Peter Finch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Finch

<Mr Peter Finch>

<The Times, January 17, 1977>

Mr Peter Finch, a leading man of the British cinema for nearly 30 years, died in Los Angeles on January 14, aged 60.

He entered films in Australia, where he spent his early years, in 1936, and established himself in the British cinema after the war. He began as a virile romantic lead in war and adventure films but later mellowed into an actor of considerable depth and sensitivity. He had recently completed _Raid on Entebbe_ in which he played Mr Rabin, the Israel Prime Minister.

Mr Finch, whose real name was William Mitchell, was born in London in 1916, the son of an Australian physicist. His parents divorced when he was two and he was brought up in France and India by a grandmother before settling with relatives in Australia. After several jobs, including journalism, he became a professional actor in the early 1930s, appearing on stage in films and in radio, and forming his own theatre company.

A part in the Anglo-Australian _Eureka Stockade_ in 1948 brought him wider attention and he decided to continue his career in Britain. Laurence Olivier, who had seen Finch acting in Australia, cast him with Edith Evans in _Daphne Laureola_ and he appeared in other Olivier stage productions including _Othello_, where he played Iago opposite Orson Welles.

His British film career, meanwhile, had started promisingly with the prisoner-of-war picture _The Wooden Horse_ and _The Miniver Story_ and through most of the 1950s he was under contract to the Rank Organization. That inevitably meant accepting the good with the bad, but his most distinguished films of the period included an adaptation of GRaham Greene's _The Heart of the Matter_, and _Father Brown_.

_Simon and Laura_ with Kay Kendall proved an unhappy excursion into comedy, but more successful was his portrayal as an Australian in the cinema version of Nevil Shute's _A Town Like Alice_, which was followed by the popular war film _The Battle of the River Plate_. In 1959 he gave probably his best performance to date as a doctor in the Congo in _The Nun's Story_ and followed it with a moving and sympathetic performance in the title role in _The Trials of Oscar Wilde_. He went on to make _No Love for Johnnie_, the story of an ambitious Labour party politician, and returned to the stage to play Trigorin opposite Vanessa Redgrave in _The Seagull_.

In 1967 Finch joined forces with a younger generation of British actors, including Alan Bates, Terence Stamp and Julie Christie in John Schlesinger's ambitious film of _Far From the Madding Crowd_.

But his next notable part, which he took over at short notice after the actor originally chosen withdrew, was as the homosexual Jewish doctor in Schlesinger's _Sunday, Bloody Sunday_, where his sensitive performance brought him his third British Film Academy Award, the others being for _A Town Like Alice_ and _No Love for Johnny_.

END

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%87,_%D0%9F%D0%B...