Veteran actor Albert Finney, who found fame as one of Britain’s “angry young men” of the 1950s and 1960s and went on to star in films including Murder on the Orient Express and Erin Brockovich, has died at the age of 82, a family spokesman said on Friday.
Finney, who received four Oscar nominations for Best Actor and won three Golden Globes, “passed away peacefully after a short illness with those closest to him by his side,” the spokesman said.
A Shakespearean actor, he mixed his movie career with TV roles and acclaimed stage performances.
Photo: Reuters
He made his name in the gritty kitchen sink drama Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1960, becoming part of the wave of working-class actors and writers who revolutionized British film and TV at the time known as the “angry young men.”
He gave memorable portrayals of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, former British prime minister Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens’ miser Ebenezer Scrooge and pope John Paul II.
Finney’s more recent films included The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Bourne Legacy (2012) and the James Bond film Skyfall, out the same year.
Born in 1936, Finney, a bookmaker’s son, grew up in Manchester, northwest England, and graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1955.
He started out in Shakespeare plays before portraying the titular hero in the adventure-comedy Tom Jones, which made him a major film star.
He was honored by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) with the BAFTA Fellowship lifetime achievement award in 2001.
Finney racked up 13 BAFTA nominations — nine for film and four for TV productions.
In Skyfall, Finney played the Bond family’s gamekeeper Kincade.
“The world has lost a giant,” said Daniel Craig, who played Bond in the movie.
“He really was one of the greats: a brilliant, beautiful, big-hearted, life-loving delight of a man. He will be terribly missed,” Skyfall director Sam Mendes said.
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