Christopher Plummer’s lost years
Christopher Plummer, Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Tyrone Power—all drank to staggering excess. That was the culture back then.
If Christopher Plummer made a few bad films in his younger days, he knows the reason why. “We were all blind drunk most of the time,” he tells Craig McLean in the London Sunday Telegraph. “All those early ’60s movies, when you look at them now, a lot of them are terribly slow. It’s because we were drunk! We went for two-hour lunches and came back [slurring]: ‘Let’s not shoot for the rest of today, let’s do it tomorrow.’”
But that was the culture back then. Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Tyrone Power—all drank to staggering excess. On one theater tour, Plummer and Power partied so hard they contracted hepatitis. “You proved yourself a man if you stayed up all night, drank 10 gallons of whiskey. And if you were able to play Hamlet the next day without showing any signs of a hangover, then you were in! It was a terrible kind of pressure to be a ne’er-do-well at night and a serious actor the next day.” Plummer finally eased off when his wife, Elaine Taylor, gave him an ultimatum. “Elaine did say: ‘If you don’t stop this stupid overdrinking I’m outta here.’ Thank God. She did save my life.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
How global conflicts are reshaping flight paths
Under the Radar Airlines are having to take longer and convoluted routes to avoid conflict zones
-
Zohran Mamdani: the young progressive likely to be New York City's next mayor
In The Spotlight The policies and experience that led to his meteoric rise
-
The best film reboots of all time
The Week Recommends Creativity and imagination are often required to breathe fresh life into old material