Trivia: Throughout his acting career, Albert Finney has impressed critics with his protean ability to step into a role and wear a character's persona no matter the age, nationality, or métier. In stage, film, and television productions over more than 40 years, Finney has portrayed a Polish pope, a Belgian detective, an Irish gangster, a British miser, a gruff American lawyer, a Scottish King, a German religious reformer, and an Roman warrior -- all with convincing authenticity. Finney was born on May 9, 1936, in the working-class town of Salford, Lancashire, England. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1955, he performed Shakespeare and quickly earned a coveted spot as understudy for the great Laurence Olivier in Shakespeare productions at Stratford-upon-Avon. On one occasion, he stepped into Olivier's shoes to play the lead role in Coriolanus, a play about the downfall of a proud Roman soldier, and won recognition that led to film roles.Finney's upbringing in Lancashire, a region of mills and smokestacks, exposed him to the kind of social injustice and economic hardship that helped prepare him for his role as a nonconformist factory worker in the 1960 film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a milestone in the development of British realist cinema. Critics -- who hardly noticed him in the bit-part role he played in his first film, The Entertainer -- universally praised his vibrant performance in Saturday Night. This success earned him the lead role in director Tony Richardson's 1963 film Tom Jones, adapted by screenwriter John Osborne from the Henry Fielding novel of the same name. As the wenching country boy Jones, Finney was a bawdy, rollicking, uproarious success, helping the film win four Academy awards.Rather than abandon live stage drama, Finney continued to pursue it with the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic in London, performing in Shakespeare productions and plays by other authors. He won Tony nominations for Luther and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, as well as a best actor Oliver for Orphans. When he made his next film in 1967, he starred opposite Audrey Hepburn in Stanley Donen's Two for the Road, a comedy-drama about marital mayhem, and again won high critical praise.If there was a pattern to the types of roles he selected, it was that there was no pattern. For example, after playing a 20th century art enthusiast in 1969's Picasso Summer, he took on the role of a 19th century Dickens character in Scrooge (1970), then played a bickering husband in Alpha Beta (1973), Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), a Napoleon-era Frenchman in The Duellists (1978), a werewolf hunter in Wolfen (1981), and a plastic surgeon/murder suspect in the ludicrous Looker (1981).After winning an Academy award nomination for his performance in 1982's Shoot the Moon, Finney delivered another outstanding performance in Peter Yates' 1983 film The Dresser, which earned five Oscar nominations, including a nomination for Finney as best actor. In the film, Finney plays a boozing Shakespearean actor whose life strangely parallels the tragic life of one of the characters he portrays, King Lear. In 1984, Finney won still another Oscar nomination, as well as a Golden Globe nomination, for his role as a self-defeating alcoholic in director John Huston's Under the Volcano. In the same year, critics praised him highly for his dynamic portrayal of Pope John Paul II in an American TV production.Finney continued to take on diverse and challenging roles in the late 1980s and during the 1990s, primarily in small, independent productions. Among the films that earned him more accolades were the Coen brothers' gangster epic Miller's Crossing (1990) -- for which Finney replaced actor Trey Wilson after his untimely death -- as well as A Man of No Importance (1994), The Browning Version (1995), and Simpatico (1999). Also in 1999, he won the BAFTA TV award for best actor for his role in A Rather English Marriage. 2000's Erin Brockovich exposed Finney to the widest audience he'd seen in years: playing the hangdog attorney Ed Masry, Finney proved to be the perfect comic foil to Julia Roberts' brassy heroine, and in the process secured himself Golden Globe and Academy award nominations for best supporting actor. Though a Golden Globe Award eluded him that year, he returned in two years and won for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the made-for-television film The Gathering Storm.2003 saw Finney in his biggest role since Erin Brockovich. In Tim Burton's Big Fish, he played Edward Bloom in present-day scenes, while Ewan McGregor assumed the role of the eccentric storyteller in flashbacks. The actor once again proved to be a favorite of the Hollywood Foreign Press when he received yet another Golden Globe nomination for his work.2006 found the now veteran actor appearing in the Ridley Scott dramedy A Good Year, in which he played the uncle to a younger version of Russell Crowe through flashbacks. He also signed on to appear in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a thriller staring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Marisa Tomei. In 2007 he was cast as the mastermind behind the program that created Jason Bourne in The Bourne Ultimatum, a roll he reprised five years later in The Bourne Legacy.Over the years, Finney saw the end of two major performances in his personal life: his first marriage to Jane Wenham (1957-61) and his second marriage to Anouk Aimée (1970-1978). He has one son, Simon, from his first marriage.

Trivia: A staple of the British stage for nearly a quarter of a century before he gained his first significant measure of international notice, Nigel Hawthorne has had one of the acting profession's more slow-burning careers. However, it has been an undeniably distinguished career marked with any number of critical peaks, perhaps most notably his brilliant, Oscar-nominated title performance in Nicholas Hytner's 1994 adaptation of Alan Bennett's The Madness of King George. Born in Coventry on April 5, 1929, Hawthorne grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, where he moved with his family at the age of four. After attending the University of Cape Town, where he started acting, he returned to England in 1951. Determined to pursue an acting career, Hawthorne slogged away for years in relative obscurity, oftentimes hovering precipitously close to complete bankruptcy. His early career proved to be so disappointing that the actor returned to Cape Town for a time, but he ultimately returned to England to try his luck all over again. His second attempt was thankfully more successful than his first, and although it would be years before he would be duly appreciated, he did enjoy some measure of success in London's West End. Hawthorne's first helping of international acclaim came with his portrayal of Sir Humphrey Appleby on the popular British television series Yes, Minister during the '80s. His work on the political satire earned him a number of BAFTA awards and such fame in his native country that he was on occasion mistaken for being an actual politician, even, reportedly, by Queen Elizabeth herself. The actor went on to establish himself as one of Britain's great performers, winning a 1991 Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway production of Shadowlands and a 1992 Olivier Award (as well as an Evening Standard Award and a host of other honors) for his title role in the Royal National Theatre's production of The Madness of George the Third. His work in the latter play was adapted to the screen in 1994 with Nicholas Hytner's widely acclaimed The Madness of King George. Again, Hawthorne enjoyed great critical praise for his portrayal of the mentally unbalanced king, earning an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA award for his rich, manic, and ultimately dignified performance.Hawthorne, who had been appearing onscreen since 1972's Young Winston, subsequently did starring and supporting work in a number of high profile films, including Richard Loncraine's Richard III (1996), Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997), The Object of My Affection (1998), and David Mamet's acclaimed adaptation of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (1999), which cast Hawthorne as the father of the title character. The actor, who offscreen has enjoyed a long relationship with writer Trevor Bentham, earned additional recognition for his contributions to film, television, and the theatre when he was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1987. In 1999, he was further recognized in the Queen's 1999 New Year's Honours List when he received a much-deserved knighthood.

Trivia: British lead actor, onscreen from the '60s.

Trivia: Alfred Burke exemplifies poet Dylan Thomas' famous line: "Old age should burn and rage at close of day." Years past his 80th birthday, Burke signed on to play Professor Armando Dippet in the second Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The move was daring, for it risked turning Burke into an icon of Potter zealots more than 70 years his junior -- and possibly even into a Dippet Doll for sale at Christmas. Such attention would make it difficult for him to find time to slouch into the oblivious comfort of an armchair before a fireplace, cup of tea in hand, as most octogenarians are wont to do. But of course, Burke has never been one to slouch. He's been acting since the 1930s in a diversity of challenging roles such as Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in The House on Garibaldi Street, Jewish moneylender Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Karol Wojtyla's father in Pope John Paul II, the prisoner Alyosha in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and shopkeeper Lurgan Sahib in Kim. Testifying to his ability to portray characters convincingly was this BBC report: While Burke was playing the Rev. Patrick Brontë in a 1973 TV series about the Brontë sisters, tourist visits to the Brontë parsonage soared to an unprecedented number -- 250,000 -- that year. Burke was born on February 28, 1918, in the Peckham district of London, England. After training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he performed regularly in stage, film, and television productions. However, not until 1965 did he gain widespread recognition in the U.K. That was the year he began portraying Frank Marker, a shabby detective working out of a small office in the TV series Public Eye, which won critical acclaim, awards, and the admiration of millions of viewers during its ten-year run. Burke also appeared frequently in another hit TV series, The Avengers. Throughout his career, Burke has had a penchant for playing policemen, clerics, military officers, and others who carry a badge or wear a uniform. For example, in military roles, he has played a rear admiral (Longitude), a major (Enemy at the Door), a captain (No Time to Die), a lieutenant-colonel (Amère Victoirè), and a petty officer (Yangtse Incident). In clerical and police roles, he has portrayed a pope (The Borgias), a minister (The Brontës of Haworth), a detective superintendent (The Night Caller), and an inspector (20,000 Pound Kiss). Remarkably, Burke has also found time to perform Shakespeare. In 1949, theatergoers saw him as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at the Nottingham Playhouse and as Roderigo in Othello at the Embassy Theatre in London. Forty-seven years later, in 1996, he played Egeus in a film production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then in 2000, he played John of Gaunt in Richard II with the Royal Shakespeare Company. A year later, at age 83, he played Escalus in Romeo and Juliet, another Royal Shakespeare Company production.

Trivia: Growing up in Scotland, the descendent of Irish immigrants, Brian Cox always felt an affinity to American cinema that eventually led him to pursue his career stateside. Born on June 1, 1946, in Dundee, Scotland, Cox knew he wanted to act from an early age, but identified more with the characters portrayed in American films than in "zany British comedies," to use his phrase. While working at the local theater, where he started by mopping the stage, the 15-year-old Cox would watch the actors and study their styles to separate the wheat from the chaff. He attended drama school in London and got caught up in British theater and television during the 1970s. Cox landed on Broadway in the early '80s, but found more closed doors than open ones. It was while performing a play transplanted from the U.K. that a casting agent for Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) noticed him. The film would become the first cinematic treatment of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter (spelled "Lecktor" at the time) character, which Anthony Hopkins would make his own in Silence of the Lambs (1991). Cox was cast in the role, paving the way for the success that had eluded him until his 40th year.Despite the breakthrough, Cox remained better identified with television than film during the late '80s and early '90s, though his roles significantly increased in number. His initiation to regular film work came through appearances in two 1995 sword epics, Braveheart and Rob Roy. Over the latter half of the 1990s he materialized in character-actor roles -- police officers, doctors, fathers -- in such films as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Kiss the Girls (1997), Rushmore (1998), and The Minus Man (1999). Although he appears more often in American than British cinema, Cox has also paid homage to his Scottish and Irish roots, such as playing an IRA heavy in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer (1997).In 2001, Cox secured major acclaim -- and an American Film Institute nomination for best supporting actor -- with the release of L.I.E., the debut film of director Michael Cuesta. Like Todd Solondz' critical darling Happiness (1998), the film presents a child molester (Cox) as one of its major characters without condemning him, if not actually leaving him altogether unjudged. Cox's complicated, intense portrayal enabled such shades of gray, raising the character above the bottom rung of the morality food chain.As the decade continued, so did Cox's visibility in bigger hollywood films. In 2002 alone, he took on substantial roles in The Bourne Identity, The Rookie, The Ring, The 25th Hour, and Adaptation, a film that saw him stealing scenes with an appropriately over-the-top turn as blowhard screenwriting guru Robert McKee. The following year audiences could see him in the blockbuster comic-book sequel X2: X-Men United, and in 2004 he starred alongside Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the epic retelling of the Iliad, Troy. He returned to the Bourne franchise for The Bourne Supremacy, and appeared in the thriller Red Eye. He was the psychiatrist in the comedy Running With Scissors, and in 2007 portrayed Melvin Belli in David Fincher's Zodiac. He was cast in the geriatric action film Red, and joined up with Wes Anderson a second time to lend his voice to a bit part in Fantastic Mr. Fox. In 2011 Ralph Finnes tapped Cox to play Menenius in his big-screen adaptation of The Bard's Coriolanus.

Trivia: British actor Lee Montague was most active on stage and television. He averaged about one film per year after his 1959 movie debut in The Savage Innocents. In the mid '70s, Montague began showing up on American-financed TV miniseries which required European location shooting. Lee Montague was seen in Franco Zeffirelli's expensive, all star TV production Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and in the harrowing multipart historical drama Holocaust (1978).

Trivia: Trained at the RADA, Ronald Pickup made his London theatrical bow in 1964. Since that time, Pickup has played an abundance of Shakespeare on stage and television: his bravura 1984 performance as Titus Andronicus on the BBC/PBS Shakespeare Plays series can make the flesh creep even when one is only thinking about it. In films from 1968, Pickup has played such prominent roles as Stravinsky in the 1980 biopic Nijinsky. Even busier on television, he was seen as Randolph Churchill in the 1975 biopic Jennie and as Whitlock in the 1994 TV-movie Gone With the Wind-sequel Scarlet. He is also a regular or semi-regular in quite a few British TV series: Moving (1985), Oscar (1986), Fortunes of War (1987), Not with a Bang (1990) and The Riff Raff Element (1994). Additionally, Ronald Pickup has supplied the voice of Aslan in the TV adaptations of C.S. Lewis' "Narnia" stories.