Finney’s fine legacy doesn’t include Oscar
Albert Finney, a revered British actor who found worldwide acclaim in 1963 as the raffish 18th-century roustabout Tom Jones, and who carved an independent path as a stage actor and in films as Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot, died Thursday at a London hospital. He was 82.
Finney’s family said Friday that he “passed away peacefully after a short illness with those closest to him by his side.” He died at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, a cancer treatment center, were he had a chest infection. He had been treated several years earlier for kidney cancer.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Finney appeared in gritty, realistic roles on stage during Britain’s “angry young men” era of the theater and film. He vaulted to stardom in the title role of the film “Tom Jones.” Handsome and roguish, Finney stepped into his role as a highspirited, adventurous would-be country squire with gusto. He eagerly fell into the arms of women and exuded a powerful charm and sex appeal.
“Tom Jones” won four Oscars, although Finney did not win one. He was nominated three more times for best actor — in “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974), “The Dresser” (1983) and “Under the Volcano” (1984) — and once for supporting actor, opposite Julia Roberts in “Erin Brockovich” (2000), without winning.
He was sometimes called the greatest actor never to win an Oscar. He also was well-known for skipping the awards ceremonies.
“It seems silly to go over there and beg for an award,” he said in 2012. Finney
The son of a bookmaker, Finney grew up in northern England on the outskirts of Manchester. He took to the stage at an early age, doing a number of school plays and — despite his lack of connections and his working-class roots — earning a place at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
It wasn’t long before some critics were hailing him as “the next Laurence Olivier.”
He received a percentage of the profits from “Tom Jones,” which earned him a fortune and enabled him to resist the commercial lures of Hollywood. Instead, he practiced his craft on the London stage, excelling both in Shakespeare’s plays and in more contemporary offerings, while choosing his film roles with care. He played Scrooge in a 1970 film of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Daddy Warbucks in the 1982 screen version of “Annie,” Pope John Paul II in a 1984 TV movie and Winston Churchill in another television production, “The Gathering Storm” (2002), for which he received an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe.
Other film roles included as an Irish mobster in “Miller’s Crossing” and as a secretive intelligence operative in two of the Jason Bourne films.
In one of his final roles, as the gruff Scotsman Kincade in “Skyfall,” he shared screen time with Daniel Craig as James Bond and Judi Dench as M, turning the film’s final scenes into a master class of character acting.
“The world has lost a giant,” Craig said.
A noted bon vivant, Finney was married three times and romantically linked to many other glamorous women. He is survived by his third wife, Pene Delmage, son Simon and two grandchildren.