Frank Finlay

Acting

Frank Finlay

Born 1926-08-06 · Farnworth, Lancashire, England, UK

Frank received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations for his performance as William Shakespeare’s Iago in Stuart Burge’s 1965 film of Laurence Olivier’s staging of Othello. He also won the Best Actor Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. He later essayed the definitive screen portrayal of Alexandre Dumas’ musketeer Porthos in three movies for director Richard Lester: The Three Musketeers (1974), The Four Musketeers (1975) and The Return of the Musketeers (1989). Frank’s many other films include The Longest Day; Tony Richardson’s The Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner; Martin Ritt’s The Molly Maguires; Bob Clark’s Murder by Decree; Alan Bridges’ The Return of the Soldier (for which he recieved a BAFTA Award nomination); Franco Zeffrelli’s Sparrow; and Eric Styles’ Dreaming of Joseph Lees; and most recently Roman Polanski’s multi-award winning The Pianist and Norma Jewison’s The Statement. His similarly extensive television projects have earned him two BAFTA Awards, for his performances in The Death of Adolf Hitler (starring as Hitler, with Rex Firkin directing); The Adventures of Don Quixote (as Sancho Panza, opposite Rex Harrison, for director Alvin Rakoff); the ground breaking Bouquet of Barbed Wire and Another Bouquet; 84 Charing Cross Road; and recently the critically acclaimed series The Sins. Born in Farnworth, Lancashire, Finlay had already begun performing on stage when he earned the Sir James Knott Scholarship at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Since then he has led theatre companies in London and on Broadway. He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1984 New Year’s Honours List, and was presented with his CBE by the Queen in February1984.

Acting credits

The Pianist poster
8.4

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.

The Pianist

2002

The Voyeur poster
6.4

At a college in Rome, a professor, nicknamed "Dodo" is in a deep depression. His stunningly beautiful wife has just left him for another man. Dodo wants her back very badly and has erotic daydreams about her. A beautiful young student in his class asks him for a ride home and seduces the lucky man, but still he wonders about his wife and her lover.

The Voyeur

1994

The Longest Day poster
7.6

The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"

The Longest Day

1962

Lifeforce poster
6.2

A race of space vampires arrives in London and infects the populace, commencing an apocalyptic descent into chaos.

Lifeforce

1985

The Key poster
6.0

In 1940s Venice, after twenty years' marriage, retired art critic Nino Rolfe and his younger wife Teresa feel their passion waning. To help her shed her inhibitions and rekindle their relationship, the professor records his sexual fantasies in a diary.

The Key

1983

The Three Musketeers poster
6.7

In 17th century France, young D'Artagnan wants to join the King's Musketeers, but instead befriends three legendary musketeers—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—and together, they become embroiled in the political intrigue surrounding King Louis XIII and his adversaries, particularly the powerful Cardinal Richelieu.

The Three Musketeers

1973

The Wild Geese poster
6.8

A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.

The Wild Geese

1978

Inspector Clouseau poster
5.0

Detective Inspector Jacques Clouseau is borrowed from the Surete on special assignment for Scotland Yard in hopes that a fresh outlook will help the government recover the loot from the Great Train Robbery, which is being used to underwrite a new crime wave. What they don't count on, however, is having more than one Clouseau on the job.

Inspector Clouseau

1968

The Four Musketeers poster
6.5

The Four Musketeers defend the queen and her dressmaker from Cardinal Richelieu and Milady de Winter.

The Four Musketeers

1974

Shaft in Africa poster
6.1

Detective John Shaft travels incognito to Ethiopia, then France, to bust a human trafficking ring.

Shaft in Africa

1973

A Christmas Carol poster
7.5

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

A Christmas Carol

1984

The Return of the Musketeers poster
6.2

It's 1649: Mazarin hires the impoverished D'Artagnan to find the other musketeers: Cromwell has overthrown the English king, so Mazarin fears revolt, particularly from the popular Beaufort. Porthos, bored with riches and wanting a title, signs on, but Aramis, an abbé, and Athos, a brawler raising an intellectual son, assist Beaufort in secret. When they fail to halt Beaufort's escape from prison, the musketeers are expendable, and Mazarin sends them to London to rescue Charles I. They are also pursued by Justine, the avenging daughter of Milady de Winter, their enemy 20 years ago. They must escape England, avoid Justine, serve the Queen, and secure Beauford's political reforms.

The Return of the Musketeers

1989

The Ploughman's Lunch poster
4.8

As the UK begins its military engagement in the Falklands, a BBC news journalist attempts to climb up from his working-class roots, at any cost, lying to those around him to get what he wants, only to discover that he is the recipient of a deception far more clever than his own.

The Ploughman's Lunch

1983

The Deadly Bees poster
4.4

Pop singer Vicki Robbins collapses from exhaustion while shooting ta music video; her physician prescribes a respite on Seagull Island with beekeeper Ralph Hargrove. Initially finding the Hargroves' bitter marital strife oddly relaxing, the arrival of specially-bred attack bees pushes Vicki to her survival instinct.

The Deadly Bees

1966

Murder by Decree poster
6.3

Sherlock Holmes is drawn into the case of Jack the Ripper, who is killing prostitutes in London's East End. Assisted by Dr. Watson, and using information provided by a renowned psychic, Robert Lees, Holmes finds that the murders may have their roots in a Royal indiscretion and that a cover-up is being managed by politicians at the highest level, all of whom happen to be Masons.

Murder by Decree

1979

Cromwell poster
6.6

Disgusted with the policies of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell plans to take his family to the New World. But on the eve of their departure, Cromwell is drawn into the tangled web of religion and politics that will result in the English Civil War.

Cromwell

1970

Fifty Shades of Erotica poster
7.0

Before Fifty Shades of Grey and beyond the limits of desire, Nucleus Films draw back the veil on Fifty Shades of Erotica. Now, in the privacy of your own home and as a consenting adult, you can succumb to trailers from carnal classics like The Libertine, Story of O, Venus In Furs, Cruel Passion, Gwendoline, Education Anglaise, Dressage and many, many more as you enter the timeless world of fetishistic fantasy, deviant desires and pulsating pleasure! Submit yourself to the salacious sensations and cruel caresses of this mind-blowing collection of curated carnality, the rare and raunchy, re-mastered from the finest available materials. So, lie back, relax and prepare to enter the sensual world of Fifty Shades of Erotica...

Fifty Shades of Erotica

2015

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner poster
7.2

A rebellious youth, sentenced to a boy’s reformatory for robbing a bakery, rises through the ranks of the institution by impressing its Governor through his prowess as a long distance runner. He is encouraged to compete in an upcoming race, but faces ridicule from his peers.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

1962

Robbery poster
6.6

In this fictionalised account of the Great Train Robbery, career criminal Paul Clifton plans an audacious crime: the robbery of a mail train carrying millions in cash.

Robbery

1967

Casanova poster
4.1

The life story of an 18th century womanizer who's arrested, not so much for his crimes, but because he's viewed as an undesirable by the husbands and families of the women he seduces.

Casanova

1987

The Shoes of the Fisherman poster
6.8

Ukrainian bishop Kiril Lakota, a political prisoner in a Soviet gulag for twenty years, is unexpectedly released and sent to the Vatican, where, upon the sudden death of the Pope, leader of the Catholic Church, he must face a challenging destiny that will put the future of the entire world in his hands.

The Shoes of the Fisherman

1968

Twisted Nerve poster
6.8

Martin Durnley is a young man with an infantilizing mother, resentful stepfather and an institutionalized brother with Down's syndrome. To cope, he retreats into an alternate child personality he calls Georgie. After being caught during a theft attempt at a department store, he befriends a female customer who is sympathetic to him, but his friendship soon turns into obsession.

Twisted Nerve

1968

The Molly Maguires poster
6.4

Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1876. A secret society of Irish coal miners, bond by a sacred oath, put pressure on the greedy and ruthless company they work for by sabotaging mining facilities in the hope of improving their working conditions and the lives of their families.

The Molly Maguires

1970

Nothing Like a Dame poster
6.8

BBC Arena's documentary on the Dames of British Theatre and film featuring Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Joan Plowright on screen together for the first time as they reminisce over a long summer weekend in a house Joan once shared with Sir Laurence Olivier.

Nothing Like a Dame

2018