Albert Finney, 82, (9th May 1936 - 7th February 2019) actor

Albertson he was once described by Sir Laurence Olivier as the greatest actor of his generation not bad when that generation includes the likes of Cain Connery and O'Toole a key figure in the British New Wave cinema of the 60s Finley's breakthrough film was satin night and Sunday morning his performance as a rebellious factory worker Arthur Seaton was so convincing that at the time many felt there couldn't have been much acting involved at all that comes up in this 1960 interview with Robert Robinson along with a revelation about a major role he once turned down are you anything like the man you play in Saturday night and Sunday morning he's a very jolly sort of extrovert type I don't think at all I am you know I feel that I the person I'm much more inhibited and quieter I've said this once before but I mean if a person like Arthur was stood next to me at a bar and I overheard the scene where he picked up the girl in the film I would feel you know a bit embarrassed and I think I'd move away they let him get on with it because I would feel sort of Oh men do that daily you know this is how their people behave but I I'm not Shire it much quiet I don't drink that a man I can't take it not at all what was it about the man that made you warm to him so much that you should act him in this and this very full-throated way well in a way I mean that one of the things about being an actor is that one can do things in one's work in one's profession and play characters which you're which aren't you in real life and this sort of attracted me that to play somebody does behave like that because I don't feel I am like that he's very attractive and I also feel that you know he's I think is a sort of interesting case that's too forgiving elephant Agra it's poison croaking frame shop got laid off for six weeks to drink it firm stays tight stomach trouble if you bring your own flask if it's three or four dollars its cleanup for me jack make a number one share and share alike snow good you won't think like that like you won the fools though would you good enough I've seen the family rap but nobody else if I got stuck a beggar matters like most blokes do you know I'll do it I'm a cab on fire hey we were allowed to do it but in a rack on that woman's venture what you're talking about whatever you you're young rogues they mister rub off so much carbon from alive I don't go around tormented women you know that you once said to me that as an actor you let the character stand in front of you you never stood in front of the character so to speak now I want a fuming as they say in exam papers discuss that for me well I actually a very strong barber but acting is a there's a craft side of actor I think I hate about the sort of you know the myths of the cinema and all that is that the image built up on the screen of actors are met off screen personalities and saying this is them you know and that I mean what I think I hate I mean and this it this has happened to me already the people have seen my performances haven't anything that that's me you know they say held that sounded fin in it the bet is his personality you know and I think very strongly that one's audience should realize that one is presenting them with a sort of it's like a Potter you know the one in a way is showing illustrating the way you make the pottery you're showing them and you revealing it to them through your craft as well as through your emotions all that the marriage of of instinct and emotions and a spiritual and you know and the physical makes it a craft and I think that is very important to me that's very important you had a chance of playing a very different term type of man laws of Arabia in this building speaker this game maker why did you turn that down well I also feel strongly about actors being committed too much with their commitments completely unknown one I think it's very bad because what I think what I'm very young 24 you know and I feel that if I'd sign that for five years from big international pictures that one if one is a success in the first I think that one becomes an investment and the amount of after that in your next picture I think that the people who own you you're so like a racehorse you know and the people who own you try to make sure that you're still sellable and they can confine your acting in order to reproduce what they thought was successful about your the first film you said them this is something else you once said to me when we met that you're not very interested yet in putting down roots in the way of a house or a flat or whatever why is it does it well it is a sourcing value this kind of responsibility bother you at all I mean I doesn't want him in this I mean I don't think that I am escaping from responsibility but I'm not wanting to put down roots but I think that I just would soon I'm not put down roots I mean doesn't I don't find these sort of my family I had the air of running a flat of organizing of collecting things I don't the families have checked it but the man I don't want I don't want to feel that the place which I sort of live in his mind for life in some sense at all is it that your job at the moment appeals to you more than them than perhaps even life itself without sounding sort of dedicated it's in for some hate to serve I sort of feel in a way that my that my job is my life at the Manor sounded silly a bit some she she had a meaning to but I find that my I find I get much more pleasure and elation and fun out of my work but I do it out of my life and I'm quite happy about it's not miserable about if I'm not sort of you know staying our health unified to anybody and just enjoy this state at the moment the impact of Saturday night and Sunday morning was huge even two years after its release Finney was still fighting the public's perception of him a cinemas very own angry young man something he expands upon here in his conversation with John Freeman it's widely believed I think among your public that the character of Arthur Seaton in Saturday night and Sunday morning which you played in the film there's some coast parallel to yourself in your own life so let's just look about look at that really what sort of home do you come from well I suppose is really a lower-middle-class huh we would always comfortable doors as far as I I had a marvelous childhood I was always very happy I remember it was great sort of joy your father is by profession a bookmaker and he's therefore I think it's probably safe to say he's never been really short of money never been really short of money but there is a slight false illusion about bookmakers then at all sort of tremendously wealthy and on great yachts you know my father in fact doesn't do but I was always comfortable you know and this was this was not the sort of sofa because you come from Salford it wasn't the sort of soffit we saw in the taste of honey it was a different yes a different side of salt a much more comfortable solid little bourbon end of sofa yeah well all this of course is a very sort of conventional solid middle-class garden and it's very different from Arthur's Seat nor even from vanilla for that matter no has it been a professional embarrassment to you being sort of typecast at least in the public mind as a kind of North Midlands corner for it's unlikely yes I mean I terribly resented that I there's something in me which absolutely hates this sort of selling of an image to the public this in order to sell a product you say that this is it this is what it does you know that he sort of gets drunk all the time and he sort of shoots guns at fat ladies all the time you know this is evident and I felt terribly imprisoned by this feeling of being a sort of north country you sewers and I was jealous not jealous it was sort of rather annoyed that when Arthur Seaton the film was shown people saw me after Seaton I was also in billy lion that they would find no difference between the two characters which absolutely different you know I do hate this feeling of being that that is what you are one is an act well now let's accept it that you're a very conventional young actor of bourgeois tastes respectable dress now you can play any part you have fed in fact a considerable variety about which part that you have played in effect has given you most satisfaction so far well they've in fact I suppose if this change is in a way John you know because now Luther gives me or gave me great satisfaction but it depends on the state one is in at the time you know I mean when I did Coriolanus at Stratford when I took over from sir Lawrence I was in a very bad state as regards acting and somehow just having to go on freed me and it was marvelous to play Coriolanus men to the tremendous length of Marvel but that was because the rest of the season for me was rather black you know it depends how one is so there's I don't look back on any particular part with this sort of as a great high spot but what was it in fact that first made you want to be an actor I mean I don't want the story about how you left school and so on but there must have been something inside well I didn't really this is peculiar in a way because I didn't ever feel that I wanted to be an actor I did plays at school and the player the school I was there for safa grams loaded and the years I was there did and tremendous number of plays but when I was in those plays I thought it would be quite nice to be an actor but no more than when I played rugby for the school or cricket or whatever I thought it would be quite good to be a rugby player or a play there then eventually the headmaster suggested that I I went to drama school I I said yes mainly because I didn't I thought well it'd be marvelous to be in London you know as a student because I read about them painting statues white and running about the streets all that stuff me Martin so I thought yes I got a London but it was after being a trial for two terms I realized what I was doing and I also realized that I enjoyed it and then it was and this supposedly was going to be my career and I've sort of buckled down to it and sort of got working at it and since then you really have got satisfaction yes absolutely yeah you know since then this has been the thing I get more pleasure out of you you always talk about working at least your press cuttings suggest this shoot you you go to work each evening you work on stage now do you regard your job is done when the curtain comes down or do you subscribe at all to the old-fashioned view that the actor is to some extent a servant of the public in his private life as well no not at all I think the actor only owes the audience good work in the theater I don't feel that an actor's private layovers got anything to do with him whatsoever do well do you think that's completely consistent with the business that you have to go into whether you like it or not to some extent of selling your personality that on the one hand you enjoy the limelight on the stage on the other hand you beg out of it as fast as you possibly can as soon as you're off the stage isn't there a temperamental inconsistency here or not no I don't think so because I am an actor I mean you know that one works in a theater and is still there in front of a camera yeah but you depend also on audience is a bit isn't there a danger that you may catch yourself off too much from the subtle well the fertilizing element if you like in your work no because I think that in if one can retain a certain sense of freedom I mean the danger is you know that when you become sort of you be is successful or whatever you get a bit of money you know you can go run in a large car and you can live very sort of expensively and then you you eventually only do all of the sort of people you see a sort of very serve are waiters and very expensively dressed diners you never see sort of people well I'm acting people it's my job my life if you like and I've got to see them so in a certain sense if people get in their hand that when I leave the theater I just want to go out into the night and be alone or whatever the night is surely I'm able to watch people or feel that I can somehow do you feel that the intense professional life you've lived for the last few years and your early success on the whole has helped you to grow up and to achieve at our latitudes or has it tended to hold you back by making you concentrate on the unreal of life um I think anyway I'm a slow matura soon as they say I mean I think in a certain sense this is why as a sort of schoolboy I never had any sort of definite you know feelings of what I wanted to do and only now very recently have I ever I I'm in a way slightly still going through a sort of identity complex because of moving from a certain kind of environment when I was seventeen and all these things you know the new influences the new changes so still don't quite know what I am in a sense but perhaps an actor never knows know what he is he's always very different finish spoke there about how an actor needs to stay grounded but it was impossible who honest lauded as he was to completely avoid the glamour of the period there were rumors of a romance with Audrey Hepburn when they co-starred in the 1967 comedy 2 for the road and he was married to the French actress Anouk ma until she eventually left him for Ryan O'Neal but work was always the priority here he is talking to clive Goodwin about Tom Jones for which he won a Golden Globe and his directorial debut Charlie bubbles how about you said about this time in an interview I want to surprise people surprised myself I want to get away from taking myself acting I mean - seriously did you take acting too seriously I sometimes feel I do tell myself too seriously do you know that I'm and it was good to do Tom Jones where I had to like it I had to perform before instead of walking around the pool and considering what I did I just said right I'm gonna dive in here now do you know and did things sort of try to do things much more spontaneously that's right do you know and not mind that the public would see a spontaneous reaction rather than a created artistically I hope achieved reaction with the kind of a try I am I like to feel that they're seeing my work I like to feel that they're seeing something I've worked at my I've considered other possibilities but this is how I what I think they should see I think I have a facility for acting you know and I think mine danger sometimes is that I I'd do it easily I can do some things kind of with a certain amount of ease I need the neuroses of making my work more complicated or more difficult than it need be sometime in order to avoid this facility in order to escape the feeling of that I'm just getting away with it you know let's look at a film a film that you've made yourself that you appear in that you've directed from a script by Sheila Delaney it's called Charlie bubbles and as I haven't seen this film yet because you've only just finished shooting it perhaps you would like to lead us into the clip and tell us something about it well the the clip we see is towards the end of the film and the main character Charlie his divorce from his wife he lives in London she lives in Derbyshire with their child and he's gone up spent Saturday morning with them in they live in the country and on the Saturday afternoon he's taken his land to a football match and at the football match he meets a friend he knew at school having been brought up in that area and they chat to each other and the little boy gets very bored just after the game and goes home because the little boy goes to match every week whether or not his father takes it and the boy just leaves Charlie thinks he's lost the lad and spends a wild sort of half hour tearing round looking for him goes to the police etc and goes back to the cottage to tell his ex-wife but the child's missing and the lads they're watching television what made you choose Charlie babbles for your first film as a director it wasn't that I was I've been looking for a subject or anything like to direct it was I got the I read the screenplay from Xie well it was really an out my when first read it a document of about sixty pages and I responded very much to the character and the character situation shouldn't and felt I wanted to act it but probably strongly about the way the film should be treated and then felt it would be wrong for me to hire a director to then direct it and the way I felt as the actor he should be directive that seemed to me rather illegal so I did both which has been interesting now it's just hard especially for the first to do both I mean at the directing side of it I absolutely adored extraordinary experience but what my performance is live no idea the experience of both acting in a film and directing one is again not very common is it something which you'd ever do again well ii said to say now of acting and directing in a film I'd say no and the kind of character development that should be in Charlie barbels really he's much more intense and needs much more I think awareness of the actor with his director what path they're on and what line of thought they want the audience to follow and I think that's very difficult to act and direct him actually and I think that at the moment having literally just finished shooting and not having started editing yet I feel that I'd never do it again you know I mean I would like to direct another film and not act in it finding our did direct another film but the critically acclaimed performances continued he was Oscar nominated for his FQ Paro in the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express but before that one another Golden Globe with a radical departure the title role in the musical Scrooge album for named Scrooge is your first singing role in films what sort of points do you have you'll find out later suppose no I don't know I inish I did a show a musical ten years ago at the Royal Court yeah and I was I I thought I discovered a not too unpleasant baritone or tenor I don't know but I think they said bad at that at the time but as in this of course most of the numbers are oh I mean all my numbers are as the old math and I want him even when he's singing to sort of have obviously a kind of unit of yeah he doesn't have much resonance in his voice and he doesn't have much great quantities of breath I want this in other words a singing still to be very much in character except at the end of the film when he's chained when Scrooge is changed by his experience then perhaps you know little more resonance comes back in but when you think of the musical at the present time I mean it is by definition a big-budget film it has to be and yet a lot of musicals have failed recently and did you regard this as a hazard or not no I mean when I got into it all rather quickly and but I was just extremely attracted by the sort of playing the character I mean when I read the script I didn't liked it very much and the juices started to work inside you know no I haven't read a script that had had that effect on me for sometime else that have done something else over the last year presumably after you did looser on Broadway you went off for ten months just like that what were you doing contemplating your navel well no some of the time when I was on a beach I did a bit of that but [Music] for eight years I'd been in a profession I've been doing things constantly I'd only had one vacation and so I wondered about you know which was marvellous and so nice to go to Mexico and so as long as you want and then feel I think oh that Hawaii tomorrow I mean that's very pleasant and I'd kind of just wandered about like that for ten months after a while I got tired of doing that and wanted to come back because I needed the neurosis perhaps of my work again to be made sick again after been made whole I don't know you used to have a reputation for living out of suitcases not liking the idea of having possessions you know you went from that kind of thing to owning a large house and living rather like a the lord of the manor which you almost immediately gave up again what's what's your institute two possessions now well still much the same i mean i've got more of them obviously but in it was about three years ago for the first time i wanted a base I've never one of them before that but three years ago it kind of did I want a place which I could whatever I'm done I could crawl back into and lie down and that was mine you know and something and yet you see as the years go on you you were acquire more possession wine and playing this part I want more and more possession tell you screwed with another hit for Finny a second venture into musicals 1982's Annie wasn't but Finnish reputation could withstand the occasional flop and the 1980s saw acclaimed performances in films like shoot the moon the dresser and under the volcano despite that run this 1992 interview starts with Terry Wogan telling Finney that he seems to have been taking things easy you're a man though you don't give you a whole life to your craft that's the thing I've noticed about you whether you're working fine but you know man it takes a lot of time off aren't you I mean you're off to desert isles and i'd like to do that i like take time off I mean partly because I'm pacing myself I want to be acting when I'm 90 I don't have to do it all this week you know so if you thank you Jason women and betting on horses well well what else is he made an LP in the 70s Oh shush and you wrote them yo I wrote the lyrics I write 12 lyrics and Dennis King did the music and it did very well the charts they leave me enough it was picked up by Motown Records and I was only one of two white artists on motor and I we went over America promoting it and one week we got to 192 in the top 200 Albums but that was our peak I think it's a collector's item either you pick it up somewhere for Tempe but it was fun writing and trying you know I can't really sing what'd he say to those people who say she takes diving you have to learn to do it you know yeah we're doing other things with your natural sense of rhythm or what you've heard you see that there are people who say Albert Finney was a natural successor to Laurence Oliver and he could have done he could have been the Kenneth Branagh of his days I remember when they said that Laurence Olivier could have been the kind of man of his day at you know aspirations to do the great classical role but um you know but the act or manager and do all that live in today's time so no and I've done a lot of new plays in my career but I do most film do a contemporary and I like reflecting out the world is today and how people are today I mean I like doing the classics from time to time but if you wear tights on your life I noticed that when you came up no well that's because I guess another walk they hold my modern walk oh I see but so I don't like to just stay in the classics I mean they're there and if one wants to refer to them but I'd like to do modern things I mean this the modern world is what we're living in and what would try to be in grips with that same year Finney met Barry Norman to promote the playboys not one of his most memorable films but it was the source of a good anecdote and the encounter also had that what if moment to rival Phineas rejection of Lawrence of Arabia all those years earlier there was great excitement when we were filming and we were filmed in the village of Red Hills which is in County Cavan in the north of the Republic and in the landlocked and the cabin newspaper reported the event of the filming in Red Hills and same as this great Irish actor Milo will share and then named all the Irish at the British actor Albert Finney and American actor Aidan Quinn the American actress Robin Wright who's now married to Sean Penn who used to be married to Maradona yeah but so heroes that you haven't played the one that astonishes me that actually that you were even offered is Gandhi Richard Attenborough wanted you to play again is a long time ago well I do appreciate that and nevertheless you doesn't mean to me like Gandhi no I didn't - me either Richard wanted to make Anna for a very long time I think 20 years yeah and he discussed the possibility of me doing it in the middle 60s and I thought well if I go to a health farm for two years uh I'll never look like the madman and of course it obviously was not right that I did it all right that Richard did it then he was right that he did it with Ben because it worked better you were called by Olivier the greatest actor of your generation Kenneth Tynan after seeing you in Saturday night Sunday morning said that you're like a smoldering young Spencer Tracy are they are these labels like they said other millstones I mean do you feel you've got to live up to them or do you say the hell with it let somebody else is a million yes it is I mean don't believe it I mean if you believe the good things people say you must also believe then the bad things people say so it's best to believe none of it and go your own way and don't ever take it on as a sort of burden it's nonsense that's just a response one person's response of a single people's response of course not but it's only a point of view isn't it nevertheless it's all subjective you see it's never believed what to say about you good bad or indifferent but you know one of the results of that and then having had that sort of thing said about you is that every few years earnest people like me at this moment come to you and say have you fulfilled all this great talent that you had this great promise that you heard do you feel able that you had great talent and and B have you fulfilled it well no I mean I just think I'm a working guy I really just go on I just want to go on working I hope to remain promising till I sit up he certainly has remained promising Erin Brokovich the Bourne trilogy sky for all huge it's all featured Albert Finney 50 years on the angry young man remains a major presence on our screens and has matured wonderfully into one of our most distinguished most respected acting talents [Music]

Channel: George Pollen

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Keywords: Albert Finney

Id: fF7rFi5V0sY

Length: 29min 6sec (1746 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2017