Nearly 10 years after his death, Peter O’Toole is making a return to the screen in a BritBox documentary from Jim Sheridan.
The revered Irish director, known for narrative films including “My Left Foot” and “In the Name of the Father,” interviewed colleagues and family about the “Lawrence of Arabia” star for “Peter O’Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba.” They range from Kenneth Branagh, Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi and Stephen Fry to ex-wife Siân Phillips and daughter Kate O’Toole. Each interview helps shed light on the actor’s complicated yet brilliant life and career.
O’Toole, who grew up in England with Irish heritage, was nominated for eight Oscars, winning an honorary Academy Award in 2003. The actor was also known for his stage work and fondness for alcohol.
Sheridan, who met and began a friendship with O’Toole over 50 years ago, agreed to make the docu after producer Brian O’Flaherty asked him to do it.
“The force of O’Toole’s personality and his power as an actor was just astonishing,” says Sheridan. “I thought that somebody like O’Toole, who was a big Irish star and groundbreaker, deserved some memory.”
Sheridan structured “Peter O’Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba” into four acts, each introduced by a quote about the performer that encapsulates his life during a specific period.
“We just really wanted to have a good bit of his childhood and a little bit of where he came from,” Sheridan says. “Then there were a lot of interviews with people that loved and adored him and thought he was crazy. So, the film covers his early, big rise to stardom, and then the little lull that he had, and then he comes back again. That’s basically the structure.”
In addition to talking heads, Sheridan allows O’Toole to tell his own story by using the actor’s words collected from hundreds of hours of archival interviews.
While Sheridan’s docu focuses on O’Toole’s film successes like “Lawrence of Arabia” as well as his theatrical triumphs including “Jeffrey Barnard Is Unwell,” the film doesn’t shy away from failures such as his 1980 performance of “MacBeth” at the Old Vic in London, as well as his substance abuse issues (mainly booze) and his tumultuous marriage.
“It was hard to cover that part of his life,” says Sheridan. “But this film was like a labor of love. You couldn’t not love the man. He was crazy and hard to deal with sometimes. But as Siân describes, she wasn’t a victim of Peter. It was an equal fucking boxing match. She gave as good as she got. She was strong.”
Sheridan made his first docu, “Three Moons,” in 1995. But the director says he “didn’t really like the experience.” The docu is centered on fashion designer John Rocha, and he “was a good designer, but it was all about surface, visuals, and the clothes,” says Sheridan.
After that experience, he stayed away from documentaries, eventually giving nonfiction filmmaking another shot with the 2021 docuseries “Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie.”
During that project he concentrated on “trying to get to the actual truth” rather than worry about visuals. “I’ve become fascinated with the whole documentary genre now,” Sheridan says. “In my next one I’m going to investigate what a documentary is and how far we’ve come from the truth.”
BritBox International acquired North American rights to “Peter O’Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba” in November. It will debut on the service May 9.
