A look at the life and career of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, who won a supporting-actor Oscar on Sunday night for his role as an ailing widower who embraces his homosexuality in “Beginners.” It’s the first Academy Award for the 82-year-old screen and stage legend.
AUSPICIOUS BEGINNINGS: Born in Toronto on Dec. 13, 1929, Plummer’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side was Prime Minister John Abbott. His parents divorced when he was a baby and Plummer was raised by his mother’s family in Montreal, where one of his classmates was jazz legend Oscar Peterson.
ACTING OUT: Plummer’s Broadway start came with 1954’s “The Star Cross Story,” followed by his film debut, Sidney Lumet’s “Stage Struck.” However, it was his 1965 role as Capt. Georg Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” that shot him to stardom. Plummer has since had an uneasy relationship with the syrupy classic, calling it “The Sound of Mucous.”
RANGE OF ROLES: Plummer has had an astonishingly diverse career on the big and small screen, from portraying a Klingon in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” to a spot-on rendering of newsman Mike Wallace in “The Insider” to explorer Charles Muntz in the animated hit “Up.” He was rewarded with his first Oscar nomination two years ago for his rendering of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy in “The Last Station.”
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STAYING ONSTAGE: Throughout his busy film career, Plummer has kept one foot planted firmly in the theatre. In recent years, he’s appeared at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Bernard Shaw’s “Caesar and Cleopatra” and Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” He also wowed Toronto audiences in 2011 with his one-man show “Barrymore.” Plummer is set to debut another one-man show, “A Word or Two,” this summer at Stratford.
FAMILY MATTERS: Plummer has been married three times and has a daughter, actress Amanda Plummer. At the Golden Globes, he thanked Elaine Taylor, his wife of 43 years, saying her “bravery and beauty haunts me still.”
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