A dynamic, often explosive, stage and screen star, Albert Finney trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where his classmates included Alan Bates and Peter O'Toole. Beginning his stage career with the Birmingham Repertory Company, he made his London debut in the company's production of George Bernard Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" in 1956. Two years later, he earned critical acclaim opposite Charles Laughton in a West End production of "The Party", after which he joined the famed Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon for their 100th anniversary season, performing Cassio in "Othello" (directed by Tony Richardson with Paul Robeson in the lead), reteaming with Laughton for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (as Lysander) and understudying Laurence Olivier's "Coriolanus", among his assignments. "[Olivier] was at the peak of his powers, and each night I watched him make this role his own. "He pushed the possibilities. He told me, 'Albert, that's what real imagination can do." Finney recalled to Cindy Pearlman of Chicago Sun-Times (March 13, 2000).
A small role as Olivier's son in Richardson's "The Entertainer" served as Finney's entree to films, and he also received excellent reviews for his stage turn in "The Lily-White Boys" (both 1960), though the show only had a short run. His triumphant performance on the London stage as "Billy Liar" raised his profile higher, and his portrayal of the dissatisfied, working-class anti-hero/seducer in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" (both also 1960), Karel Reisz's classic of British "angry young man" cinema (produced by Richardson), brought him worldwide acclaim. After quitting the starring role in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" after four days so as not to be tied to a long-term film contract, Finney cemented his film stardom as the rakish, startlingly handsome, picaresque hero "Tom Jones" (1963) in Richardson's lavish, bawdy hit, earning his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. That same year, the actor also took Broadway by storm in John Osborne's "Luther" (helmed by Richardson), before reteaming with Reisz for the director's remake of "Night Must Fall" (1964), on which Finney made his debut as producer.
In 1965, with actor Michael Medwin, Finney founded Memorial Enterprises Productions, responsible for several outstanding features including his own directorial debut, "Charlie Bubbles" (1967), and Lindsay Anderson's "If..." (1968) and "O Lucky Man!" (1973), as well as many plays, perhaps most notably Peter Nichols' "A Day in the Life of Joe Egg" (1968). He reinforced his reputation as a romantic leading man, much to his chagrin, opposite Audrey Hepburn as a bickering couple trying to save their happiness in Stanley Donen's perceptive "Two for the Road" (1967). With absolutely no interest in being a "personality" actor and disdainful of his pretty boy image, Finney took pictures for their fun value, hamming his way through the title role of "Scrooge" (1970), a handsome musicalization of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", and delivering a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a Humphrey Bogart wannabe in "Gumshoe" (1971), another offering from his production company. His "overreaction" to all the sex symbol nonsense prompted him to absolutely submerge himself in the role of Agatha Christie's famous sleuth Hercule Poirot for "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974), which garnered the barely recognizable actor his second Best Actor Oscar nod.
After "Murder on the Orient Express", Finney would appear in only one film over the next seven years, playing a small role in Ridley Scott's "The Duellists" (1977). He had directed several plays while associate artistic director of London's Royal Court Theatre from 1972-75. As a member of the National Theatre beginning in 1975, he concentrated exclusively on stage acting, portraying the title roles of "Hamlet", "Tamburlaine the Great", "Macbeth" and "Uncle Vanya", among his varied work. Finney returned to the screen with a flurry of pictures in the early 80s. The first few ("Loophole", Wolfen", "Looker" all 1981) were embarrassing, but he finally hit his stride in Alan Parker's harrowing portrait of divorce, "Shoot the Moon" (also 1981), giving a powerful, sexually-charged, rage-filled performance as a writer crazed with jealousy that his wife (Diane Keaton) and children seem to be getting along fine without him since his departure. After pocketing a nifty sum to play Daddy Warbucks in "Annie" (1982) for John Huston, he essayed the aging Donald Wolfit-like actor-manager to Tom Courtenay's "The Dresser" (1983), with both actors earning Best Actor Oscar nominations for their superb work.
Over the years, Finney has made a specialty of large, boozy, blustery men and was perhaps never better in this vein than as the gruelingly drunk diplomat of Huston's "Under the Volcano" (1984), adapted from Malcolm Lowry's autobiographical novel set in 1930s Mexico. Without overplaying the extremely difficult role, he imbued the self-destructive man with a tragic nobility, earning his fourth Best Actor Oscar nomination for an extraordinary performance requiring him onscreen almost the entire film. Finney reprised his stage role as a deceptive, drunken Chicago gangster in "Orphans" (1987), demonstrating his flair for dialects with an authentic South Side accent. Alcoholic and hallucinating in "The Green Man" (A&E, 1991), he also played a perpetually inebriated TV writer in two Dennis Potter-scripted miniseries "Karaoke" and "Cold Lazarus" (both 1996; aired in the USA on Bravo), and the sodden Dr Monygham in the lavish six-hour "Masterpiece Theatre" miniseries "Joseph Conrad's 'Nostromo'" (PBS, 1997).
Finny remains an actor of great courage, always worth watching. A charismatic Irish gang leader in the Coen brothers' "Miller's Crossing" (1990), he was also convincing as a tragic constable in a small Northern Irish border town in "The Playboys" (1992), a sexually repressed Irish bus conductor in "A Man of No Importance" (1994) and an Irish cop unable to express his emotions in "The Run of the Country" (1995). He dropped the brogue to make a fine, frumpish Southerner for Bruce Beresford's "Rich in Love" (1993), though it failed in its attempt to be another "Driving Miss Daisy". He reteamed twice with Courtenay, first in the London stage production of "Art" (1996) and later for the British drama "A Rather English Marriage" (aired on PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre" in 1999). Following his turn as the grizzled, eccentric writer Kilgore Trout in "Breakfast of Champions", Finney essayed a former racing commissioner in the film adaptation of Sam Shepard's "Simpatico" (both 1999). The latter was particularly well-suited to this breeder of horses and son of a bookie. He then found himself in Steven Soderbergh's commercial smash "Erin Brockovich" (2000), playing the skeptical, but open-minded California lawyer boss of superstar Julia Roberts' titular legal assistant whose interest in a cancer cluster case, gradually re-energized him for what becomes the case of his career. That same year, the actor had a cameo in the Soderbergh-directed "Traffic".
In 2001, Finney was cast as Ernest Hemingway in "Hemingway, The Hunter Of Death". In 2002, he took on the role of Winston Churchill in the HBO drama "The Gathering Storm," a love story offering an intimate look inside the marriage of Winston and Clementine Churchill (Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave) during a particularly troubled, though little-known, moment in their lives; the actor received intesnse critical praise, including an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television, a BAFTA TV award as Best Actor and a Broadcasting Press Guild Award. His role as the senior Ed Bloom, a man whose tendency toward fanciful self-mythologicizing puts him at odds with his disillusioned son (Billy Crudup) in director Tim Burton's "Big Fish" (2003), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.