Albert Finney Erin Brockovich (2000)
Albert Finney (May 9, 1936 – February 7, 2019, Salford, England) played Edward L. Masry in Erin Brockovich (2000). The performance earned him his fifth Academy Award nomination — the only one of his career for a supporting role — and his only Screen Actors Guild Award. (wikipedia, imdb)
Ed Masry was the late-career role that gave Finney one of his most affectionate performances
Finney had been a leading man in British and American cinema for forty years when Soderbergh cast him as Ed Masry. He was sixty-three on set. The character is a small-firm personal injury attorney with a quadruple bypass, one kidney, diabetes, and a survivor's resignation about everything except the case Erin keeps shoving under his nose. Finney played him as warm, weary, and surprised by his own moral courage. The dynamic with Roberts — Erin always extracting more, Ed always capitulating with a grumble — runs as a comic throughline from Erin's first ambush ("Don't make me beg") to the closing line ("Do they teach beauty queens how to apologize? Because you suck at it").
"Ed was incredible. He allowed me to do me and didn't stifle that." — Erin Brockovich (the real one, on the real Ed Masry, whom Finney played), Hollywood Reporter (2020)
"It's a delight to watch Roberts, with her flirtatious sparkle and undertow of melancholy, ricochet off Finney's wonderfully jaded, dry-as-beef-jerky performance as the beleaguered career attorney." — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly (2000)
Finney was a founding figure of the British New Wave and refused a knighthood twice
Finney came up at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the late 1950s alongside Peter O'Toole, Alan Bates, and Tom Courtenay. His breakthrough was Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), the Karel Reisz adaptation of Alan Sillitoe's novel about a working-class Nottingham factory worker — one of the films that defined the British New Wave. Tom Jones (1963) made him an international star and earned him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. He turned down the role of Lawrence of Arabia because he did not want to sign a long-term contract; O'Toole took it. (wikipedia)
Finney was offered a CBE in 1980 and a knighthood in 2000. He declined both. He told The Guardian the honors system "perpetuates snobbery." (guardian)
Finney's filmography is one of the most varied in postwar British cinema
| Year | Film | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Saturday Night and Sunday Morning | British New Wave |
| 1963 | Tom Jones | First Oscar nomination; Best Picture |
| 1967 | Two for the Road | With Audrey Hepburn |
| 1970 | Scrooge | Title role; Golden Globe |
| 1974 | Murder on the Orient Express | Hercule Poirot; second Oscar nom |
| 1982 | Annie | Daddy Warbucks |
| 1983 | The Dresser | Third Oscar nomination |
| 1984 | Under the Volcano | Fourth Oscar nomination |
| 1990 | Miller's Crossing | Coen Brothers; Leo |
| 1995 | The Run of the Country | Irish drama |
| 1999 | Simpatico | Sam Shepard adaptation |
| 2000 | Erin Brockovich | Fifth Oscar nomination; SAG Award |
| 2002 | Big Fish | Tim Burton; SAG Award nom |
| 2003 | Big Fish / The Bourne Ultimatum | Action support |
| 2007 | The Bourne Ultimatum | Dr. Albert Hirsch |
| 2012 | Skyfall | Final film role; Kincade |
Finney announced his retirement after Skyfall (2012). He had been treated for kidney cancer beginning in 2007. He died of a chest infection in February 2019, age eighty-two. The Erin Brockovich role is widely cited as one of his three or four finest performances, alongside Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Dresser, and Tom Jones.
The real Ed Masry appears briefly in the film
The real Edward L. Masry has a cameo as a customer in the diner scene where the real Erin Brockovich plays a waitress named Julia. He is sitting in the booth behind Roberts. Masry continued practicing law in Thousand Oaks until his death in 2005, age seventy-three. He won several environmental cases after Hinkley, including litigation against the Aerojet General Corporation in Sacramento County. Finney never met Masry in person; the two spoke briefly by phone during pre-production. (wikipedia, imdb trivia)