formidable command of language, Mr. Plummer had few equals.“As T.S. Eliot measures his life with coffee spoons, so I measure mine by the plays I’ve been in,” he wrote in his expansive 2008 memoir, “In Spite of Myself.”A Shakespearean ForemostMr. Plummer made notable Broadway appearances in works by Archibald MacLeish (the Devil-like Nickels in “J.B.” in 1958), Bertolt Brecht (the Hitler-like title role in “Arturo Ui” in 1963), Peter Shaffer (the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” in 1965), Neil Simon (the Chekhov-like narrator in “The Good Doctor” in 1973) and Harold Pinter (“No Man’s Land,” opposite Jason Robards, in 1994).He won a Tony in the title role of “Cyrano,” a 1973 musical version of Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac,” and in 2007 he was nominated for a Tony for the Clarence Darrow-like role of Henry Drummond, opposite Brian Dennehy, in “Inherit the Wind,” his final Broadway appearance.Mr. Plummer with Brian Dennehy in the 2007 Broadway production of “Inherit the Wind.” It was Mr. Plummer’s final Broadway performance.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesEven so, that was the second tier of his theatrical portfolio; he was first and foremost a Shakespearean, one who brought febrile intensity and fierce intellect to his preparation.“I disagree with the theory that he is a man of indecision,” Mr. Plummer wrote about Hamlet in an essay for Playbill in 1964. “The truth is that he has made his mind up many times over, and it is only through his self-analytical precision and towering imagination that he finds himself living the deed long before he commits himself to its performance.”In 1955, he played Mark Antony in “Julius Caesar” in the inaugural production of the American Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford, Conn. The next year he played the title role in “Henry V” at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario — where he became a fixture — and was declared by Brooks Atkinson of The Times to be “a Shakespearean actor of the first rank.”For more than a half century, through 2010 — when, at age 80, he appeared at the Stratford festival as Prospero in “The Tempest” — Mr. Plummer’s performances, including those in New York and in London, where he lived in the 1960s, were more often than not appreciated in extravagant terms.“The performance of a lifetime,” Ben Brantley wrote in The Times of Mr. Plummer’s “King Lear,” which arrived on Broadway in 2004 after first being produced at the festival. “He delivers a Lear both deeply personal and universal: a distinctly individual man whose face becomes a mirror for every man’s mortality.”Ms. Taylor, his wife, said that at his death Mr. Plummer had been preparing to appear as Lear on film for the first time, under the direction of Des McAnuff.But it was his portrayal of Iago in a 1981 Connecticut production of “Othello,” which starred James Earl Jones in the title role and came to Broadway in 1982, that defined his reputation as a Shakespearean of profound depth, worthy of comparison to the likes of Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and John Gielgud. “He gives us evil so pure — and so bottomless — that it can induce tears,” Frank Rich wrote in The Times. “Our tears are not for the dastardly Iago, of course — that would be wrong. No, what Mr. Plummer does is make us weep for a civilization that can produce such a man and allow him to flower.”The praise was amplified by the senior Times critic of the day, Walter Kerr, who wrote, “It is quite possibly the best single Shakespearean performance to have originated on this continent in our time.”A Rebellious BoyhoodMr. Plummer as King Lear on Broadway in 2004, in what Ben Brantley of The New York Times called “the performance of a lifetime.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesArthur Christopher Orme Plummer was born in Toronto on Dec. 13, 1929. His parents separated around the time of his birth, and he did not meet his father, John Orme Plummer, until he was 17, when the elder Plummer came to see his son perform in a play.“Our paths would cross once or twice again in our lifetimes and then no more,” Christopher Plummer wrote in his memoir.Mr. Plummer grew up in Montreal with his mother — Isabella Mary Abbott Plummer, a granddaughter of a Canadian prime minister and a railroad president — and her extended family in what he described as a colony of fading social aristocracy, where bird-watching and tennis were frequent recreational pursuits and the after-dinner activity was reading aloud. It was a background, he once said, that “made me want to be bad and rough and find the secrets rather than the gates.”Pampered, gifted and rebellious, he aspired early on to be a concert pianist, though in high school, where his classmates included the future jazzmen Oscar Peterson and Maynard Ferguson, he gravitated to their musical style and a life at night that included heavy drinking.“How often as a mere teenager, tanked to the gills on cheap rye whiskey and Molson chasers, did I stagger home in the blinding cold,” he wrote in his memoir.He gave up the idea of a musical career because, he said, “I realized acting came easier.” He performed in high school shows — including as Mr. Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice,” in which he received a favorable review from The Montreal Gazette that “instantly went to my head” — and made his professional debut at 16 at the Montreal Repertory Theater.Joining a troupe in Ottawa, Mr. Plummer performed in dozens of low-budget productions and, in what amounted to an extended education, took on roles in radio theater for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and spent a season with a professional company in Bermuda. The actor Edward Everett Horton, who had appeared with the company, secured him a role in a touring production of “Nina,” a French comedy, and opportunities accrued quickly.Mr. Plummer appeared in “Medea” in Paris with Judith Anderson and made his Broadway debut in “The Starcross Story,” a drama that opened and closed on one January night in 1954 in spite of the lure of its star, Eva Le Gallienne. He toured in “The Constant Wife” with Katharine Cornell (who nearly had him fired for showing up for a performance late and hung over), and in 1955 appeared in his first commercial hit, as Warwick in “The Lark,” Jean Anouilh’s drama about Joan of Arc, starring an ascendant Julie Harris.His first feature-film role was as a playwright in “Stage Struck,” a 1958 drama about the New York theater world, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda, Susan Strasberg and Herbert Marshall.Mr. Plummer in 2017. “I’m not a superstar — thank God,” he once said. “Christ, to be a superstar must be extremely tiring and limiting.”Credit…Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesBy the early 1960s, Mr. Plummer had become allied with the bad boys of the British acting world — Richard Burton, Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole — motivated, he once said, by the cantankerous rage against propriety exhibited in the work of John Osborne.In his memoir, a dishy, rollicking account of a life lived sensually and energetically, he was not shy in detailing his amorous adventures, or his drinking with fellow actors. In a 1967 interview with the CBC, he acknowledged himself to be a drunk — “though not when I’m working, producers take note,” he said — and considered the question of why actors in general drink.“The more you give to an audience, which is a tremendous amount that you give during a night if you care about your work, the more you spill out of yourself with either loathing or loving them and getting loathing and loving back,” he said. “It’s a tremendous letdown when the evening is over. You’ve given an awful lot of your own personality with just the reward of applause at the end, which is a marvelous reward but it isn’t quite enough to fill the rest of the night.”In the same interview he noted that he’d given up trying to be liked. “I’m not a difficult type to get on with,” he said. “I’m only difficult when I’m impatient with people who don’t understand temperament has nothing to do with lack of professionalism.”Mr. Plummer’s first two marriages, to the actress Tammy Grimes and a British journalist, Patricia Lewis, ended in divorce. In addition to Ms. Taylor, he is survived by his daughter with Ms. Grimes, the actress Amanda Plummer.By both their accounts, Mr. Plummer and his daughter became friends after she became an adult, though they had rarely seen each other while she was growing up.“I didn’t want anything to do with the upbringing of a child,” he told The Times in 1982. “I am really very bad at responsibility of any kind. Unless it’s my work, I’m hopeless.”It was Ms. Taylor, Mr. Plummer acknowledged many times, who curtailed at last his liquid nights and general profligacy.“My long-suffering wife Elaine,” he called her, in closing his Oscar acceptance speech, “who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for coming to my rescue every day of my life.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stream These Great Christopher Plummer Movies

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)Obituary5 Movies to StreamA Look Back at ‘The Sound of Music’Theatre Review: BarrymoreReview of His MemoirAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStream These Great Christopher Plummer MoviesThe oldest actor ever to win an Academy Award, Plummer only needed a few minutes to leave a lasting impression.Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Plummer and Don Johnson in “Knives Out,” one of Plummer’s last roles.Credit…Claire Folger/LionsgateFeb. 5, 2021Updated 7:35 p.m. ETThe Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, who died Feb. 5 at 91, made his first appearances on the Broadway stage and in Hollywood movies in the 1950s, when he was still in his 20s. He left behind a wealth of unforgettable work in film, theater and television, including Oscar-, Emmy- and Tony-winning performances.Originally introduced to the public as a dignified leading man in the classical English mold of Laurence Olivier and James Mason, Plummer would go on to play a range of roles — from adventure heroes to villainous creeps — and would find some of his greatest success in supporting parts. In his later years especially, Plummer specialized in bringing a sense of depth and weight to characters who sometimes appeared on-screen for just a handful of scenes. He only needed a few minutes to leave a lasting impression.Here are 10 of Plummer’s best roles, all available to stream:Mr. Plummer as Captain von Trapp with Julie Andrews as Maria and their harmonious children in “The Sound of Music.”Credit…20th Century Fox Film Corporation‘The Sound of Music’Stream on Disney+; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, Plummer focused much of his creative attention on theater in the U.S. and the U.K., while dabbling only occasionally in television and cinema. Then he played a stuffy Austrian naval officer and widowed father in the film version of the musical “The Sound of Music,” and he became a bona fide movie star. In the decades that followed, Plummer would sometimes dismiss the film, one of his biggest box office hits, as cloying and simplistic. But the picture is beloved for many reasons, one of which is the rich romantic chemistry between its leading actors: Julie Andrews as a headstrong governess, and Plummer as a heartbroken grump who melts when he hears her teach his children to sing.Christopher Plummer, left, and Ewan McGregor in “Beginners.”Credit…Focus Features‘Beginners’Stream it on HBO Max; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Plummer became the oldest actor ever to win an Academy Award when he took home his first Oscar at 82 for the writer-director Mike Mills’s semi-autobiographical drama “Beginners.” He plays Hal, a septuagenarian who belatedly comes out as gay and subsequently strengthens his bond with his mixed-up middle-aged son Oliver (Ewan McGregor), who learns a lot from his dad’s embrace of radical honesty. At once gently funny and tearjerking, this is a film about how people subtly affect each other’s lives.‘The Silent Partner’Stream it on The Criterion Channel; rent it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play or YouTube.Plummer was proud of his Canadian roots, and though he worked all over the world, he frequently returned to make movies with some of his home country’s finest filmmakers. In the cult favorite “The Silent Partner,” he plays a brutal thief who matches wits with a devious bank teller (Elliott Gould) after a heist goes awry. The director Daryl Duke focuses primarily on the teller, treating Plummer’s master criminal as a shadowy force of evil, applying pressure from the periphery. The actor leans into the assignment, delivering a performance dripping with menace.James Mason as Dr. Watson and Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes in “Murder by Decree.”Credit…Screenshot, via Amazon‘Murder By Decree’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play or YouTube.Another venerable Canadian director, Bob Clark, guided Plummer through one of his juiciest roles, playing Sherlock Holmes in a movie about the Jack the Ripper murders. James Mason plays the part of Dr. Watson, while Donald Sutherland plays the real-life medium Robert Lees, who claimed to have solved the case via psychic visions. But the star of the show is of course Plummer, who conveys the steely persistence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth, but also gives the character a bit of joyful bounce whenever he gets to outsmart somebody.‘An American Tail’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.One of Plummer’s most useful tools as a performer was his voice: deep and resonant, with just enough rasp to add a little edge. He was in-demand as a voice-over artist for documentaries and commercials; and he brought gusto to several classic animated films, including “Up” and “My Dog Tulip.” His first turn in a cartoon was a charmingly kooky one, playing a French pigeon who encourages the hero to follow his dreams by singing the can-do ditty “Never Say Never.” It’s a refreshingly light performance from Plummer, spotlighting his showman’s spirit.‘The Insider’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.In this docudrama about how the tobacco industry’s lawyers pressured the producers of the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” Plummer plays the reporter Mike Wallace, known and feared for his dogged interviewing style. The actor doesn’t attempt a Wallace impression. Instead he embodies the contradictions of a famous journalist, who believes in the pursuit of truth but also fears losing corporate sponsorship. Plummer captures Wallace’s natural charisma, along with his deep insecurities.Christopher Plummer as the mystery writer Harlan Thrombey in “Knives Out.”Credit…Lionsgate‘Knives Out’Stream it on Amazon Prime; rent or buy it on Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.In one of Plummer’s final performances, he plays a popular mystery novelist whose accidental death causes problems for his greedy, scheming family. Plummer’s character Harlan Thrombey only appears in flashbacks, but his friendship with his nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) — and his keen understanding of his heirs’ failings — help to fill the writer-director Rian Johnson’s clever murder plot with both genuine warmth and a sharp point-of-view. Harlan comes across as so wise and so kind that the audience will believe anything he says.‘The Thorn Birds’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Plummer notched one of the 11 Emmy nominations earned by this popular TV mini-series adaptation of Colleen McCullough’s novel. (He lost the “Outstanding Supporting Actor” award to his castmate, Richard Kiley.) Reunited with Duke, who had directed “The Silent Partner,” Plummer plays a very different kind of character: a high-ranking Catholic Church official who mentors a young priest (Richard Chamberlain) struggling with his desire for a woman (Rachel Ward) in the Australian farmlands. The elder archbishop has a small but vital part to play in this sweeping saga, serving as a voice of conscience and compassion to a man in spiritual crisis.‘The Last Station’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.It took until 2010 — 52 years after his movie debut — before Plummer picked up his first Oscar nomination, for playing Tolstoy in the writer-director Michael Hoffman’s adaptation of the Jay Parini novel “The Last Station.” The story is set during the last year of the Russian author’s life, and mostly concerns how his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren) battled with her husband’s devotees over whether his work should fall into the public domain after he died. Though he’s at the center of the intrigue, Plummer’s Tolstoy remains a fascinating enigma, enjoying the raging argument around him, which recalls many of the themes of his work.Christopher Plummer as a Klingon general in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.”Credit…Screenshot, via Amazon‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country’Stream it on Amazon Prime or Hulu; rent or buy it on Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Plummer brings some Shakespearean brio to what may be his best bad guy role, as the one-eyed Klingon general Chang. One of the great “Star Trek” nemeses, Chang takes advantage of a moment of mercy from his sworn enemies to upend their peace negotiations, and gives the Federation and the starship Enterprise one of their toughest tests. Between Chang’s blustering monologues and his ruthless machinations, Plummer makes villainy look fun.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More