Peter Finch - ©Theda Bara Awards

 

The name I highlight in this post is that of the British actor, television presenter, and poet Peter Finch, born in London. He emigrated to Australia at the age of ten and was raised in Sydney, where he worked in Vaudeville theatre and radio before becoming a film actor. Finch enlisted in the Australian Army on June 2, 1941, serving in the Middle East and acting as an anti-aircraft gunner during the bombing of Darwin. But even during his military service, Peter Finch was allowed to work in radio, theatre, and cinema.

 
Peter Finch won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1977 for the film “Network” (1976), playing “Howard Beale”, a television news anchor who suffers a nervous breakdown live on air after being fired due to low ratings. His character becomes a sensationalist “mad prophet”. Peter Finch was the first actor to win a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, as he died of a heart attack in January 1977, two months before the 49th Academy Awards Ceremony. He also won five BAFTA Awards: Best British Actor in 1957, 1961, and 1962; Best Actor in a Drama in 1972 and 1978; and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Film in 1977.

 
Peter Finch was nominated for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1977, but the nomination was shelved after his death.

 
Peter Finch was born on September 28, 1916, in South Kensington, London, United Kingdom, and died on January 14, 1977, at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, United States, at the age of 60.

 

British actor Peter Finch married three times throughout his life and had several extramarital affairs. His first marriage was to the French ballerina and writer of Romanian origin, Tamara Yevsevievna Tchinarova (1919-2017), better known by her pseudonym Tamara Finch, from 1943 to 1959. The couple had a daughter, the British actress Anita Finch (1949-). They divorced in 1959 after Tamara discovered her husband’s affair with the British actress of Indian origin, Vivien Leigh (1913-1967); His second marriage was to South African actress Yolande Turner (1935-), born Yolande Eileen Turnbull, from 1959 to 1965. The couple had two children: British actress Samantha Finch (1961-) and British film editor Charles Finch (1962-), who is CEO of the brand development and investment company Finch + Partners and also editor-in-chief of the magazine A Rabbit’s Foot; On November 9, 1973, in Rome, Finch married his third and last wife, Jamaican singer Mavis “Eletha” Barrett (1956-), known as Eletha Finch, 40 years younger than her husband. She lived with him until she became a widow. The couple had a daughter named Diana (1974-).