The Untold Truth Of Christopher Plummer

The Washington Post called him a "dashing grandee of stage and film," and that's pretty accurate. Christopher Plummer's death in 2021 — at the impressive age of 91 — brought an end to a career that spanned decades, continents, and genres from Shakespeare and musicals to science fiction. Plummer's death was reported as happening on February 5, 2021. The cause — as shared by his wife, Elaine Plummer — was complications that came after a fall.

Best known as Captain von Trapp from The Sound of Music, it's easy to overlook his other groundbreaking roles and performances in favor of that one iconic film. But film history will remember roles like his Iago, played opposite James Earl Jones in Othello. The 1982 performance was hailed by critics as "quite possibly the best single Shakespearean performance to have originated on this continent in our time." He won Tony Awards, Emmy Awards, and in 2012, his Academy Award (for Beginners) made him the oldest winner in the category.

As far as he was concerned, his career never ended: he wrote that there were always things to do, things to learn, and "above all ... there is no such thing as perfection — ... only infinity."

The New York Times says Christopher Plummer described his family as belonging to the "fading social aristocracy," but it wasn't all playing tennis and learning the piano (although that was part of it, too). He also said that his well-to-do home life "made me want to be bad and rough and find the secrets rather than the gates," and it wasn't as picture-perfect as it might seem at a glance.

Plummer's parents split not long after he was born, and his father had nothing to do with him until he was a teenager. And that's nothing at all — they didn't even meet until Plummer was 17, and his father went to a play that he was in. He'd later recall that they would meet a few more times, but as far as any kind of relationship, that was non-existent.

He also remembered that while his teachers called him gifted and at home he was definitely spoiled, there was a bit of rebelliousness that went along with that. He wrote in his memoir: "How often as a mere teenager, tanked to the gills on cheap rye whiskey and Molson chasers, did I stagger home in the blinding cold." It wasn't just a phase, either, and he would later go on to have problems with alcohol abuse and addiction.

For Christopher Plummer, there was one bright spot to filming The Sound of Music. He told Vanity Fair that was Julie Andrews, and at the time he gave that interview, it was 2015, she was 79-years-old, he was 85, and they had been good friends for 50 years. They'd worked together again, too, in a live theater tour, and a television production, and their families were friends, too.

Amid the back-and-forth banter of friends that have known each other for a very long time, indeed, Andrews recalled her favorite moments of the film — and they were moments that they absolutely connected. One was after the capsizing of the boat, and the other was, in her words, "Just before we go into the gazebo and you've said good-bye to the Baroness. You were trying to say that you were glad Maria was back. And like a child, you said that it was all wrong when I went away and it would be all wrong if I went again. It was so endearing."

That's the kind of friendship that makes the world a better place, and Andrews went on to say, "You were the glue that bonded us all together..." Post-interview, everyone headed down for dinner and a few drinks, when it became clear that they were "still a family."

When Christopher Plummer spoke to The Daily Mail in 2015, he had this to say about women: "Oh, I adore women! They're not nearly as emotional as men in a funny way. [Men are] silly, romantic creatures whereas women, when they have the responsibility of running things, make marvelous leaders."

They add that Plummer found his marvelous match on the third try, too: at that point, he and his third wife (who survived him after his passing) had been married for 45 years. His first two marriages had lasted just a few years each, but he said that he had no doubts, qualms, or hesitations when it came to the third time. He had met Elaine Taylor (pictured) just three years after The Sound of Music, and he said that at that point, "I realized I mustn't be alone and I needed someone."

That's not to say he was ever precisely alone. In his memoir, he recalled being in Austria (for The Sound of Music) and being bedridden with severe back pain... but making the most of it, with the help of a gorgeous local girl. He's also spoken about getting flirty with the oldest von Trapp girl (Charmain Carr), but was quick to add that it was just a flirtation, nothing more.

It's one of those stories that's great on the surface, but hints at a much bigger problem. Christopher Plummer told The Daily Mail that it was in the 1950s that he and Jason Robards were drinking in New York City when they got the attention of a cop. Instead of keeping it down, they bought the cop a drink... on the condition that his police horse also joined them. The horse was promptly brought into the bar. (He was harder to get out then he was to get in.)

Plummer said those days were long past him, and he's been candid with his struggles with alcohol. When he met his third wife, Elaine (pictured), he said, "I thought I was devastatingly attractive when I was drunk, but Elaine soon dissuaded me of that notion." He says instead that he was "petulant and angry," and credited her with giving him a reason to stop the heavy stuff. (The night of the horse incident, they were drinking triple tequilas.) When he accepted his award for Best Supporting Actor in 2012, he spoke (via Parade) about how her insistence that he stop drinking saved his life. "I was really going downhill. Thank God for that, as far as I'm concerned." 

Plummer's habits never extended to drugs, though: In 2018 he told The Guardian that he never had anything to do with drugs, and that he'd tried marijuana just once. "[It] put me to sleep. I found it so boring!"

When Bethesda announced the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, they had no idea what a juggernaut they were going to have. According to Digital Trends, it's impossible to say just how many copies have been sold, but in 2021, it was still sitting comfortably at number 16 in Digital Trends' best-selling games of all time... and they were basing that on 2016 estimates that didn't include rereleases or the VR version of the game.

When the voice cast was announced way back in 2011 (via Cinema Blend), Christopher Plummer headlined as the voice of the Greybeards' Arngeir. If it seems like a leap from stage to High Hrothgar it absolutely is, and Collider asked him about it — briefly. 

Did he play? Was he a gamer? Was he as psyched for Skyrim as everyone else? "No, that is something that is totally foreign to me."

In 2017, Looper announced that director Ridley Scott had cut Kevin Spacey from a major role in All the Money in the World amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Spacey had already done days of work on the film, and they needed someone to not just step in, but to prep for reshoots... like, yesterday.

Scott headed to New York to catch Christopher Plummer just before he headed to Florida on vacation, and according to The Guardian, it all happened with shocking speed. Plummer signed on just a few weeks before the film was set to premiere, and he only had about two days to get to England and learn his lines. From start to finish, the whole thing was just a few weeks, and according to Plummer, his theater background provided some seriously valuable experience in learning lines on the fly... literally. 

He told The Hollywood Reporter that he refused an offer to watch the footage with Spacey and just sort of jumped in with both feet — adding that while he had met the real-life version of his character (J. Paul Getty) at parties a few times in the 60s and 70s, most of it was still "imagination of what the man must've been."