NAME: Peter O’Toole
BORN: 02/08/1932
BIRTH PLACE: Ireland
BIOGRAPHY
The son of a bookie, and a local beauty, O’Toole trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He walked straight out of drama school into the repertory company at Bristol Old Vic. Although the company had no places for young actors at that time, they were so impressed by his audition that space was made.
At the age of only twenty four, he was given the opportunity to star in ‘Hamlet’. His appearance the following year, in ‘The Long, The Short and The Tall’, at the Royal Court in London, won him the London Critic’s Award for Best Actor. He then moved to the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford.
However, on a trip to New York, the Hollywood producer Sam Speigel approached him, looking for an actor to star in a new film about T. E. Lawrence.