Christopher Plummer, the Toronto actor who played Captain Von Trapp in the 1965 movie The Sound of Music, has died at the age of 91. Plummer was a veteran of stage and screen, portraying characters like Shakespeare’s King Lear at the Stratford Festival and starring in independent films like 2012’s Beginners, which won him an Academy Award at age 82. Plummer died early Friday at his home in Connecticut with his wife of 53 years, Elaine Taylor, by his side. Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was born on December 13, 1929, the only child of John Orme Plummer, who sold stocks and securities, and his wife Isabella Mary (née Abbott), who worked as secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University. Plummer’s parents divorced shortly after his birth, and he was brought up mainly by his mother in the Abbott family home in Senneville, Quebec, outside Montreal. He spoke English and French fluently. As a schoolboy, he began studying to be a concert pianist, but developed a love for theatre at an early age, and began acting while he was attending the High School of Montreal.
