Albert Finney
Tim Walker, Malcolm Turner

Albert Finney was an archetypal ‘Angry Young Man’: a trailblazing, working-class actor who exploded onto stage and screen with performances that changed his profession overnight and helped define the ‘Swinging Sixties’. His talent turned him into an overnight star and created a new level of realism and truth in both cinema and theatre. It also made him a multi-millionaire, enabling a jet set lifestyle which he unashamedly enjoyed. He married three times and loved good living—especially food, wine and a flutter—while bedding countless women. Not since Errol Flynn has an actor earned such a reputation as a womaniser.

Finney was a deeply private man who fiercely resisted all attempts a biography during his lifetime. Tim Walker and Malcolm Turner have traced many of Finney’s friends and close colleagues, and they have spoken candidly for the first time. The result is a penetrating and sometimes shocking analysis of a remarkable life.

While Finney was always a professional on stage or set, his private life was a different matter. He pursued and seduced some of the most beautiful women in the world including Audrey Hepburn, Jean Marsh, Joan Baez, Carly Simon, Samantha Eggar, Shelley Winters, Jacqueline Bisset, Jane Asher, Jill Bennett and Diana Quick.

Finney protected his private life so fiercely that no serious biography could have been published in his lifetime. It has taken the years since his death to put together the remarkable series of interviews with Finney’s friends and colleagues which give this book its unique power and insight.