[12] Plummer's parents separated shortly after his birth, and he was brought up mainly by his mother in the Abbott family home in Senneville, Quebec, on the western tip of the Island of Montreal.

Whittaker was also amateur stage director of the Montreal Repertory theatre, and he cast Plummer at age 18 as Oedipus in Jean Cocteau's La Machine infernale.

[21][22][23] Plummer made his professional acting debut in 1948 with Ottawa's Stage Society after which he performed roles as an apprentice artist with the Montreal Repertory Theatre alongside fellow apprenticing actor William Shatner.

[24] Edward Everett Horton hired Plummer to appear as Gerard in the 1953 road show production of André Roussin's Nina,[25] a role originated on Broadway by David Niven in 1951.

[26] Plummer made his Broadway debut in January 1953 in the Diana Morgan play The Starcross Story, a show that closed on opening night after a plagiarism lawsuit shut down the production.

[30] His American television debut was also in 1953 on a Studio One episode entitled "The Gathering Night", as an artist who finds success just as his eyesight begins to fail him.

He also appeared throughout the 1950s on both dramatic showcase programs like The Alcoa Hour, General Electric Theater, Kraft Television Theatre, and Omnibus and episodic series.

In 1956, he appeared with Jason Robards and Constance Ford in an episode entitled "A Thief There Was" of CBS's anthology series Appointment with Adventure.

[34] Plummer starred in the television adaptations of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story (1959),[35] George Bernard Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1960), Jean Anouilh's Time Remembered (playing the role of Prince Albert originated by Richard Burton on Broadway),[36] and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1962).

He made his London debut on June 11, 1961, playing King Henry II in Jean Anouilh's Becket with the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre, directed by Peter Hall.

He appeared in the title role in a 1963 production of Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,[29] which did not succeed, but he had a great success in Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun, playing conquistador Francisco Pizarro to David Carradine's Atahuallpa.

[34] In 1963, he was the subject of a short National Film Board of Canada documentary, 30 Minutes, Mister Plummer, directed by Anne Claire Poirier.

[53] He was in Inside Daisy Clover (1965), then played World War Two agent Eddie Chapman in Triple Cross (1966), and had a supporting role as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in The Night of the Generals (1967).

The plays he appeared in were Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38 directed by Laurence Olivier;[56] Georg Büchner's Danton's Death (director Jonathan Miller); Adrian Mitchell's Tyger; Luigi Pirandello's The Rules of the Game; and Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night at the New Theatre in London.

[62] That same year, he starred in the five-time Emmy Award-winning television series The Thorn Birds, alongside Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Simmons.

Plummer also did some voice work, such as his role of Henri the pigeon in An American Tail (1986) and the villainous Grand Duke of Owls in Rock-a-Doodle (1991), both directed by Don Bluth.

New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich wrote in his original review, "Mr. Plummer, a sensational actor in peak form, has made something crushing out of Shakespeare's archvillain.

"[64] For his performance he received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination losing to Roger Rees in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

Variety film critic Jeremy Gerard praised Plummer's performance while critiquing Robards by writing, "They're a remarkable pair to watch wrangling with Pinter's elliptical, often uncrackable script.

[32] That same year he co-starred in American Tragedy as F. Lee Bailey (for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination),[1] and appeared in TV movie Four Minutes, Miracle Planet, and a documentary by Ric Burns about Eugene O'Neill.

[79] He returned to the stage at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in August 2008 in a critically acclaimed performance as Julius Caesar in George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra directed by Tony Award winner Des McAnuff;[80] this production was videotaped and shown in high definition in Canadian cinemas on January 31, 2009 (with an encore presentation on February 23, 2009) and broadcast on April 4, 2009, on Bravo!

[81] In 2009 and 2010, Plummer starred in two stage to screen adaptations of the Stratford Festival productions of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra and William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

[86] That same year, Plummer appeared in David Fincher's English-language film adaptation of Stieg Larsson's book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara and Stellan Skarsgård.

Earlier that year, Plummer received his second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Mike Mills' independent comedy drama film Beginners (2011) starring Ewan McGregor and Mélanie Laurent.

In November 2017, Plummer, who was director Ridley Scott's original choice to play J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World,[91] was cast to replace Kevin Spacey in the then-already completed film.

TriStar Pictures intended to meet that release date in spite of the tight re-shooting and editing schedule; it was eventually pushed back to December 25.

He performed it and other works with the New York Philharmonic and symphony orchestras of London, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax.

Prior to their marriage they were involved in a major car crash outside Buckingham Palace after leaving The Establishment club in Soho (owned by comedian-actor Peter Cook).

I treasure the memories of our work together and all the humour and fun we shared through the years.Others who paid tribute to Plummer included Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Katherine Langford, Rian Johnson, Chris Evans and Don Johnson (who all collaborated with him on Knives Out), as well as William Shatner, Anne Hathaway, Elijah Wood, Vera Farmiga, Ed Asner (his costar in Up who also died in 2021), Ridley Scott, Spike Lee, Simon Pegg, Antonio Banderas, Leonard Maltin, Daniel Dae Kim, George Takei, Russell Crowe (his costar in The Insider and A Beautiful Mind), Bruce Greenwood and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

[113][114][115][116] Lou Pitt, Plummer's manager of 46 years, said in a statement: Chris was an extraordinary man who deeply loved and respected his profession with great old fashion manners, self-deprecating humor and the music of words.