Albert Finney

Albert Finney, Jr. (born May 9, 1936) is a five-time Academy Award-nominated English actor. Hailed as a “second Olivier” as a young stage actor in the late 1950s, Finney rose to film star fame in the early 1960s. Although his early fame was later tempered by long absences from major motion pictures, he continues to earn awards and acclaim in a varied five decade career on stage, films, and television.

Biography

Personal life

Finney was born in Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire, England to Alice (Hobson) and Albert Finney, Sr., a bookmaker. He attended and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Finney had one son in 1990 with his wife of two years, . His son, Declan Finney, currently studies at Colchester Sixth Form College and lives with his mother.

Career

Finney's first film was The Entertainer (1960), but his breakthrough came with his portrayal of a hedonistic, disillusioned factory worker in Karel Reisz's film of Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. This led to a series of “angry young man” roles in kitchen sink dramas, before he starred in the Academy Award winning 1963 film Tom Jones, for which he turned down the role of T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia.

Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot

After he starred in and directed Charlie Bubbles in 1968, his film appearances became less frequent. One of his more high profile later roles was as Agatha Christie's Belgian master detective Hercule Poirot in the 1974 film Murder On The Orient Express. Finney was so effective in the role that he complained that it typecast him for a number of years. “People really do think I am 300 pounds with a French accent” he said. Finney made several television productions for the BBC in the 1990s, including The Green Man (1990), based on a story by Kingsley Amis, the acclaimed drama A Rather English Marriage (1998) (with Tom Courtenay), and the lead role in Dennis Potter's final two plays Karaoke and Cold Lazarus in 1996 and 1997. In the latter he played a frozen, disembodied head. Finney also made an appearance at Roger Waters' The Wall Concert in Berlin, where he played “The Judge” during the performance of “The Trial (song).” In 2002, he played Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm, for which he won BAFTA and Emmy awards as Best Actor. Finney also had a voice-over role as Finnis Everglot in Tim Burton's 2005 film Corpse Bride.

He also played the leading role in the television series My Uncle Silas, about a Cornish country gentleman looking after his great-nephew. The series ran from 2000 until 2002, then again for a mini-series in 2003.

Awards and nominations

Albert Finney turned down the offer of a CBE in 1980 and a knighthood in 2000.

He has been nominated for the Best Actor Oscar four times, for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), and Under the Volcano (1984). He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Erin Brockovich (2000). London based S&M Cafes has launched a petition aiming to honour Albert Finney , the veteran British actor who was 71 in May 2007. The petition will be submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Summer 2007 requesting that Finney is considered for a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award. Despite his commercial and critical success on the big screen he has never won an Oscar.

Finney received a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles in 1961 for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). He was also nominated for Best British Actor for the same film. Despite being nominated 15 more times, he finally won for The Gathering Storm. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance in the HBO telefilm The Image (1990), and won an Emmy, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Mini-Series or TV Film, for his performance as Winston Churchill in HBO's The Gathering Storm in 2002.

He has received Golden Globe nominations for his performances in…

• Big Fish
• Erin Brockovich
• Under the Volcano
• The Dresser
• Tom Jones (he received two nominations, winning one below)

Additionally, he has won Golden Globes for The Gathering Storm, Scrooge, and for Tom Jones.

• For The Gathering Storm, he won “Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television” for 2003.
• For his role in Scrooge, his portrayal of the both the old miser and the young Ebenezer Scrooge earned him “The Best Motion Picture Actor in a Musical/Comedy” for 1971.
• For Tom Jones, he shared a win as “Most Promising Newcomer - Male” for 1964.

In 1971 he was nominated for a Golden Laurel for his work on Scrooge. For his work on Tom Jones, he was the 3rd Place Winner for the “Top Male Comedy Performance” for 1964. He was honoured by the as Best Actor for Under the Volcano (which he tied with F. Murray Abraham for Amadeus), the National Board of Review for Best Actor in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and the for Best Actor in Tom Jones.

Finney has also received three nominations from the Screen Actors' Guild Awards, being nominated for his performance in The Gathering Storm, winning for his performances in Erin Brockovich, and as a member of the acting ensemble in the film Traffic. He won the Silver Berlin Bear award for Best Actor for The Dresser at the 1984 Berlin International Film Festival.

Finney been nominated for two Tony Awards for his performances in the plays, “Luther” and “Joe Egg”. He won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for Tom Jones at the Venice Film Festival.

Filmography

References