Albert Finney, 1936-2019

Albert Finney in Tom Jones (1963)

The death has been announced of actor Albert Finney, a multiple Oscar nominee and stage actor whose career spanned over a half century.

Finney's first movie was an auspicious debut, opposite Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer, and it was followed by a noticeable starring role in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning as the caddish man who thinks only about himself until he knocks up his girlfriend.


Finney (r.) and Rachel Roberts in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

It was only a few more years until his first Oscar nomination, for playing the title role in the delightful adaptation of Tom Jones. (Sadly, that movie was literally just on TCM, like half an hour after I found out Finney had died.) Elsewhere in the 60s there was a remake of Night Must Fall, as well as starring opposite Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road.


Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Finney's second Oscar nomination came for playing Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot in the all-star 1974 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. (You didn't think he'd play Miss Marple, did you?) Further nominations came for The Dresser, which I have to admit I have not seen, and the difficult Under the Volcano, in which Finney plays an alcoholic British diplomat in 1930s Mexico. His final nomination came as a supporting actor, in 2000's Erin Brockovich.

Although you just missed his performance in Tom Jones, if you have any of the premium channels you'll have an opportunity to watch some of his other performances. Annie, in which he played not the orphan but Daddy Warbucks, is going to be on StarzEncore Family at 8:15 AM Sunday, while Erin Brockovich is going to be on the regular Starz channel a bunch of times, starting at 6:45 PM tonight, or three hours later if you only have the west coast feed.