He had me the first time I saw Tom Jones but really turned the screws into me in Under the Volcano. He lived an extraordinary life, took the money, and refused to be part of the system. Here’s the New York Times’ summation:
“At the turn of the ’60s, Finney was the screen’s incarnation of the new working-class hero,” Mr. Falk wrote in “Albert Finney in Character,” published in 1992 and republished in 2015. “In the theater, he was barely 20 when he was hailed as the ‘new Olivier.’ Yet instead of pursuing either mantle, he became a millionaire and made love to beautiful women on several continents.”
Mr. Falk added: “To some he is still the leading actor of his generation; to others, though, he has suffered an ambition bypass. To even severer critics, he appears to have remained cheerfully indolent, almost willfully failing to fulfill the remarkable early promise.”