He preferred real-life derring-do - motor racing and parachuting.īut in 1976, Finch discovered that he had diabetes. Around the same time, Finch declined the Bond offer, as well as one from Richard Lester to play Aramis in "The Three Musketeers". He was quietly authoritative as the cuckolded politician Lord Melbourne in Robert Bolt's "Lady Caroline Lamb" (1973), in a role that had first been offered to Timothy Dalton, a future James Bond. Finch and Francesca Annis, as the Macbeths, were impressively youthful, tortured and impassioned.Įqually outraged and baffled as a bitter ex-RAF hero down on his luck, Finch subtly avoided the temptation to be sympathetic as "the wrong man" accused of being the "neck-tie strangler" in "Frenzy", Hitchcock's first film shot in England for 16 years. There were those who thought it in bad taste that Polanski made a film of the most blood-soaked of all Shakespeare's plays just two years after his wife, Sharon Tate, had been murdered by the followers of Charles Manson. Polanski, who had made his own comic horror movie, "The Fearless Vampire Killers" (1967), thought Finch had the credentials to play Macbeth. His film career began in two hammy Hammer horrors, "The Vampire Lovers" and "The Horror of Frankenstein" (both 1970). Finch then appeared in "Z-Cars" (1967-68) and in 10 episodes of "Counterstrike" (1969), a short-lived BBC sci-fi series about an alien (Finch) sent to Earth to save it from extinction. "But eventually I had to leave because I was becoming more and more involved in the theatre and the SAS demands most of your weekends and several nights a week."įinch had started acting professionally with several different repertory companies around the UK before he got a part in "Crossroads", the popular daytime soap opera, during its first run in 1964. "I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the SAS and I'm still very proud of having been a member," he recalled. After serving in a parachute regiment during his military service, he joined an SAS reserve regiment. He first started acting at school, later gaining experience in amateur theatre groups. It's a very pleasant life, not one of great ambition." Actually, leaving aside the great expectations, Finch's career was a reasonably successful one by normal standards.įinch was born in Caterham, Surrey, the son of a merchant banker. "I usually do one film a year, so I always have enough money to enjoy myself and keep myself out of the public eye. "I never wanted to be a big star," Finch once said. That Finch never achieved the level of stardom that was anticipated may be attributed to his dislike of the kind of media publicity that goes with it and his self-proclaimed lack of ambition. The fact that Finch turned the part down stupefied many commentators. Around the same time he was offered the chance to replace Sean Connery as James Bond in "Live and Let Die" (1973). At the beginning of his film career, he played the title role in Roman Polanski's "The Tragedy of Macbeth" (1971) and starred in Alfred Hitchcock's " Frenzy" (1972). He had the dark good looks, the voice, the charisma and the opportunities. In the 1970s, it seemed a sure bet that the actor Jon Finch, who has died aged 71, would become a durable film star of some magnitude.
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