 Without the star's conventional good looks, Frank Finlay has become a much-respected character actor. RADA-trained and on stage from 1957, he triumphed as Iago to Olivier's Othello at the National in 1964, and in the 1965 film version (d. Stuart Burge) for which he received a BAFTA nomination. He played striking supporting roles in many films, from 1962 (as a tetchy railway clerk in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, d. Tony Richardson), including the Chaplain, prosing on about the value of games - as he pats a boy's knee - in I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name (d. Michael Winner, 1967), Inspector Lestrade in A Study in Terror (d. James Hill, 1965) and Murder by Decree (d. Bob Clark, 1978), and, very touchingly, Glenda Jackson's bemused, decent husband in The Return of the Soldier (d. Alan Bridges, 1982, BAFTA-nominated as supporting actor). He has filmed internationally (e.g., The Molly Maguires, US, d. Martin Ritt, 1970; The Three/Four Musketeers, Panama/Spain, d. Richard Lester, 1973/74) and also done a great deal of highly regarded TV, including the very popular Surrey-set, sex-dominated saga, A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (LWT, 1976), and Charles Sturridge's mammoth Longitude (Granada, 2000). He was created CBE in 1984. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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