The son of a Lancashire bookmaker, Albert Finney came to motion pictures via the theatre. Actor
He won an Olivier award, the U.K. equivalent of the Tony, for “Orphans” and also appeared in Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” and in the original London production of Yasmina Reza’s “Art.” Finney would reprise his role in “Orphans” in Alan J. Pakula’s 1987 film adaptation.In his memoir “The Long-Distance Runner,” director Tony Richardson called “Luther” his most successful collaboration with Finney. Survivors include Finney’s third wife Pene Delmage, whom he married in 2006; and son Simon Finney, a film technician from his marriage to Wenham, as well as two grandchildren. The film itself was an overstuffed bore and something of a commercial disappointment.In 1968, Finney directed and acted in “Charlie Bubbles,” playing a famous married writer from a working-class background who has an affair. Albert Finney is a retired English actor. “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.”As his film career unfolded, Finney began portraying a variety of larger-than-life characters.
Finney was mostly known for his role in Tom Jones, for his role as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express and for his role as Edward Bloom in Big Fish.He won a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, an Emmy Award, and a BAFTA Award. Albert the Irresistible: How Albert Finney, the greatest actor of his generation who died aged 82, seduced a roll call of Hollywood's most bewitching beauties Soundtrack 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. Pauline Kael called Finney’s hilarious and touching performance “juicy” and cited his “thundering voice and wonderful false humility.” It brought the actor his third best actor Oscar nomination.The next year Finney gave one of his most controlled performances as the alcoholic consul in John Huston’s adaptation of Malcolm Lowry’s “Under the Volcano.” “His words come out with a peculiar intensity of focus,” critic Roger Ebert wrote, “pulled out of the small hidden core of sobriety deep inside his confusion.” The part earned Finney a fourth Oscar nom as best actor.