- August 2, 1932
Peter Seamus O’Toole ( 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was a British stage and film actor.
Peter Seamus O’Toole was born on 2 August 1932, the son of Constance Jane Eliot (née Ferguson), a Scottish nurse, and Patrick Joseph “Spats” O’Toole, an Irish metal plater, football player, and bookmaker
O’Toole claimed he was not certain of his birthplace or date, stating in his autobiography that he accepted 2 August as his birth date but had a birth certificate from England and Ireland. Records from the Leeds General Registry Office confirm he was born at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds, Yorkshire, England on 2 August 1932
He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company.
In 1959 he made his West End debut in The Long and the Short and the Tall, and played the title role in Hamlet in the National Theatre’s first production in 1963. Excelling on the London stage, O’Toole was known for his “hellraiser” lifestyle off it