Irish stage and film actor whose range extends from classical drama to contemporary farce.

O'Toole grew up in Leeds, England, and was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He was a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post in his teens and made his amateur stage debut at Leeds Civic Theatre. After serving two years in the Royal Navy, he acted with the Bristol Old Vic Company from 1955 to 1958 and made his London debut as Peter Shirley in George Bernard Shaw (Shaw, George Bernard)'s Major Barbara (1956). He appeared with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in 1960 in highly praised performances as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and he played the lead in Hamlet for the inaugural production of the National Theatre (Royal National Theatre) in London in 1963. A prominent film star by this point in his career, O'Toole continued to appear on stages throughout the world to great acclaim. He was named associate director of the Old Vic in 1980.

O'Toole made his motion picture debut in Kidnapped in 1960 and two years later became an international star for his portrayal of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence, T E) in David Lean (Lean, Sir David)'s epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In 1964 he played Henry II in Becket, and he had the title role in Lord Jim (1965). He played Henry II again in The Lion in Winter (1968), a film notable for the witty verbal sparring matches between O'Toole and costar Katharine Hepburn (Hepburn, Katharine). The Ruling Class (1972), a controversial black comedy that has become a cult classic, cast O'Toole as a schizophrenic English earl with a messiah complex. Personal problems contributed to a decline in his popularity during the 1970s, but he made a strong comeback in the early '80s with three well-received efforts. He played a duplicitous and domineering movie director in The Stunt Man (1980), and his performance as the Roman commander Cornelius Flavius Silva in the acclaimed television miniseries Masada (1981) was hailed as one of the finest of his career. His most popular vehicle during this period was My Favorite Year (1982), an affectionate satire on the early days of television, in which O'Toole plays Alan Swann, a faded, Errol Flynn-type swashbuckling screen star with a penchant for tippling and troublemaking.

Since the early 1980s, O'Toole has maintained his status with fine performances in such films as the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (1987), the cult favourite Wings of Fame (1989), the miniseries The Dark Angel (1991), and Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997), in which O'Toole portrays Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur). In 1992 he published a lively memoir, Loitering with Intent: The Child; a second volume, Loitering with Intent: The Apprentice appeared in 1996. O'Toole has been nominated for an Oscar eight times: for Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, The Lion in Winter, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year, and Venus (2006); in 2002 he was awarded an honorary Oscar. He received an Emmy Award for his performance as Bishop Cauchon in the television miniseries Joan of Arc (1999).