Peter's Principles: Don't Drink. Don't Hog. And Don't Be a Nazi.
Marian Christy. Arts&Entertainment, September, 1993; pp.16-18.

Boston. Peter O'Toole is sticking out his tongue as far as it will go, like a seven-year-old kid. but he's not doing it out of anger, although in the past, he has exhibited the angry behavior of a serious imbiber, preferably Scotch. O'Toole wants his tongue examined up-close, specifically the jagged scar, left side, that resulted when he bit his tongue in two slices during a Rugby game in which he took a brutal blow to the head. The doctor closed the wound with clamps, not stitches. When the tongue healed, O'Toole, then 19, lisped. Every morning and every night I exercised my tongue," O'Toole is explaining with a lilt in his famous voice which is elocution-perfect, despite the fact that a cigarette is dangling from the pouty lips. London-based O'Toole quit "boozing," his choice of word, 18 years ago, so we are taking tea, specifically "Irish tea," in his sprawling suite at The Four Seasons Hotel.

Suddenly O'Toole puts his cup down on the marble table. his delft-blue eyes, startling and compelling, widen. Unprompted, and in rapid succession, he recites over and over the tongue twister that long ago cured his lisp. "Two ghosts sat on posts and drank toasts to their hosts." There is a subliminal point to this staccato shower of words. O'Toole has spent a lot of years on the edge but, ultimately, has proven that he is the master of his fate. "Self-discipline is," he exclaims, "the skill of sheer persistence."

The ex-hell-raiser, born in County Galway 60 years ago, had serious stomach surgery in the mid-seventies, due to pancreatitis. Part of his intestines was removed. When O'Toole awoke from the final effects of the anesthesia, he surprised himself. "I was still alive," he says incredulously. His fellow carousers had been Laurence Harvey, Peter Finch, Richard Burton. They're not around anymore.

O'Toole, who starred in such praiseworthy movies as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Becket (1964), and The Lion in Winter (1968) had been alcohol-dependent. Oscar-nominated seven times, he had no wins, a fact that didn't help his escapist inclination. But now, armed with the wisdom of introspection, he says, "I realized that you can't do anything drunk. To be at concert pitch, you need the mental grip to control yourself, to control the audience."

Even in this one-on-one, O'Toole is the ultimate actor. We are sitting on a long, angled couch. For what appears to be no particular reason, he gets up, moves swiftly to profile himself in tall view at a discreet and self-flattering distance. But, of course, there is a reason. He is a peacock in full preen, aware of his powerful persona and splendid sartorial sense. In an instant he has composed a self-portrait. He leans against a large window frame as if, in his mind, it is the frame of a lens and I, the interview, am a camera recording this egotistical, elegant pose. His incredible eyes (only God knows how many women they've mesmerized!) implore, "Look at me." It's impossible not to.

He is cadaver-thin, a scarecrow human on which hangs superb British-tailored sportswear: a crisp white shirt, pointed collar upturned and punctuated with a paisley ascot, a vanilla tweed blazer than melts into pale gabardine trousers with knife-sharp creases. O'Toole is a chain smoker, a man never without his Gauloise cigarette which juts out from the ebony holder dangling from his mouth.

He is an imposing man who radiates confidence. The rumor is that he has often bragged that no one, no one, could ever upstage him. True? O'Toole relaxes into spontaneous laughter and then he gets serious. "Anybody who is afraid of being upstaged is uncertain about his work. I find that funny. Other actors have said they're intimidated by me, but usually I create a feeling of trust," he says.

He sinks back on the couch. To glimpse the real Peter O'Toole, you've got to understand that he says what he thinks and vise versa. He isn't as puffed up and egotistical as his brilliant career might suggest. "When it's their turn," he says about fellow actors, "the stage is theirs. After they work a while with me, they understand that I don't hog from them. They don't hog from me."

O'Toole is in the United States touting the first section which he refers to as "the child part," of his four-volume autobiography, Loitering with Intent (Hyperion). It takes the reader from his beginnings up to the point where he enters the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, after spending four years as a copyboy with the Yorkshire Evening News. His editor had told him to forget writing, that he didn't have the right stuff.

Now the critics think otherwise. O'Toole's book is written in a quirky English slang style. It mimics a James Joyce stream-of-consciousness. There is no chronology. It is an unpredictable diary. O'Toole writes random thoughts as they pop into his memory. The result is carefree and charming. That is not to say that the actual childhood events in O'Toole's life were either carefree or charming.

"When I was seven, my appendix burst. I had peritonitis and was sent to an isolation ward. When I finally got out, I discovered the world had gone mad. War! Explosions! Soldiers with helmets! I discovered I was expected to hid with Mommy and Daddy in cellars."

O'Toole clears his throat and shifts gears.

"I was a small boy, the sirens went off, and Father and I went to the cellar. Hours passed. And we, the pair, went up toward the street to have a look. The sky was filled with searchlights cutting through like giant swords. Suddenly an enormous white cloud exploded. It was followed by a boom-boom, a blast so powerful that it actually lifted us off our feet. We found ourselves on the street, completely awed, completely frightened." His distress is so acute that he falls into silence.

Strangely, the ghost of Adolf Hitler flits in and out of O'Toole's book and becomes a major presence. The first glimpse O'Toole had of Hitler was in newsreels. Then he saw the destruction, death, and chaos that spilled onto his childhood and shattered it forever. He still thinks of Hitler as the menacing bogeyman of his youth. He gets huffy when I ask why he cannot erase Hitler from his past the same way he exorcised alcohol from his system.

"Yesterday," he shoots back, "I was delayed at the airport in Philadelphia. So I went into a bar, ordered a Coca-Cola, and watched the television news. The broadcast shoed rank after rank of former SS agents, Latvians who had served Hitler, receiving pensions for their service to the Furher."

O'Toole's eyes are glazed with ice. In his book, he refers to Hitler as the "profoundly strange mincing little dude from Linz." In person, he wants to use expletives. But he treats me like a lady. On the other hand, he wants me to understand the frustration.

"Don't you get it" he demands. "No one in the bar noticed or cared that the swatstika is still flying cheerfully. Hitler lives!" The tea has a soothing effect on O'Toole, thank heavens. A few sips and the rockiness the conversation is smoothed. Very helpful in re-establishing our rapport is a change of subject from a man he hates, Hitler, to a man he loves, his late father, Captain Pat O'Toole, who captained nothing except racetrack bets. O'Toole's father was an itinerant gambler, a star bookie. O'Toole swears he got his sense of style, showmanship, and sophistication from the Captain, the black sheep of the family.

When he traces his love of staginess, he focuses on "Daddy," the man he adored: "How I remember that Daddy stood on a stool, a sort of stage, and shouted the odds. A racetrack is a parade. There are beautiful horses. White rails. And my father, beautifully dressed, wearing a bowler. I thought as a boy, This is life lived in public! Life on display! It had an enormous effect on me. I was taken first with my father's showmanship, the showmanship in particular."

O'Toole particularly admired his father's stark independence. Although the Captain was his own mother's darling, he refused to be part of the family's furniture store chain. "My father was a brilliant salesman who used his money to gamble," O'Toole says. "He did the unthinkable. Hence 'the black sheep.'" His parents were "mismatched," but, as different as they were, they got along. O'Toole did not come from a divided household.

"My mother was proper and genteel and well-read. I loved her very much. I loved him very much. They had a great love for each other. That love fell through the cracks of the barriers that separated them. They laughed. That was their common bond, laughter. They touched me, their child. They touched each other. When our circumstances were drastically reduced, they never lost their poise."

While O'Toole's parents were a happy couple, he himself has never found marital bliss. When the subject comes up his shoulders slump. He retreats into a shell. Mention his first wife, Welsh actress Sian Phillips, from whom he was divorced, and what happens? Silence. Mention American fashion model, Karen Sommerville, with whom he had a two-year liaison. Silence. Mention his son Lorcan, 10, form the Sommerville romance. Silence. Mention the bitter custody battle that ensued with Sommerville. Silence. Mention his devotion to Lorcan and "I don't talk about him," O'Toole huffs.

Is it possible to get O'Toole to smile again, to be less difficult and more communicative again? How about his love for Scobie, his bulldog, whom he loved and who died unexpectedly? "We had communion," he says about the animal. "You don't really understand communion until it's no longer there." O'Toole makes it clear that he now balks at permanent relationships of any sort. "When it's over there's a void. A hole."

A final question concerns connections. How does this handsome, intense, brooding Irishman make satisfying connections? O'Toole doesn't misinterpret the question or dance around it. What he says next is powerful and lasting. "I am the one who has adopted the theater as other people adopt the cloth." He adds the punchline. "To me the theater is communion . . ."

A bell rings. Time to stand up? Sit down? Genuflect? Kneel? O'Toole's use of the word "communion" and the startling ring are in such perfect synchronicity that this could be Mass. But, no. It's just the doorbell. O'Toole is expected elsewhere. The confession is over.