Альберт Финни: Жизнь и карьера актера

English actor (1936–2019)

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. 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.

Finney was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of Albert Finney, a bookmaker, and Alice (née Hobson).

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. 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. 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. 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. Finney then did Billy Liar (1960) on stage and for British television. 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. 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. 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.

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. Finney received 10% of the movie's earnings, which made him more than $1 million. Finney followed this with a small part in ensemble war movie The Victors (1963), which was not a success. He then made his Broadway debut in Luther in 1963. When that run ended he decided to take a year off and sail around the world. "People told me to cash in on my success while I was hot," he later said. "I'd been acting for about eight years and had only had one vacation  Captain Cook had been a hero of mine when I was a kid, and I thought it would be exciting to go to some of the places in the Pacific where he'd been." Finney undertook a season of plays at the Royal National Theatre, including Miss Julie by August Strindberg in 1965. Memorial also produced some in which Finney did not appear, such as Spring and Port Wine and The Burgular. Memorial then made Charlie Bubbles (1968), which Finney featured in and also directed. Liza Minnelli made her feature debut in the movie. Finney later called it "the most intense sense of creation I've ever had." Memorial Productions stopped producing and Finney emphasized acting. "It was OK at first," he later said, "but in the end it was sitting in an office, pitching ideas to Hollywood and waiting for the phone to ring." Finney played Agatha Christie's Belgian master detective Hercule Poirot in the movie Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Finney became so well known for 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. He received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He announced he intended to direct a movie, The Girl in Melanie Klein, for Memorial, but it was not made. Finney decided to take time off from features and focus on stage acting, doing classics at the National Theatre in London. "I felt that it needed commitment," he later said. "When you're making movies all the time, you stop breathing. You literally don't breathe in the same way that you do when you're playing the classics. When you have to deliver those long, complex speeches on stage, you can't heave your shoulders after every sentence. The set of muscles required for that kind of acting need to be trained. I really wanted to try and do justice to my own potential in the parts. I didn't want to be a movie actor just dropping in, doing Hamlet and taking off again. I wanted to feel part of the company." Finney was at the National for more than three years during which he played in Hamlet, Macbeth, Tamburlaine, and plays by Anton Chekhov.

Finney had not played a major role in a feature movie in six years, and started to think about resuming work with cinema. The last two successful movies he had made were Scrooge and Orient Express in which he was heavily disguised. "Most Americans probably think I weigh 300 pounds, have black hair and talk with a French accent like Hercule Poirot," said Finney. "So I thought they should have a look at me while I was still almost a juvenile and kind of cute." He received excellent reviews for his performance in the drama Shoot the Moon (1982). Finney said the role "required personal acting; I had to dig into myself. When you have to expose yourself and use your own vulnerability, you can get a little near the edge." Huston cast Finney in the lead role of Under the Volcano (1984), which earned both men great acclaim, including another Best Actor Oscar nomination for Finney. Finney played the lead role of Sydney Kentridge in The Biko Inquest, a 1984 dramatisation of the inquest into the death of Steve Biko which was filmed for television after a London run. Finney performed on stage in Orphans in 1986, then did the movie version, directed by Alan J. Pakula. He had the lead in a television miniseries, The Endless Game (1989), written and directed by Bryan Forbes. Finney began the 1990s with the lead role in a film for HBO, The Image (1990). He received great acclaim playing the gangster boss in Miller's Crossing (1990), replacing Trey Wilson shortly before filming. Finney made an appearance at Roger Waters' The Wall – Live in Berlin (1990), where he played "The Judge" during the performance of "The Trial". Finney featured in the BBC TV serial The Green Man, based on the Kingsley Amis novel. He followed it with The Playboys (1992) for Gillies MacKinnon; Rich in Love (1993) for Bruce Beresford; The Browning Version (1994) for Mike Figgis; A Man of No Importance (1994), for Suri Krishnamma; and The Run of the Country (1995) for Peter Yates. In 1994, Finney played a gay bus conductor in early 1960s Dublin in A Man of No Importance. He had the main role in Dennis Potter's final two plays, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (both 1996). In the latter he played a frozen, disembodied head. Finney did Nostromo (1997) for television, and Washington Square (1997) for Agnieszka Holland then made A Rather English Marriage (1998) with Tom Courtenay. He had supporting roles in Breakfast of Champions (1999) and Simpatico (1999).

Finney had his biggest success in several years with Erin Brockovich (2000), alongside Julia Roberts for Steven Soderbergh. His portrayal of real life California lawyer Edward L. Masry earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, his fifth and final Oscar nomination. Finney had a cameo in Soderbergh's Traffic (2000) and played Ernest Hemingway in Hemingway, the Hunter of Death (2001) for TV. He had the main role in Delivering Milo (2001) and in 2002 his critically acclaimed portrayal of Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm won him British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), Emmy and Golden Globe awards as Best Actor. He also played the title role of the television series My Uncle Silas, based on the short stories by H. E. Bates, about a roguish but lovable poacher cum farm labourer looking after his great nephew. The show played for two series broadcast in 2001 and 2003. Finney had a major role in Big Fish (2003) directed by Tim Burton, and did another cameo for Soderbergh in Ocean's Twelve (2004). He sang in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005) and the film of Aspects of Love (2005). Finney was reunited with Ridley Scott in A Good Year (2006). He had support roles in Amazing Grace (2006), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). His final movie role was in Skyfall (2012). A lifelong supporter of Manchester United Football Club, Finney narrated the documentary Munich, about the air crash that killed most of the Busby Babes in 1958, which was shown on United's TV channel MUTV in February 2008.

In 1957 Finney married actress Ann Jane Wenham Figgins ("Jane Wenham"); they had a son, 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. 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. Finney died of a chest infection at the Royal Marsden Hospital on 7 February 2019; he was 82.

Other awards include: a Golden Laurel for his work on Scrooge (1970) and for his work on Tom Jones, for which he was the 3rd Place Winner for the "Top Male Comedy Performance" for 1964. He was honoured by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association as Best Actor for Under the Volcano (which he tied with F. Murray Abraham for Amadeus), the National Board of Review Best Actor award for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and the New York Film Critics Circle Best Actor award for Tom Jones. Finney won two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role, for Erin Brockovich, and as a member of the acting ensemble in the film Traffic. He was also nominated for The Gathering Storm, for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries, but did not win. He won the Silver Berlin Bear award for Best Actor, for The Dresser, at the 34th Berlin International Film Festival in 1984. He won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, for Tom Jones, at the Venice Film Festival.