Page 21 - FOYER_Cannes 2001

DIARY BERLIN • LOSANGELES • MILAN • FOYER • CANNES • TOKYO • LONDON PAGE19
ALBERT FINNEY
ADOLDFELLOW
Before receiving the Fellowship at the climax of the evening, Finney had missed out yet again, this time to Traffic co-star Benicio Del Toro, after his 11th BAFTA nomination - for Best Supporting Actor in Erin Brockovich.
That’s no fewer than ten misses following his one success first time out 40 years ago. In that film galaxy far away, he was named Most Promising Newcomer To Leading Roles for the 1960 kitchen-sink classic Saturday Night And Sunday Morning.
Finney’s fared even less well at the Hollywood Oscars failing at the final hurdle after Best Actor nomina- tions for Tom Jones, Murder On The Orient Express, The Dresser and Under The Volcano. Perhaps it will prove fifth time lucky Over There with his Erin Brockovich nomination for Best Supporting Actor later this month.
All this rather downbeat reference to what he hasn’t achieved – and you suspect that he’s the last to be rattled by the rejection – shouldn’t blind us to all he has in a glittering career which started on the stage in the 1950s.
The film titles already mentioned are, of course, just one part of an astonishing resumé which have also reached the heights of theatre (from National Theatre to Art) and TV (Dennis Potter’s Karaoke and Cold Lazarus etc) as well as movies.
The son of a Salford turf account- ant (and sometime back-street book- ie) – ‘A Finney – Civility And Prompt Payment’ – Finney Jr could imitate animals so well that aged 10 he was taken by his mother to the BBC in
Manchester for an audition. Plays and sport dominated his school days then, at 17, he won a place at RADA where some of his fellow students, if not exact contem- poraries, included Peter O’Toole, Frank Finlay, Richard Briers, Alan Bates, Roy Kinnear and Virginia Maskell.
At 18 he appeared as Troilus in a RADA produc- tion of Ian Dallas’s The Face Of Love – a modern-dress ver- sion of Troilus And Cressida. Ken Tynan, theatre crit- ic of The Observer, was on hand to note of Finney, “a smouldering young Spencer Tracy, an actor who will soon disturb the dreams of Messrs Burton and Scofield.”
Instead of succumbing to the lure of the Rank Charm School, which had rounded up any number of Brylcreemed bucks for its well- scrubbed stable, or joining Binkie Beaumont’s ‘boys’ at the all-powerful theatrical agency HM Tennent,
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Photos from top: Albert Finney in Gumshoe; with Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich; with Tom Courtenay in The Dresser; Miller’s Crossing
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