Peter O'Toole

  Dashing, sophisticated and one of the most stunning-looking men on the planet in his youth, this lauded Irish thespian studied at RADA alongside the likes of Albert Finney and his lifelong friend (and frequent drinking partner) Richard Harris before debuting on the London stage. But movies were where the blue-eyed stunner became a star. With only a few TV and film parts on his résumé, O'Toole won the title role in the 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia. He was not the first choice; myriad actors had turned down the part, including old school chum Finney. Yet as writer/adventurer/warrior T.E. Lawrence, O'Toole was magnetic and magnificent, earning his first of eight Academy Award nominations for best actor. For the rest of the decade, he remained a mega movie star, appearing in projects both prestigious (as King Henry II in both Becket and The Lion in Winter, garnering him two more Oscar nods) and popular (the caper How to Steal a Million, the comedy What's New, Pussycat). He even tackled a musical, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, winning yet another Oscar nomination. But in the '70s, despite a nod for his turn as an insane nobleman in the satire The Ruling Class, his hard off-screen life began to catch up with him. Although married to actress Siân Phillips with two children, he was a notorious ladies' man, and a lush. His looks began to suffer, as did his career and finally his health. Although accounts differ as to whether it was alcohol, stomach cancer or some combination thereof that prompted doctors to remove parts of his stomach and intestines, O'Toole almost died. And while he made a full recovery, he was never again the beautiful man he once was. In the '80s, after some low-profile projects and a divorce, he made a comeback with a pair of Oscar-nominated turns: a manipulative director in the thriller Stunt Man and a washed-up alcoholic movie star in the comedy My Favorite Year, a role eerily similar to his own life. While O'Toole continued to work steadily, he sometimes seemed to suffer from Michael Caine syndrome, signing on to projects of dubious quality (Supergirl, Club Paradise, King Ralph) simply to earn a paycheck. In 2003, after being nominated for — but never winning — seven acting Oscars (a record he shared with buddy Richard Burton), he finally took home an honorary statuette in 2003. O'Toole, however, was initially hesitant to accept it, and wrote a note to the Academy stating that despite his advanced age, he was "still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright." In 2006, he proved that wasn't an empty boast when he was nominated for his eighth Oscar for his work as an old actor involved with a teen in Venus. With his craggy face and sunken eyes, O'Toole looked like a specter of his former self, but he still displayed the same incredible charisma he had 45 years earlier.