Peter O'Toole: Last of the hard-drinking hellraisers

Was there ever a more auspicious opening credit in history than "Introducing Peter O'Toole as TE Lawrence"?

That brief and simple sentence, which appears on screen at the start of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, one of the least brief and simple films ever made, signalled the start of an extraordinary career that spanned half a century.

But now, at its end, that career somehow feels at once under-fulfilled and under-appreciated.

O'Toole, who died on Sunday aged 81, was third choice for the Lawrence role, after Marlon Brando and Albert Finney. He was 29 years old when he made the film, 30 when it was released in Britain for Christmas 1962, and coming on for 31 when he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the role, and then lost it to Gregory Peck. (It was to be the first of eight near-misses.)

His body, rangy and expressive, filled the film's set-piece moments to their edges - the assault on Aqaba, the massacre at Tafas.

But the smaller moments stick in your mind just as keenly. In one scene we watch, spellbound, as Lawrence snuffs out a lit match between his thumb and forefinger without flinching, and then wince as a younger officer looks at him sceptically, tries to mimic him and burns his fingers.

"What's the trick," another soldier asks, bemused. Lawrence's reply: "The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts."

In other words, there is no trick: an uncomforting maxim that O'Toole's career would go on to bear out. After Lawrence of Arabia came starring roles in Becket, in which he played King Henry II alongside Richard Burton, and Lord Jim, based on the Joseph Conrad novel, which found little favour with critics or audiences.

Something unreflective was needed. Enter a young comedian called Woody Allen, who needed a long, blond streak of English sex-appeal to play the straight(ish) man in What's New Pussycat?, which cemented his reputation.

But the character that lodged in cinemagoers' minds was O'Toole himself: the hellraiser, the whisky-sinker, the garrulous, charm-drizzled sot. Like Oliver Reed, Burton and Richard Harris, he was one of Hollywood's great drinkers, and his passing brings that notorious era to a close.

Other performances to cherish: Henry II (again) in The Lion in Winter , the titular teacher in Goodbye, Mr Chips , a mad baronet in The Ruling Class , a crazed film director in The Stunt Man and an actor in the 2006 drama Venus .

One of my own favourites was the Pixar animation Ratatouille, in which he played Anton Ego, a seemingly unpleasable food critic.

"The world is often unkind to new talent; new creations," he says in the film's closing scenes. "The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new: an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source."

I'll admit I shed a tear when I first heard O'Toole speak those lines, and yet the words are delivered with such simplicity you can scarcely detect a scrap of the actor's craft in them. What's the trick? Acknowledging each emotion without sinking into it. Navigating the script like a seasoned traveller. And above all, not minding that it hurts.