Peter O'Toole: The Definitive Biography by Robert Sellers

Author:Robert Sellers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

In the last few years O’Toole had been back many times to Clifden, sometimes with Siân and the kids, sometimes alone. Always he would make the effort to see Billy Foyle, and sometimes he’d bring a little showbiz sparkle to the town. Foyle will never forget one occasion , when O’Toole arrived for lunch at the little restaurant he owned on the high street with Federico Fellini in tow and an entourage of ten of the most beautiful women anyone had ever seen. People in the town still talk about it.

As he’d promised, Foyle had been looking for a perfect piece of land for O’Toole to build on and had finally found the ideal spot, up on the picturesque Sky Road a few miles outside Clifden. It was totally isolated and barren, looking out over the Atlantic. ‘ And really he shouldn’t have got planning permission,’ confesses Foyle. ‘But I knew some of the lads in the planning office, this was how things were done back in those days, I had a few words with them and greased their palms so to speak and Peter had no problem.’

Over the next couple of years the house slowly began to take shape, with both O’Toole and Siân often working alongside the builders, digging ditches for the sewage or planting trees, flowers and vegetables in the garden, which due to the battering they received from the harsh wind off the Atlantic had repeatedly to be replaced. ‘ Plants must be sturdy to survive here,’ O’Toole pointed out. ‘Just like the people.’ Until it was completed the family all crammed into a three-roomed cottage which had no phone or television and just a Calor-gas stove to cook on, while the entourage (nanny, chauffeur, tutor and minder) were installed in the best hotel in Clifden with all the mod cons. ‘ They had swimming pools and tennis courts,’ remembered Kate. ‘We had brown water from the well and warm milk from the cow. We loved it.’

When it was completed the house was very much an extension of its owner. ‘ There was a coldness about it, I thought,’ says Billy Foyle. Very few people really got to know who Peter O’Toole was. ‘With Peter,’ says Billy, ‘you never really got inside of his head. He wouldn’t come out and say, “Billy, I feel bloody awful,” or “This marriage has gone on the blink.” He would never confide in me. I know he trusted me, but he would never confide in me about his personal life.’ It was the same with Johnnie Planco, who represented him in America for over thirty years. ‘ Peter rarely talked about his personal life beyond his children.’

O’Toole’s Irish bolt hole was the complete antithesis of Guyon House, which was warm and inviting. And it is no coincidence that Siân was responsible for buying and furnishing their Hampstead home, while O’Toole took the lion’s share of the decision-making at the Clifden property. Inside it was basic and about as far removed from a film star’s house as it was possible to get.

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