In this version we can not only see his villainy at work but the thought processes behind it. Mini Bio (1) One of Britain's finest products of the stage, film and TV, actor Frank Finlay, he with the dark and handsomely serious-to-mordant looks, was born on August 6, 1926, in Farnworth, England, the son of Josiah, a butcher, and Margaret Finlay. In Cyprus, Venetian Iago (Frank Finlay) awaits word of his boss the general (Laurence Olivier, title character), battling the Turks at sea, keeping an eye on the wife Desedemona (Maggie Smith) and amorous Cassio (Derek Jacobi), in the filmed version of the British National Theatre production of Shakespeare's Othello , 1965. He had met Doreen Shepherd when they were both members of the Farnworth Little theatre, and they married in 1954, living mostly in Shepperton, Middlesex. This led to appearances on The Morecambe and Wise Show. The latter series, produced by London Weekend Television in 1976, starring Susan Penhaligon as his daughter, Sheila Allen as his wife and James Aubrey as his American teacher son-in-law, made Finlay a household name after years of toil. Frank Finlay's convincing and powerful Iago is bluff, provincial noisy and professionally jealous, sometimes goading himself into hysterical furry, less a Machiavelli than one of those amoeba-minded Southern Senators who still foam at the mouth at the thought of a black man and a white woman getting into bed together. His other screen roles include the father of Adrien Brody’s character in “The Pianist” (2002), the Holocaust drama directed by Roman Polanski, and the father of Jane Tennison, the police detective played by Helen Mirren, in the last two installments of “Prime Suspect,” the popular British television drama. He cropped up in Richard Eyre’s The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983), scripted by Ian McEwan, and The Return of the Musketeers (1989), the least good of the trilogy, blighted by the death of Roy Kinnear in a riding accident on location. Othello 1965 Iago (Frank Finlay), an officer in the Venetian army and ensign to the Moorish general Othello (Laurence Olivier), bitterly resents the appointment of a younger soldier Cassio (Derek Jacobi) as Othello's lieutenant. He appeared on Broadway in two short-lived plays, “Epitaph for George Dillon,” by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton, in 1958, and “Filumena,” by Eduardo De Filippo, in 1980. NEW YORK — Frank Finlay, an Academy Award-nominated English actor known for his screen appearances as Iago in “Othello” and Porthos in “The Three Musketeers,” died Jan. 30 … Finlay’s Frank struck up a telling rapport with Julie Covington’s communist agitator, and their scenes together were an electrifying fusion of experience and innocence. (The award that year went to Martin Balsam for “A Thousand Clowns.”). His first leading television role came in 1971 in Casanova. Directed by Richard Lester, it also starred Richard Chamberlain, Michael York and Raquel Welch. I want a solid, honest-to-God NCO.” He got that to such an extent that Finlay, at that time an inexperienced Shakespearean, veered between dull and shaky in one of the longest roles in the canon (after Hamlet). Because Mr. Finlay was so often cast as a rogue or villain, some of the productions with which he was associated were considered mildly scandalous in their day. Having featured as Jesus Christ in Dennis Potter’s Son of Man at the Leicester theatre and the Roundhouse in 1969, he briefly joined the Royal Shakespeare Company to play the Marxist theatre critic Bernard Link, visiting the post-1968 European hot spots on a lecture tour, in David Mercer’s After Haggerty (1971). He also appeared at the Court in Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959) and The Happy Haven (1960), both by John Arden, and opposite Rex Harrison in Chekhov’s Platonov and as Corporal Hill in Wesker’s Chips With Everything (1962). Mr. Finlay’s wife, the former Doreen Shepherd, whom he married in 1954, died in 2005; a son, Stephen, died in 2004. But despite his being extraordinary and quite the most remarkable theatrical experience I've ever had, the person who I was drawn most to was Frank Finlay's Iago. Although he was a devout Catholic, he rarely played good people. A prolific stage performer, Frank Finlay came to international prominence repeating his stage role as a particularly villainous Iago to Laurence Olivier's "Othello" in the 1965 film version, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Fortunately, Frank Finlay as Iago is very nearly his equal, a figure of poisonous menace who knows how to cloak his true nature beneath a believable veneer of concern; without Finlay in the role, this Othello would feel lopsided and off-balance. Early on, he had appeared in two Michael Winner movies, both comic romps, in 1967: The Jokers and I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname. As an actor, there was something sinister and sepulchral about Frank Finlay, who has died aged 89. Convinced of his wife’s infidelity, Finlay’s Peppino sat sulking downstage, heart-broken. Frank Finlay in The Return of the Musketeers. • Frank Finlay, actor, born 6 August 1926; died 30 January 2016. Francis Finlay, CBE (6 August 1926 – 30 January 2016), known as Frank Finlay, was an English stage, film and television actor, Oscar-nominated for a supporting role as Iago in Laurence Olivier's 1965 film adaptation of Othello. Making his Broadway debut in "The Epitaph of George Dillon" in 1959, he also sparked a noteworthy professional association with Laurence Olivier at the National Theatre, the highlight being his intense but subtle portrayal of "Iago" to Olivier's "Othello" in 1964. Mr. Finlay went on to perform with the Royal National Theater, of which Mr. Olivier was an artistic director, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His family announced his death, The Associated Press reported. He left school at 14 and became a butcher’s apprentice, but found he could not resist the lure of community theater. He was 89. Fin­lay made his first stage ap­pear­ances at the local Farn­worth Lit­tle The­atre, in plays that in­cluded Peter Black­more's Mi­randa in 1951. All rights reserved. His luxuriant mane of black hair (turning grey and, later, white) complemented a skull-like appearance with still, sunken eyes and prominent cheekbones. In the same year the two actors had appeared together (Olivier executing some scene-stealing business with a hat), and with Plowright, in a glorious version by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall of Eduardo De Filippo’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday, which transferred in 1974 to the Queen’s theatre, London. “It was still the time when the Reps were doing ‘Who’s for tennis?’ plays,” Mr. Finlay told The Sydney Morning Herald in 1988. Mr. Finlay was also known to an international audience as Porthos, the lusty extrovert among the Three Musketeers, in the 1974 film of that name. Othello (1965) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. Frank Finlay's Iago is the centerpiece that all the other characters gravitate to. On TV, Finlay made a … On television he played Jean Valjean in a BBC mini-series of Les Miserables, Adolf Hitler, Casanova and, most famously, an incestuously obsessive father in Andrea Newman’s television drama, Bouquet of Barbed Wire. The following year, also at the Old Vic, he played a stooge-like Joxer Daly to Blakely’s Captain Boyle in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, making himself look surprisingly thin in a huge greatcoat. Frank Finlay is an absolutely brilliant Iago, willingly talking to us, the audience, in his soliluquies, as though we were one of the characters, and taking malicious delight in his evil machinations. He is a picture of true evil. Frank Finlay as Iago tribute (hearts filthy lesson) - YouTube Frank was educated at Bolton technical college and worked as a butcher’s apprentice and grocer’s assistant before making his debut in fortnightly rep at Troon, Ayrshire, in 1951, followed by seasons of 10 months each in Halifax and Sunderland. He then played two war criminals: in Michael Cristofer’s Black Angel at the King’s Head, London, in 1990, and in Harwood’s The Handyman at Chichester in 1996. Written by Kathy Li Plot Summary | Add Synopsis Finlay’s film career, allied to his stage credentials, kept him solidly in work thereafter. He played the Gravedigger in the opening NT production of Hamlet (starring Peter O’Toole) at the Old Vic in 1963, followed by a string of leading roles, notably Iago to Olivier’s Othello. He was named a Commander of the British Empire in 1984. His survivors include a daughter, Cathy; a son, Daniel; and several grandchildren. He never wore them again.”. In character roles on stage, screen and television, Mr. Finlay was routinely praised by critics for his resonant voice, physical grace and brooding, soulful mien. His last stage appearance was as the old retainer Firs in The Cherry Orchard at Chichester in 2008. But Othello's old Ensign, Iago (Frank Finlay), doesn't like Othello, and is determined to bring about the downfall of Othello's new favorite, Cassio (Sir Derek Jacobi), and destroy Othello in the process, by casting aspersions on Othello's new bride. There fol­lowed sev­eral parts in pro­duc­tions at the Royal Court The­atre, such as the Arnold Wesker tril­ogy. The resulting film, directed by Stuart Burge, showed him at his best – phlegmatic, malignant and manipulative – and he, Olivier, Redman and Maggie Smith as Desdemona all received Oscar nominations. He later won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where, bowing to the demands of repertory theaters of the period, he took pains to cultivate plummy London diction. As the National got going at Chichester, he scored again in Arden’s The Workhouse Donkey (1963), as a blustering Labour politician, Alderman Butterthwaite, another northern character part executed with a high degree of absurd and demonic rascality. 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