Christopher Plummer plays Doctor Parnassus in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” directed by Terry Gilliam, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22 and will be released in the U.S. later this year.
Plummer has remained one of the finest and most versatile of classical actors to have graced the big screen since his film debut in 1958 in Sidney Lumet’s “Stage Struck”. Raised in Montreal, the great-grandson of former Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Abbott, he trained as a concert pianist before deciding to become an actor. He made his New York theatre debut in 1954 and has won countless accolades as a stage actor on both sides of the Atlantic including two Tony Awards, for “Cyrano” and “Barrymore”, from seven nominations. A former leading member of both the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he won London’s Evening Standard Award as Best Actor for “Becket”, he has played most of the great classical roles, many of which have figured in his 55-year, Emmy-winning television career. He has appeared in over a hundred motion pictures, a wide range of notable films, including “The Man Who Would Be King”, “Battle of Britain”, “Waterloo”, “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”, Terry Gilliam’s “Twelve Monkeys” and, more recently, “The Insider”, “A Beautiful Mind”, “Alexander”, “Syriana”, “Inside Man” and “Man In The Chair”. To generations of cinemagoers he will always be remembered as Baron von Trapp in Robert Wise’s 1965 musical blockbuster “The Sound of Music”. His most recent film projects are three animated features: the sci-fi adventure “9”, Pixar’s adventure comedy “Up” and the story of a man and his best friend, “My Dog Tulip”. He recently completed the role of the great Russian novelist Tolstoy in Michael Hoffman’s historical drama “The Last Station”, opposite Helen Mirren.
