O'Toole, the star of classics such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter and The Ruling Class, has received critical plaudits for his latest film, Venus, in which he plays an ageing thespian besotted with a young visitor, played by newcomer Jodie Whittaker.

Three years ago the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to give the Irish actor a lifetime Oscar. Although "enchanted", he asked them to defer it until he was past 80, adding: "I am still in the game and may still win the lovely bugger outright."

O'Toole's failure to win after so many nominations, a record shared with his old drinking buddy Richard Burton, remains as embarrassing to the academy as its failure to hand the trophy to directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese.

"We shall be getting out the old codger vote for Peter this time around," said a Disney executive last week. "Peter does not star in many films these days, but everyone remembers him as a glorious roaring boy who has been criminally overlooked. It's time to put that right."

Fine acting is not enough. Disney-owned Miramax, which will release Venus in the United States two weeks before the Oscar nomination deadline at the end of December, is planning "something special" to reach a third of the 6,000 Oscar voters estimated to be of pensionable age.

This will include screenings at the Motion Picture Country House in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, an academy-financed retirement home where dozens of O'Toole's contemporaries live.

O'Toole, a notorious womaniser when in his prime, has praised the "wonderful role" he plays in Venus. "Four years ago I said out loud I wished someone would be brave enough to write such a politically incorrect role for me, about an older man and a younger woman, because I know such things happen all the time. It makes such a change from being the token geriatric," he said.

O'Toole remains determined to grow old in his own inimitable style. "The only exercise I get is following the coffins of friends who exercised," he said recently.