New Peter O'Toole biography reveals that we didn't know the half of his life

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Peter O'Toole married actress Siân Phillips and they had two children
She described lives as 'intermittently ecstatic or unbelievably dreadful'
O'Toole would disappear for days on end boozing with a new actress
Needed his own minder on the set of Lawrence of Arabia to ensure he was fit to work

By Robert Sellers For The Daily Mail

Published: 18:42 EST, 4 September 2015 | Updated: 22:36 EST, 4 September 2015

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Troubled star: Peter O'Toole backstage in 1963

Soon after they started seeing each other, Siân Phillips realised that her new boyfriend was the most unpredictable person she’d ever met. They were sitting in her digs when he suddenly announced: ‘You look as though you’re in mourning for your sex life.’

Castigating her for wearing too much black and purple, Peter O’Toole gathered up all her clothes and flung them out of the window — onto the wet cobblestones below.

‘What will I wear now?’ Siân couldn’t help wailing. It was 1958, and she’d only just embarked on her career as an actress.

Simple, said O’Toole: she should wear his clothes. So she did — henceforth sharing his cotton trousers, lumberjack shirts and fisherman’s sweaters.

At the time they met, on tour in a lacklustre play, both had already been singled out as major talents. Siân, the 25-year-old daughter of a Welsh policeman, had graduated from RADA the year before, having won the acting academy’s highest accolade — the Bancroft Gold Medal.

Meanwhile, after a spell at the Bristol Old Vic, 26-year-old O’Toole, the son of an Irish bookie, had been recognised as one of their greatest finds — despite partying uproariously till three every morning. Indeed, he seemed to get away with everything.

The victim of one of his most wicked pranks was a young actress at Bristol called Wendy Williams. At one point during a play, she was meant to look wistfully at O’Toole who — by a trick of the lights — appeared in silhouette in the wings.

One night, as she was gazing at him, he undid his flies, produced a banana — then calmly produced a pair of scissors, snipped off the top and ate it. Wendy, who could only see the banana in silhouette, promptly fainted on stage.

Even early on in his career, O’Toole was sometimes drinking a bottle of brandy before going to sleep.

‘The man who invented mornings was no Christian. I prefer to go straight into the afternoon,’ he said nonchalantly.

O'Toole with his ex-wife, Sian Phillips, who described their life together as 'intermittently ecstatic or unbelievably dreadful'

O’Toole seemed, in short, the unlikeliest of partners for the teetotal and refined Siân Phillips. But she was soon totally dazzled by his laser-like blue eyes and raucous sense of humour.

The first thing he did was initiate her into the dark arts of boozing. ‘I realised that an appreciation of Guinness was pretty essential in my new life,’ she said.

Back in London, O’Toole was sometimes so inebriated that he’d fall asleep in the middle of a stage performance and have to be given a sharp kick. Or the booze would make him so daring that he’d say to Siân: ‘Now for a little climb,’ — and then scale the high front of Lloyds Bank in Covent Garden.

She learned not to panic at his madcap antics. She even accepted his decision to alter his beautiful face — after an agent told O’Toole that he’d never become an international star without a nose job.

The nose he had been born with was large and slightly bulbous: ‘a great nose, a wonderful nose,’ recalls actress Phyllida Law. ‘I was outraged when I heard he’d had it bobbed.’

Other friends were equally aghast, feeling his noble proboscis had been turned into a Hollywood ‘snub’.

Was it the new nose that did the trick? While O’Toole’s career began to take off, Siân was waiting for job offers and spending most of her time alone in their flat.

Sometimes, she wouldn’t see him for days — and then he’d suddenly turn up drunk at 4am, expecting her to make him breakfast.

Once, he showed up in a new sports car, yelling: ‘Get your passport, we’re off!’ It was the beginning of a grand mystery tour around Europe that took in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Holland.

‘He had an aura, always,’ Siân recalled. ‘When we first went on holiday, we were mobbed. People wanted to travel with us, talk to us, but he hadn’t done anything then; he wasn’t famous.’ When O’Toole proposed — by grabbing Siân in the kitchen one day and asking her to have his children — she was warned by friends that he would ‘trample all over’ her.

Deliriously in love, she ignored them all. They married in Dublin in December 1959. Instead of a reception, they had a pub crawl.

Peter O'Toole in the starring role in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. He was assigned a minder during filming to ensure he was fit for work

Peter O'Toole spent two years in the deserts of Jordan filming Lawrence of Arabia

Happily putting her own career on hold, Siân moved to Stratford-upon-Avon when O’Toole, then 27, embarked on a season playing leading Shakespeare roles.

Mid-way through rehearsals for The Merchant Of Venice, in which he played Shylock, she gave birth to their first daughter, Kate.

Her husband turned up at the maternity ward with several other inebriated actors to serenade the new arrival. Later, he got so drunk with his father that both were found spread-eagled on the floor the following day.

O’Toole’s drinking became more and more reckless. At one after-show party, he held court on a throne, with a pedal bin on either side of him — one full of beer, the other of hard liquor — into which he alternately scooped a pint mug.

Once, his friend Roy Kinnear remembered, he downed a bottle of whisky without pausing for breath.

Inevitably, his work suffered. Playing Shylock one night, O’Toole launched into an affecting speech — but it was from King Lear rather than The Merchant Of Venice.

Siân began to fear that he wouldn’t survive the season, particularly after he began having severe stomach pains. After one of many rows over his drinking, she discovered O’Toole walking precariously along the roof of their rented house. But it wasn’t just his boozing that was affecting their relationship. O’Toole expected their household always to revolve around him, without any nagging or references to his excesses.

He could also be savagely hurtful. Unreasonably, he became obsessed by Siân’s sex life before they’d met, often raising the subject in company — much to her humiliation. At one point, she could take it no longer and left him.

O’Toole’s friend Gary Raymond recalled: ‘They had this almighty row and her parents came to pick her up. Peter was distraught. He was potty about Siân, he really was.’

The unliklist of partners: O'Toole starring alongside with ex-wife Sian Phillips in the 1971 film Murphey's War

O'Toole, pictured with Sian Phillips three days after the birth of their daughter Pat in 1963

O'Toole was known to have fallen asleep in the middle of stage performances. Playing Shylock in the Merchant of Venice at Statford Upon Avon.

The British-Irish stage and screen actor alongsie Audrey Hepburn in the 1966 film How to Steal a Million

Hell-raiser: O'Toole with French actress Veronique Vendell in a scene from the 1964 film Becket

She returned a few days later.

Professionally, her husband was proving to be the hit of the season. But there was even better to come: in 1960, after both Marlon Brando and Albert Finney had turned down the starring part in the film Lawrence Of Arabia, it was offered to O’Toole.

As soon as the contract was signed, he splashed out on a Christmas present for Siân: a brand-new Morris Minor, with a huge ribbon wrapped round the bonnet. But she’d barely had time to take it for a spin when O’Toole drove the car to Bristol to see some old mates.

That night, Siân had a phone call from the police. ‘I’m afraid we’ve had to lock Peter in the cells,’ she was told. While drunk, he had rammed the back of a squad car. Siân never saw her Morris Minor again.

Wisely, the director of Lawrence Of Arabia, David Lean, assigned a minder to his new star while shooting in the deserts of Jordan — thus ensuring that he was usually fit to work. But the film took almost two years to complete, and O’Toole had to find an outlet for his demons.

On days off, his co-star Omar Sharif flew with him by private plane to Beirut — then the sin city of the East. Once, they blew nine months’ wages there in one night.

Looking for female companionship on another evening, they ended up in what they thought was a brothel — though they couldn’t help wondering why the women were so unresponsive.

It turned out they were in a nunnery. ‘We misbehaved ourselves appallingly,’ Sharif admitted later.

Lawrence of Arabia, however, changed everything for O’Toole — with the exception of his drinking habits. Following world-wide acclaim for his performance, he became an international star, with a four-storey Georgian house in Hampstead and a collection of cars that included a Daimler, a Rolls-Royce, a Chevrolet and a Mini Cooper.

O'Toole was known to disappear for days at a time during his marriage to Phillips. Pictured: in Warner Bros Pictures' sweeping epic Troy

Peter O'Toole received a lifetime achievement Oscar. Pictured: O'Toole with fellow Oscar winner Ronald Harwood

The couple now had all the trappings: nannies, au pairs, secretaries, gardeners, cleaners and a chauffeur. There was a Bonnard painting in the bedroom, a Picasso in the hallway and a Jacob Epstein bust — on which their daughter Kate hung her knickers.

To Siân, he gave so many exceptional pieces of Etruscan jewellery that she was advised they belonged in a museum. No longer chained to the local pub, O’Toole would have crates of booze delivered at the start of every week — and invariably it was all gone by Friday.

By this time, they’d had another daughter and Siân’s mother, Mamgu, had come to live with them. Affectionately called ‘the old Welsh cow’ by her son-in-law, she worshipped him, and was oblivious to his sporadic drunken rages.

Sometimes he disappeared for days at a time. Siân never knew where he was — but other actors noted that he often indulged in liaisons with pretty actresses he’d met on film sets.

Deliberately, he never carried a door key — so poor Siân would be woken in the early hours by her errant husband hammering to be let in.

The notorious boozer, O'Toole, launched his return to the London stage at the Coach and Horses

She grew increasingly concerned when he played the lead role in Hamlet — directed by Laurence Olivier — at the National Theatre, and refused to alter his ingrained habits. The actor Derek Jacobi, who had a sword-fight onstage with O’Toole, was, frankly, scared of him. Never once, he revealed, did his opponent stick to the agreed moves.

‘Peter wasn’t always at his most sober, and he’d wink at me across the stage — and I knew I was in for it,’ he said. ‘I was fighting, literally, for my life at the end of the show every night.’

O’Toole was told by doctors to ease off the drinking, but he refused to accept he had a problem. Coming home, he’d often stop at countless pubs between central London and Hampstead; and if it was after closing time, he’d knock on the door, and say: ‘Peter’s here.’ He’d always be allowed in.

Despite his addiction, Siân suspected he was actively playing up to his hell-raising image. For the 1964 General Election, for instance, he hired a coach with Guinness on tap to travel around the local pubs — promising Labour voters a ‘free drink and ride’ to the polling station. Life with O’Toole, she said, was ‘intermittently ecstatic or unbelievably dreadful’. It was certainly never dull.

O'Toole in a tux at the 79th Annual Academy Awards

When he didn’t like something on TV, he threw ping-pong balls at the screen. Siân had wisely provided him with a basketful of them — after he’d thrown a portable TV through the screen of their main set.

Throughout the Sixties, O’Toole remained in huge demand — usually making one indifferent film after another while his talented wife stayed at home.

When they did occasionally work together, Siân sensed that he resented her presence.

Once, she was cast by director Herbert Ross to play a flamboyant actress in his 1969 remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, while O’Toole played the kindly schoolmaster.

However, he refused point-blank to rehearse with his wife, preferring to sit alone on set some distance away. When a reporter asked how Siân combined her busy private life with a career, O’Toole answered on her behalf. ‘She doesn’t have a career — she has jobs,’ he said.

Was he envious of her talent — or simply determined to keep her under his thumb?

Either way, by the early Seventies his career was in trouble. He’d had four film flops in a row, and his barn-storming style seemed to be drifting out of fashion.

On top of that, Richard Burton, who’d once been a loyal drinking companion, was no longer coming out to play.

Elizabeth Taylor had put paid to that, after finding them lying on the floor, both drunk as lords as they fondly embraced each other and sang Happy Birthday.

The next time they saw each other, Burton said in a meek voice: ‘Elizabeth doesn’t approve of our racing around together.’ And that was pretty much it.

‘I didn’t see him again for many years,’ claimed O’Toole. ‘Poor soul.’ From then on, he referred to Elizabeth as ‘that woman’. Even after increasing health problems, forced him to stop drinking in 1975, he could never quite forgive her.

There was another disturbing change: that year, for the first time, he refused to let Siân come out to visit him on location. She was immediately suspicious, having recently found a love letter among his correspondence.

In fact, while filming Man Friday (another flop) the year before, he’d started an affair with a Mexican actress 20 years his junior, named Malinche Verdugo.

Deeply unhappy, Siân fell into a secret affair herself with her co-star in a West End play — a younger actor called Robin Sachs.

Her marriage limped on for more than a year until she felt compelled to tell O’Toole about her infidelity. They continued to live together, but the arguments escalated.

Eventually, in 1977, she moved out, though ironically her affair had ended. The children, she agreed, should stay with O’Toole and her mother.

Dazed and unsure of her future, she felt it would have been cruel to uproot the girls from their local schools and comfortable lifestyle.

O’Toole bought her out of the house, but she received almost nothing else — certainly none of the beautiful jewellery that he’d given her. She felt too defeated to contest the decision in court.

The joint bank account was closed, her allowance stopped, her medical insurance cancelled; it was a complete severing. None of this surprised Siân. ‘O’Toole prided himself on his resolutely unforgiving nature,’ she said.

After the divorce in 1979, their paths rarely crossed again. To his close friends, O’Toole merely quipped: ‘It’s been a good canter.’

In private, however, he remained in shock for a long time — he couldn’t believe that his wife really wanted to leave him.

In spite of his own affairs, not to mention his other outrageous behaviour, he felt betrayed.

Yet, arguably, it was Siân who had more cause to be devastated.

Within months of her departure, her rival, Malinche, had moved into the marital home.

Bizarrely, Siân’s mother sided with her son-in-law: ‘I’ll look after Malinche as though she were my own daughter,’ she announced over lunch one day.

Siân was completely lost for words. And yet, in a sense, she understood. After all, she had herself loved O’Toole ‘to distraction’, as she put it.

Even after 20 years of putting up with his bad behaviour and occasional cruelty, she could still say: ‘He did, and does, fascinate me — but I can’t claim to understand him.’

Adapted by Corinna Honan from Peter O’Toole: The Definitive Biography, by Robert Sellers, to be published by Sidgwick & Jackson on September 10 at £20. To pre-order a copy for £15 visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808 272 0808. Offer valid until September 12, free p&p.