Albert Finney, one of the leading actors of the postwar period, has died after a short illness. He was 82. The robust British performer began as a stage actor before transitioning to film. With his gravely voice and rumbling stare he brought an intense realism to his work, rising to fame in such 1960s classics
Albert Finney, one of the leading actors of the postwar period, has died after a short illness. He was 82.
The robust British performer began as a stage actor before transitioning to film. With his gravely voice and rumbling stare he brought an intense realism to his work, rising to fame in such 1960s classics as “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” and “ Tom Jones.” He later memorably played Agatha Christie’s legendary sleuth Hercule Poirot in “ Murder on the Orient Express ” and impressed critics and audiences with towering performances in “ The Dresser ” and “Under the Volcano.” Finney was nominated for five Oscars but never won the prize.
In 1963, Finney played the foundling hero in Tony Richardson’s Oscar best picture winner “ Tom Jones .” The role made Finney an international movie star and earned him the first of four best actor Oscar nominations. A year earlier, Finney had turned down the title role in “Lawrence of Arabia” because he didn’t want to commit to a multi-picture deal and, he said, stardom frightened him.
Along with his contemporaries Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, and Richard Harris, Finney helped define a period where the movie business’s cultural axis shifted in the direction of the U. K. He was part of a new wave of British talent that offered an enticing brand of hell-raising sex appeal. It was a movement that shook off the stuffier, stentorian approach to drama popularized by Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud and replaced it with something that was distinctly blue collar.
Finney’s first major screen role was as Arthur Seaton, a machinist in 1960’s Karel Reisz-helmed “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.” Widely considered the most convincing of the British “angry young men” dramas, the film was seen as one of the first authentic portraits of working-class youth. With his restless charm and undeniable charisma, Finney seemed to be speaking for a generation when his character says: “All I’m out for is a good time. The rest is propaganda.”
Finney’s own rebelliousness would surface time and again throughout his long career. “I hate being committed — to a girl, or a film producer, or to being a certain kind of bigscreen image,” Finney told the Evening Standard at the time he declined the Lawrence role.
Finney, who began his career in the theater, made his screen debut in a small role as Olivier’s son in 1960’s “The Entertainer.” A few years later, Finney would reject Olivier’s offer to succeed him as head of Britain’s National Theater.
In a 1956 review of a now-forgotten play, “The Face of Love,” British critic Kenneth Tynan called Finney “a smoldering young Spencer Tracy…here is an actor who will soon disturb the dreams of Burton and Scofield.
