Albert Finney
Albert Finney (9 May 1936 – 7 February 2019) was an English actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining fame for movie acting during the early 1960s, debuting with The Entertainer (1960), directed by Tony Richardson, who had previously directed him in theatre. He maintained a successful career in theatre, movies and television.
Albert Finney
9 May 1936
7 February 2019 (aged 82)
Actor
1956–2012
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Penelope Delmage(m. 2006)
1
He is known for his roles in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Tom Jones (1963), Two for the Road (1967), Scrooge (1970), Annie (1982), The Dresser (1983), Miller's Crossing (1990), A Man of No Importance (1994), Erin Brockovich (2000), Big Fish (2003), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), and the James Bond movie Skyfall (2012).
A recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Silver Bear and Volpi Cup awards, Finney was nominated for an Academy Award five times, as Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), and Under the Volcano (1984), and as Best Supporting Actor for Erin Brockovich (2000). He received several awards for his performance as Winston Churchill in the 2002 BBC–HBO television biographical movie The Gathering Storm.
Early life[edit]
Finney was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of Albert Finney, a bookmaker, and Alice (née Hobson).[1] He was educated at Tootal Drive Primary School, Salford Grammar School, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), from which he graduated in 1956.[2]
Career[edit]
1955–1962: Early career[edit]
While at RADA Finney made an early television appearance playing Mr Hardcastle in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. The BBC filmed and broadcast the RADA students' performances at the Vanbrugh Theatre in London on Friday 6 January 1956. Other members of the cast included Roy Kinnear and Richard Briers.[3][4] Finney graduated from RADA and became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Finney was offered a contract by the Rank Organisation but refused it to perform for the Birmingham Rep.[5] He was in a production of The Miser for Birmingham Rep, which was filmed for the BBC in 1956. Also for the BBC he appeared in The Claverdon Road Job (1957) and View Friendship and Marriage (1958). At Birmingham he played the title role of Henry V,[6] and in 1958, made his London stage debut in Jane Arden's The Party, directed by Charles Laughton, who featured in the production along with his wife, Elsa Lanchester. In 1959 Finney appeared at Stratford in the title role of Coriolanus, replacing an ill Laurence Olivier.[7] Finney guest featured for several episodes of Emergency-Ward 10 and was Lysander in a TV version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1959) directed by Peter Hall.
Finney's first movie appearance was in Tony Richardson's The Entertainer (1960), with Laurence Olivier. Finney and Alan Bates played Olivier's sons. He made his movie breakthrough in the same year with his portrayal of a disillusioned factory worker in Karel Reisz's movie version of Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), produced by Richardson. The movie was a success, being the third most popular movie in Britain that year. It earned more than half a million pounds of profit.[8] Finney then did Billy Liar (1960) on stage and for British television.[9] Finney had been chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in David Lean's production of Lawrence of Arabia after a successful and elaborate screen-test that took four days to shoot. However, Finney baulked at signing a multi-year contract for producer Sam Spiegel and chose not to accept the role.[10]
Finney created the title role in Luther, the 1961 play by John Osborne depicting the life of Martin Luther. He performed the role with the English Stage Company in London, Nottingham, Paris and New York.[11] The original West End run at the Phoenix ended in March 1962, after 239 performances there, when Finney had to quit the cast to fulfil a contractual obligation with a movie company.[12]
1963–1977[edit]
Finney featured in the Academy Award-winning 1963 movie Tom Jones, directed by Richardson and written by Osborne. Due to the success of Tom Jones, British exhibitors voted Finney the ninth most popular movie actor in 1963.[13] Finney received 10% of the movie's earnings, which made him more than $1 million.[14]
Personal life and death[edit]
In 1957 Finney married actress Ann Jane Wenham Figgins ("Jane Wenham"); they had a son,[1] Simon Finney, who works in the movie industry as a camera operator, and they were divorced during 1961.[45] In 1970, Finney married French actress Nicole Dreyfus ("Anouk Aimée"), a union that lasted eight years. In 2006, he married Penelope Delmage, a travel agent. They remained together until Finney's death.[1][45]
In May 2011, Finney disclosed that he had been receiving treatment for kidney cancer.[46] According to a 2012 interview, he had been diagnosed with the disease five years earlier and had had surgery, followed by six rounds of chemotherapy.[47] Finney died of a chest infection at the Royal Marsden Hospital on 7 February 2019; he was 82.[48][49][50]