Peter Finch (born September 28, 1916, London, England—died January 14, 1977, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) was an English actor who was noted for his ability to portray complex characters with subtlety and warmth.
While Finch was a toddler, his parents divorced owing to his mother’s extramarital affair, and it was not until decades later that Peter discovered that George Ingle Finch, a chemist and noted mountaineer, was not his biological father. Peter grew up in France, India, and Australia, where he launched an acting career in the 1930s. He performed in repertory theatre, appeared in a few Australian films, and became a popular radio actor. During World War II he served in the Australian armed forces before returning to acting. He formed the Mercury Mobile Players repertory theatre, and a performance with the troupe in 1948 so impressed Laurence Olivier, that he signed Finch to a personal contract.
Finch moved to London in 1949. For several years he worked in theatre, radio, and television as well as film, but, after costarring with Elizabeth Taylor in the Hollywood movie Elephant Walk (1954), he focused more exclusively on cinema work. Finch’s performance as an Australian POW in Malaya (now in Malaysia) in A Town Like Alice (1956) won him the first of five British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards as best actor. He played a doctor in both Windom’s Way (1957) and Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story (1959), the latter of which starred Audrey Hepburn. Finch was cast as Alan Breck Stewart in the Walt Disney production Kidnapped (1960), and he showcased his versatility in the title role of The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960). He later won praise as a womanizing MP in the political drama No Love for Johnnie (1961). His other notable films included The Pumpkin Eater (1964) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967).
In 1972 Finch received an Academy Award nomination for his role as a homosexual doctor in John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). Finch was, however, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Howard Beale in his last theatrical movie, Network (1976). His vivid portrait of the unbalanced television newscaster who cries, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” earned Finch an Academy Award. He died of a heart attack several months before the awards ceremony, becoming the first performer to be awarded an Oscar posthumously. He also received a posthumous Emmy nomination for playing Yitzhak Rabin in the 1976 TV movie Raid on Entebbe.