British actor Albert Finney dies aged 82 after short illness
- Finney received five Oscar nominations but never won, and refused a knighthood
Albert Finney, who forged his reputation as one of the leading actors of Britain’s early 60s new wave cinema, has died aged 82 after a short illness, his family announced. In 2011, he disclosed he had been suffering from kidney cancer.
Having shot to fame as the star of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Finney received five Oscar nominations but never won, and refused a knighthood.
Born in Salford, in the North of Endland, in 1936, Finney grew up the son of a bookmaker as part of what he called the “lower middle class”. Encouraged by his headmaster at Salford Grammar school, Finney got a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he found himself in the same class as Peter O’Toole and Alan Bates.
Having established himself as a theatre actor, Finney capitalised on the late-50s surge of interest in “northern” material, and found himself cast, first, in a small role in the film adaptation of John Osborne’s The Entertainer (set in the northern seaside town of Morecambe) and then as the lead in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, as rambunctious factory worker Arthur Seaton.
Directed by Karel Reisz and released in 1960, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning proved to be extremely popular as well as a key film in the “angry” cinema of the period.
