Every great actor should be fortunate enough to become an internet meme in their 80s. Christopher Plummer, who died Friday at 91, experienced his own late-in-life social-media anointing at least
Every great actor should be fortunate enough to become an internet meme in their 80s. Christopher Plummer, who died Friday at 91, experienced his own late-in-life social-media anointing at least twice over.
There was the oft-recurring GIF of Capt. von Trapp in “The Sound of Music,” Plummer’s best-known and most inescapable role, tearing a Third Reich flag in two an image that has become handy Twitter shorthand for anti-neo-Nazi resistance over the past few years. That quick single shot is a marvelous bit of acting in itself: You can’t help but notice Plummer’s ramrod-straight military-man posture or the tight-lipped expression playing on his handsome face, a grimace teetering on the edge of a smile. And then, of course, there are those two swift, satisfying rips right down the middle of the swastika. (He really puts his arms into it.)