In December of 1980 I saw Peter O’Toole in that reviled production of Macbeth at London’s Old Vic. It was slow and turgid and altogether horrid, and the audience all but booed at the curtain call.
The look on O’Toole’s face at that moment was ghastly in itself. I felt truly sorry for the guy. I wanted to comfort him on some level.
All such thoughts went out the window when I interviewed the 48-year-old O’Toole in his Hampstead Heath home two or three days later, and just after John Lennon‘s murder. He was mostly dry and amiable after a fashion, but shifted into a chilly performative mode when the mood struck. He obviously didn’t much care for my company, and I didn’t have the moves or the moxie that might’ve sparked a connection.
I re-encountered O’Toole a few months later during a Manhattan press schmooze luncheon for the then-filming My Favorite Year. I was so afraid that I might say the wrong thing again that I went into hyper mode, cranking my energy field up to level 11. O’Toole saw right through my anxiety. “Whoa whoa whoa,” he dismissively chortled with wry amusement, slightly rolling his eyes.
Here’s a snippet from Jim Sheridan‘s documentary “Peter O’Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba“. It features Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh and Brian Blessed speaking about the production and reception of O’Toole’s Macbeth.