Peter O’Toole was 50 when I met him in 1983, but his heavily lined faced made him look two decades older.
The hard-drinking actor had already lived the equivalent of several lives and brought countless others to the screen with a ferocious fearlessness that’s still hugely impressive today.
With his death, only Michael Caine remains among the generation of wild-man British actors who rewrote the rules for movie acting, including Richard Burton and Richard Harris.
At the time, he was promoting a re-release of a film that contains perhaps his greatest little-known performance — “The Ruling Class’’ (1972), a black comedy in which O’Toole fully and scarily embraces the madness of an aristocrat who thinks he’s Jesus Christ and turns into Jack the Ripper when his family seeks a cure.
No less daring, and totally unforgettable, was his work in the film that shot him to stardom — David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962).
It brought O’Toole the first of eight Oscar nominations (with no wins, a record) for playing a politically and sexually enigmatic British Army officer who goes over to the other side where he suffers torture and worse.
It was the first in a remarkable gallery of historical and literary characters over seven decades — right up to playing the Emperor Constantine’s orator, Cornelius Gallus, in “Katherine of Alexandria,’’ scheduled for release next year. And each time, O’Toole, who never had what you’d call a star persona, disappeared into the character.
He had a remarkable run in period pictures, playing everything from Tiberius in Bob Guccione’s X-rated ancient Rome epic “Caligula’’ (1979) to the shy ’30s schoolmaster in the remake of “Goodbye Mr. Chips’’ (1969) to a drunken movie star in the 1950s-set comedy “My Favorite Year’’ (1982).
The actor had more than his share of flops, including “Lord Jim’’ (1965), “Man of La Mancha’’ (1972, as Don Quixote) and “Supergirl’ (1984).
But O’Toole had a wicked sense of humor (especially about himself) and loved comedy — even if films like “What’s New Pussycat?’’ were not well received by either critics or the public.
He told me in 1983 that it was one of his favorites, and that he’d been begging Woody Allen to write another script for him (it didn’t happen).
“You see,’’ said O’Toole, who saw an interviewer’s questions as an opportunity to free-associate, “I’m basically Woody Allen’s alter ego.’’