O'Toole turns down Honorary oscar

Peter O’Toole has turned down the offer of an honorary Oscar because he still hopes to win the real thing.

The actor, who has been nominated for seven Academy Awards without success, said he was “enchanted” by the gesture, but asked for it to be deferred for a decade.

“Since I’m still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright, would the Academy please defer the honour until I am 80?” he said in hand-written letter to organisers.

But Academy president Frank Pierson said it was a one-off opportunity.

“We will have the Oscar for him and if he cares to pick it up, that would be great,” he told Variety.

He said the Academy was “bemused and sorry” by O’Toole’s stance.

Mr Pierson earlier sent a letter to the 70-year-old actor explaining that the Academy board had “unanimously and enthusiastically” voted to give him the honorary award.

“As to being ’in the game,’ nobody ever thought you were out of it,” he wrote.

“The award is for achievement and contribution to the art of the motion picture, not for retirement.”

He said Paul Newman and Henry Fonda had both won competitive Oscars after receiving honorary awards.

Only Marlon Brando and George C. Scott have refused an Oscar, and no honorary winner has turned one down.

O’Toole has been nominated seven times in the lead actor category but has never won. His last nomination was for My Favourite Year in 1982.

Academy executive director Bruce Davis said there will be a statuette at the March 23 ceremony just in case.

If O’Toole decides not to attend, it will go into the Academy’s vault waiting for when he is ready to pick it up.