Christopher Plummer, the Hollywood legend best known for his iconic role as Captain Von Trapp in the classic musical “The Sound of Music,” has died at 91.
His family confirmed that he died peacefully at his home in Connecticut.
Plummer received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2012 for “Beginners,” and was nominated in 2010 for “The Last Station,” and again in 2018 for “All the Money in the World,” where he replaced the disgraced Kevin Spacey.
Born in Toronto and raised in Quebec, the Canadian actor began his career on Broadway with “The Starcross Story” before moving into film with Sidney Lumet’s “Stage Struck” in 1958.
“The Sound of Music” catapulted him to stardom in 1965, but that same year he also starred in Robert Mulligan’s Alan J. Pakula-produced drama “Inside Daisy Clover,” opposite Natalie Wood and Robert Redford.
He won a Tony Award in 1974 for Best Actor in a Musical for “Cyrano,” and again for Best Actor in a Play in 1997 for “Barrymore.”
He has two Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Actor in 1977 for “Arthur Hailey’s the Moneychangers,” and Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in 1994 for the series “Madeline.”
He played a number of major historical figures, including Roman emperor Commodus in “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (1964), Arthur Wellesley in “Waterloo” (1970), Rudyard Kipling in “The Man Who Would Be King” (1975), Mike Wallace in “The Insider” (1999), Leo Tolstoy in “The Last Station” (2009) and, most recently, as J. Paul Getty in “All the Money in the World.”
In 2019, he starred in Rian Johnson’s murder mystery “Knives Out.” But he also worked with filmmakers like Terrence Malick (“The New World”), David Fincher (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”), Spike Lee (“Malcolm X”), and Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind”).
