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London - Peter O'Toole, the charismatic actor who achieved instant stardom as Lawrence of Arabia and was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, has died, his agent said Sunday. He was 81.
O'Toole died Saturday after a long illness, Steve Kenis said in a brief statement.
The family was overwhelmed "by the outpouring of real love and affection being expressed towards him, and to us, during this unhappy time. ... In due course there will be a memorial filled with song and good cheer, as he would have wished," O'Toole's daughter Kate said in the statement.
O'Toole got his first Oscar nomination for 1962's Lawrence of Arabia, his last for Venus in 2006. With that he set the record for most nominations without ever winning, though he had accepted an honorary Oscar in 2003.
A reformed — but unrepentant — hell-raiser, O'Toole long suffered from ill health. Always thin, he had grown wraithlike in later years, his famously handsome face eroded by years of hard drinking.
But nothing diminished his flamboyant manner and candor.
