The last hellraiser

By the time Hollywood claimed him,OToole already had a distinguished career on the British stage playing Hamlet in the National Theatre Company production directed by Laurence Olivier and the original angry young man,Jimmy Porter,in Look Back in Anger. OToole,always the outlier,was said to have brought a gritty realism to the mannered,declamatory Shakespearean theatre of the time. Yet when he returned to the stage in 1980,his Macbeth was criticised for being dated and gimmicky. Making the transition from stage to film,OToole seemed to be the natural successor to British actors like Olivier and John Gielgud. Like Olivier,there would always be a hint of the stage about him,whether he was playing the tempestuous Henry II in Becket 1964 and The Lion in Winter 1968 or the crazed Emperor Tiberius in Caligula 1979.

Along with Richard Burton,O Toole would be one of the great tragic heroes of the 1960s,dissolute,self-destructive,driven by a great discontent. But in real life,OToole declared himself to be the cheerful rebel. He was the last of the hellraisers,the one who survived all his peers. As he makes his final exit now,the lights go out. Its the end of an era.