Peter O'Toole raised hell -- and standards

• The actor was nominated for a record eight best acting Oscars
• His last film%2C %27Katherine of Alexandria%2C%27 will be released in 2014
• A stomach ailment nearly killed him in the 1970s

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences told Peter O'Toole that he'd be receiving an honorary Oscar for a body of work that included seven best actor nominations and no wins, he surprised officials with his response.

While he would eventually accept the honor, he politely reminded academy members that he was "still in the game" and that he'd rather "win the bugger outright."

He never would. But O'Toole, 81, who died Saturday in a London hospital following a long illness, would earn an eighth nomination and cement his legend as yeoman actor, Oscar bridesmaid and poster boy for the Hollywood hell-raiser.

Over a half-century of films, O'Toole would inspire a legion of young actors, earn a record number of Oscar nominations without a win — and remain a reformed but unrepentant bad boy to the end. His unfettered observations of the industry (he once called Troy co-star Brad Pitt "a fair actor, a delightful young man") underscored O'Toole's view of acting as a profession, not a path to celebrity.

"I earn my living," he told USA TODAY in 2007. "I put steam on the table by being an actor. That is how I live. The longer I live, the more expensive it becomes. So I do my work. And I can't be immensely picky. How many beautiful scripts come in one's lifetime? I have had more than anybody, practically."

Indeed, his good fortune began in 1962, when the blond, 6-foot-2 actor earned the attention of director David Lean, who chose him to play T.E. Lawrence, the real-life British Army officer who became legend in Lawrence of Arabia after Albert Finney and Marlon Brando dropped out.

His rise to stardom was immediate. The film earned seven Oscar wins, including best picture and best director.

O'Toole's youthful looks and anti-authoritarian swagger made him an instant heartthrob. British playwright Noel Coward famously quipped, after seeing O'Toole traversing the desert in flowing robes: "If you'd been any prettier, it would have been Florence of Arabia."

Though he wouldn't win the statuette, O'Toole would set the course for another generation of actors. Tom Cruise once told USA TODAY that O'Toole was his role model. "I remember seeing Lawrence of Arabia, one of my first movies, and seeing (O'Toole) going through that vast desert, and I knew I wanted to be an actor."

For O'Toole, high-profile parts would follow. He earned Oscar nominations as Henry II in 1968's The Lion in Winter and Arthur Chipping in Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

But his personal life took a downturn in the 1970s as he struggled with alcohol and ended his 20-year marriage to the revered Welsh actress Sian Phillips. He nearly died after a stomach ailment forced the removal of parts of his intestines.

Still, O'Toole would rebound, shining in Oscar-nominated turns such as The Stunt Man, playing a tough-minded filmmaker not unlike Arabia director Lean. In My Favorite Year, he earned another nomination as a washed-up matinee idol. Both, like his other major roles, earned him Oscar nominations. In his last film, Katherine of Alexandria, he plays Cornelius Gallus, a palace orator. The film is set for release in 2014.

A diehard rugby and Shakespeare fan (he once confessed to knowing all of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets by heart), O'Toole never seemed to take himself too seriously. He once strode into an interview with David Letterman on a camel. Citing personal and political reasons, he declined a knighthood in 1987.

Even in his last Oscar-nominated turn in 2006's Venus, as an aging actor attracted to his friend's young great-niece, O'Toole relished extreme roles.

"For me," he once said, "life has either been a wake or a wedding."