Albert Finney (born May 9, 1936 in Salford, Lancashire, England) is a five-time Academy Award nominated British actor. He has received several nominations and awards within the entertainment industry. In the early years of his career he was hailed as a "A second Olivier".
His first film was The Entertainer (1960), but his real 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.
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 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 Very English Marriage (1998) (with Tom Courtenay), and the lead role in Dennis Potter's final two plays: Karaoke and Cold Lazarus in 1996-1997. In the latter he played a frozen, disembodied head. In 2002, he played Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm, for which he won BAFTA and Emmy awards as Best Actor.
He also played the leading role in the television series My Uncle Silas, about a Cornish country gentleman looking after his grand-nephew. The series ran from 2000 until 2002, then again for a mini-series in 2003.
Additionally, he has won Golden Globes for The Gathering Storm, Scrooge, and for Tom Jones.
1936 births | Living people | English film actors | English television actors | English stage actors | English voice actors | British film actors | British stage actors | British television actors | British film directors | British film producers | People of Irish descent in Great Britain | Best Actor Academy Award nominees | Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominees | Salfordians
Albert Finney | Albert Finney | Albert Finney | Albert Finney | אלברט פיני | Albert Finney | Albert Finney
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