This is why I love Peter O'Toole

He was born in Ireland, he played T.E. Lawrence (who is epic, and had a romantic young motorcycle death) and he's downright beautiful and of course charmingly British. IMDB lists as one of his trademarks "His blue eyes" and says under trivia that nuns in the Catholic school he attended beat his left-handedness out of him. Also in his IMDB profile is a quote from Noel Coward to O'Toole:  "If you'd been any prettier, it would have been Florence of Arabia."

The great thing about being an actor, or really any performer who gets filmed a lot, is that they can preserve themselves at their most youthful and attractive for generations and generations. Sure they can't escape aging like the rest of us mortals, but it's probably the closest thing to it. It's kind of like the way memory freezes people if you stop seeing them, or if you only knew them for a short time. Then if you happen to meet up with them years later, unless they haven't aged/developed at all, they occupy a totally new entry in your brain, as if they're a new person. This is kind of a weird example, but I remember when I helped direct a high school musical and I worked with the same kids intensively for two months straight, I realized I would probably never see these kids again, and they would be 16, 17 and 18 in my head FOREVER. And I would be a 22-year-old college senior in their heads forever.

I remember being shocked and a little depressed when, after I went on a Robert Plant kick and checked out a bunch of Led Zeppelin concert DVDs from the library and drooled over his shirtless/long haired/androgynous/microphone thrusting sex appeal, I google imaged Plant and found what looked like a shriveled troll who looked like he belonged under a bridge somewhere. And it's not much better for O'Toole. Or Ginger Rogers for that matter. I will allow Fred Astaire to be one example of someone who pretty much kept the same appeal until death, but that's because he was ALWAYS ugly-hot. Anyway, once I got past the disturbing fact that people, including my beloved film icons, don't always age well, I reveled in the beauty of film, photographs, memory, and frozen time. It's kind of how I feel about people in my past, who, for whatever reason our friendship or relationship or whatever didn't work out. Good memories are always there to be replayed, and that's kind of comforting.