Film

Sound of Music star Christopher Plummer dies aged 91

Plummer played Captain von Trapp and was the oldest actor to win an Oscar

File photograph: EPA/ Eugene Garcia

Fri Feb 5 2021 - 19:40

Christopher Plummer, the award-winning actor who played Captain von Trapp in the film The Sound Of Music, has died aged 91.

Plummer died on Friday morning at his home in Connecticut with his wife, Elaine Taylor, by his side, said Lou Pitt, his long-time friend and manager.

Over more than 50 years in the industry, Plummer enjoyed varied roles ranging from the film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, to the voice of the villain in Up (2009) and as a canny lawyer in Broadway’s Inherit The Wind.

Christopher Plummer holds his Oscar for best actor in a supporting role for Beginners in the press room at the 84th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California in February 2012. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images

The world has lost a consummate actor today

But it was opposite Julie Andrews as von Trapp that made him a star. In response to his death, Andrews said: “The world has lost a consummate actor today and I have lost a cherished friend. I treasure the memories of our work together and all the humour and fun we shared through the years.”

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In The Sound of Music he played an Austrian captain who must flee the country with his folk-singing family to escape service in the Nazi navy, a role he lamented was “humourless and one-dimensional”.

Plummer spent the rest of his life referring to the film as “The Sound of Mucus” or “S&M”. “We tried so hard to put humour into it,” he said in 2007. “It was almost impossible. It was just agony to try to make that guy not a cardboard figure.”

The role catapulted Plummer to stardom but he never took to leading men parts, despite his silver hair, good looks and ever-so-slight English accent. He preferred character parts, considering them more meaty.

Plummer won the Oscar for best supporting actor at the age of 82 for Beginners in 2012, becoming the oldest person to win an acting award. However, it was his performance as frugal billionaire J Paul Getty in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World that earned him the greatest plaudits in his final years.

Plummer was signed up to replace Kevin Spacey, who had become embroiled in Hollywood’s sexual harassment and abuse scandal, in hastily organised re-shoots costing millions less than two months before the film’s world premiere. He received an Oscar nod at the age of 88, making him the oldest person to be nominated in an acting category.

At the age of 89, he appeared in a leading role in Departure, a 2019 Canadian-British television series about the disappearance of a trans-Atlantic flight. Among his final big-screen roles was murder mystery Knives Out in which he played Harlan Thrombey, the patriarch of a wealthy, dysfunctional family, opposite Daniel Craig’s private detective. – AP/Bloomberg/Reuters

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