The great actor Peter O’Toole died Saturday in London at age 81 after a lengthy illness.  The son of an Irish bookmaker was almost as famous for his partying and debauchery as he was for starring in epic blockbusters.

He had a few movies under his belt when international stardom came in David Lean's epic “Lawrence of Arabia”, the story of the mythic British World War I soldier and scholar who led an Arab rebellion against the Turks.  His sensitive portrayal of Lawrence's complex character garnered O'Toole his first Oscar nomination, and a fine paycheck.. most of which he claimed was gambled away in casinos in Casablanca and Beirut.  He cheerfully went back to work on stage on on screen.

“If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it,” he once said, “If you give up drinking, don't go moaning about it; go back on the bottle.  Do.  As.  Thou.  Wilt.”

O’Toole was considered one of Hollywood's hellraisers, and embraced hard drinking and partying during the 1960s.

“Me, (Richard) Burton, Richard Harris; we did in public what everyone else did in private then, and does for show now. We drank in public, we knew about pot (marijuana).”

After years of career ups and downs, O’Toole would parody his image as washed-up, boozed-out actor Alan Swan in the 1982 comedy “My Favorite Year”.

He’d be nominated for an Oscar eight times without a win, something that didn’t particularly trouble him, because he said, he’d wind up in the record books anyway.  O’Toole did get an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2003, which he accepted with grace and then kept on working until his retirement in 2012, which lasted about a year.  He had completed two more movies after that.