Frank Finlay

Frank Finlay (6 August 1926 – 30 January 2016) was an English actor born in Farnworth, Lancashire, the son of Josiah and Margaret Finlay. He was educated at St Gregory the Great School before leaving at age fourteen to train as a butcher at Toppings, where he earned a City and Guilds Diploma in the trade. His introduction to performance came at the local Farnworth Little Theatre, where his earliest stage appearances included a role in Peter Blackmore's Miranda in 1951. It was there that he also met Doreen Shepherd, who would become his wife. The couple had three children and lived in Shepperton, Middlesex. Doreen died in 2005 at the age of 79. After working in repertory theatre, initially in Scotland, Finlay won a scholarship to RADA in London.

His stage career developed through productions at the Royal Court Theatre, including work in the Arnold Wesker trilogy, and he became closely associated with the National Theatre during the years Laurence Olivier served as director. At the Chichester Festival Theatre, Finlay took on a wide range of roles, among them the First Gravedigger in Hamlet, Josef Frank in Weapons of Happiness, and Salieri in Amadeus. He also appeared in productions of The Party, Plunder, Saint Joan, Hobson's Choice, Much Ado About Nothing, The Dutch Courtesan, The Crucible, Mother Courage, and Juno and the Paycock. One of his most significant stage assignments came when he played Iago opposite Olivier's title character in John Dexter's 1965 National Theatre production of Othello. While theatre critics were largely unimpressed by his stage performance, the film adaptation of that production, also released in 1965, earned Finlay an Academy Award nomination. Critic John Simon noted that the film's close-ups allowed Finlay to deliver a more subtle and effective performance than he had achieved on stage.

Finlay's Broadway career spanned from 1958 to 1980. He made his Broadway debut in Epitaph for George Dillon during the 1958–1959 season, and returned to Broadway in 1980 to star in Filumena opposite Joan Plowright in the National Theatre production. Between November 1988 and April 1989, he toured Australia in Jeffrey Archer's Beyond Reasonable Doubt, performing in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide.

On television, one of his earliest roles was as journalist Conway Henderson in the family serial Target Luna in 1960. His first major television success came in 1967 when he played Jean Valjean in the BBC's ten-part adaptation of Les Misérables. In 1971 he took the title role in Dennis Potter's BBC 2 series Casanova, which led to appearances on The Morecambe and Wise Show. He portrayed Adolf Hitler in The Death of Adolf Hitler for London Weekend Television in 1973, and that same year played Sancho Panza opposite Rex Harrison's Don Quixote in the British television film The Adventures of Don Quixote, a performance that earned him a BAFTA award. He won a second BAFTA that year for playing Voltaire in the BBC production of Candide, making him a four-time BAFTA nominee with one win recorded in 1974. Finlay starred as the father in the drama Bouquet of Barbed Wire in 1976 and its sequel Another Bouquet in 1977. He was reunited with his Bouquet co-star Susan Penhaligon when he played Professor Van Helsing in the BBC's Count Dracula in 1977, alongside Louis Jourdan. He appeared as Marley's Ghost in the 1984 television production of A Christmas Carol opposite George C. Scott's Ebenezer Scrooge, and guest-starred as a witch-smeller in the 1983 episode of The Black Adder opposite Rowan Atkinson. He played Justice Peter Mahon in the New Zealand television serial Erebus: The Aftermath in 1988, and portrayed Howard Franklin in a 1994 episode of Heartbeat. Later television work included the BBC drama series The Sins in 2000 alongside Pete Postlethwaite and Geraldine James, the series Life Begins from 2004 to 2006, and appearances as Jane Tennison's father in the final two stories of Prime Suspect in 2006 and 2007. In 2007 he guest-starred in the Doctor Who audio adventure 100, and in 2008 appeared in the BBC drama series Merlin as Anhora, Keeper of the Unicorns. He also played a role in a Granada Television adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Golden Pince-Nez from the Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, in which his son Daniel also appeared in a minor role.

Finlay's film career included Martin Ritt's The Molly Maguires in 1970, and in 1973 he portrayed Amafi, the nemesis of Richard Roundtree's character, in Shaft in Africa. That same year he began playing Porthos for director Richard Lester in The Three Musketeers, a role he reprised in The Four Musketeers in 1975 and The Return of the Musketeers in 1989. He appeared twice as Inspector Lestrade in Sherlock Holmes films centered on the Jack the Ripper case: A Study in Terror in 1965 and Murder by Decree in 1979. His other film credits include The Wild Geese in 1978 and Tinto Brass's The Key, the most successful Italian film of the 1983–1984 season, in which he starred alongside Stefania Sandrelli. In Roman Polanski's The Pianist in 2002, Finlay played the father of Adrien Brody's character.

A Roman Catholic, Finlay was a member of the British Catholic Stage Guild. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year's Honours of 1984 and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bolton in 2009. Finlay died on 30 January 2016 at his home in Weybridge, Surrey, from heart failure, at the age of 89.