Albert Finney In Character

Albert Finney has been a film and stage star for over 40 years, ever since first taking the movie and theater worlds by storm in 1960 with his roles in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Billy Liar. Oscar-nominated performances followed in Tome Jones, Mueder on the Orient Express, The Dresser, and Under the Volcano. Now 66, Finney's star on both sides of the Atlantic is still rising as he matures into a consistently impressive range of roles. He co-starred again with Tom Courtenay in the BAFTA-winning A Rather English Marriage and received a fifth Oscar nomination for his role opposite Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovitch.

Albert Finney was once the screen's incarnation of the new British working-class hero. In the theatre, he was hailed as the new Olivier. Yet, instead of actively pursuing either image, he went his own way. This biography, attempts to probe the real man beneath the many masks of the actor, director, traveller, bon viveur and lover.

Albert Finney was a Salford-born, homework-hating bookie’s son who broke the social barriers of British film. He did his share of roistering, and yet outlived his contemporaries and dodged typecasting to become a five-time Oscar nominee and one of our most durable international stars. Bon vivant, perennial rebel, self-effacing character actor, charismatic charmer, mentor to a generation of working-class artists, a byword for professionalism, lover of horseflesh and female flesh – Albert Finney is all these things and more. Gabriel Hershman’s colourful and riveting account of Finney’s life and work, drawing on interviews with many of his directors and co-stars, examines how one of Britain’s greatest actors built a glittering career without sacrificing his integrity.

Albert Finney Jr., born on 9th May 1936, Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire, England, UK was an actor, producer and director of film, TV and theatre. Finney attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) then began to work in the theatre as a Shakespearean actor before becoming well known on screen in the early '60s, debuting with The Entertainer (1960), directed by Tony Richardson, who'd previously directed him in the theatre. Albert maintained a successful career in theatre, movies and TV.

This informed, highly readable account of 65 great British cinema character actors recalls such highlights of film history as Alec Guiness's obdurate commanding officer in The Bridge on the River Kwai, the chilling screen presence of Peter Cushing, and the hilarious bungling of Ian Carmichael in I'm All Right Jack.

British film stars—even the most famous ones, such as James Mason, Sean Connery, and Julie Andrews—are a neglected subject in film history. This interesting collection looks at the whole of British stardom from circa 1910 onwards, and the many types of British stars who gained worldwide fame through national and international cinema.

In this book, Claire Cochrane maps the experience of theatre across the British Isles during the twentieth century through the social and economic factors which shaped it. Three topographies for 1900, 1950 and 2000 survey the complex plurality of theatre within the nation-state which at the beginning of the century was at the hub of world-wide imperial interests and after one hundred years had seen unprecedented demographic, economic and industrial change. Cochrane analyses the dominance of London theatre, but redresses the balance in favour of the hitherto marginalised majority experience in the English regions and the other component nations of the British political construct. Developments arising from demographic change are outlined, especially those relating to the rapid expansion of migrant communities representing multiple ethnicities. Presenting fresh historiographic perspectives on twentieth-century British theatre, the book breaks down the traditionally accepted binary oppositions between different sectors, showing a broader spectrum of theatre practice.

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