Peter O’Toole quits acting: His most memorable performances

PETER O’Toole, the legendary star of stage and screen, today announced his retirement from the acting profession, in a career spanning over 50 years.

The Irish actor, 79, said: “I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell.

“The heart for it has gone out of me,” he added. “It won’t come back”.

We look back on some of his best-known performances.

Lawrence of Arabia

The role for which O’Toole will always be associated with, his turn as the charismatic adventurer and Middle-Eastern freedom fighter, T.E Lawrence, in David Lean’s 1962 epic brought O’Toole his first of eight Academy Award nominations.

Becket

O’Toole more than held his own in this two-hander with Richard Burton based on the close friendship and later rivalry between King Henry II and Thomas Becket.

The Lion in Winter

Again teaming up with another acting heavyweight, Katharine Hepburn, O’Toole essays the role of Henry II in this tale of royal intrigue and dynastical plotting that predated Game of Thrones.

The Last Emperor

Although demoted to a small supporting role in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 account of Imperial China’s last ruler, O’Toole still brought an understated gravitas to the part, garnering him another Oscar nomination.

Venus

One of the Irish actor’s most recent roles, this 2006 effort saw O’Toole on comedic form as a faded actor whose life is thrown into chaos by the arrival of a loud-mouthed teenager into his life.