Celebrated 'Sound of Music' Star Christopher Plummer Dies
Christopher Plummer, the dashing actor who played Captain von Trapp in the film “The Sound of Music” and at 82 became the oldest Academy Award acting winner in history, has died. He was 91.
Plummer died Friday morning at his home in Connecticut with his wife, Elaine Taylor, by his side, according to his longtime manager.
Over more than 50 years in the industry, Plummer took on celebrated and varied roles, from the villain in 2009’s “Up” to a canny lawyer in Broadway’s “Inherit the Wind.”
But it was opposite Julie Andrews as von Trapp that made him a star.
He played an Austrian navy captain who flees the country with his folk-singing family to escape service in the Nazi military, a role he considered “humorless and one-dimensional.”
“We tried so hard to put humor into it,” he told The Associated Press in 2007. “It was almost impossible. It was just agony to try to make that guy not a cardboard figure.”
The film catapulted Plummer to stardom, but he never took to leading roles, preferring meaty character parts.
Plummer enjoyed a remarkable film renaissance late in life, which began with his acclaimed performance in Michael Mann’s 1999 film “The Insider” and continued in films such as 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind” and 2009’s “The Last Station,” in which he played a deteriorating Tolstoy.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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