At the Eclipse Awards dinner in February of 1985, at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, your wandering correspondent found himself in the men’s room washing up at a sink adjacent to the one being used by the actor Albert Finney. It was an opportunity I had to grab.“Mr. Finney, I’m presenting an award later tonight, but I’ve been battling a sore throat and I fear I might lose my voice. Do you have any advice?”Finney dried his hands, glanced my way, and replied, “Drink plenty of water. Speak softly. And keep it short.”Thus ended the lesson, from the man who had transformed himself into Tom Jones, Daddy Warbucks, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Hercule Poirot during a career that began with a bang in 1960 with the gritty British flick “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.”Just four days earlier, Finney had received his fourth Oscar nomination as Best Actor for his tour-de-force as the drunken diplomat in “Under the Volcano,” and here he was dispensing wisdom to some anonymous goofball in a monkey suit worried about his 15 seconds of low-watt fame in front of a horse racing crowd.Finney, though, was right where he wanted to be, which was by the side of Mickey and Karen Taylor and the rest of the Slew o’ Gold crew who had gathered in the fervent hope that their star colt would be named the 1984 Horse of the Year. He was not – John Henry got the nod in a close vote – but Slew o’ Gold was named champion older male, and the guy who presented the award made it through the brief ceremony without sounding like Tom Waits.With the news of Finney’s death this week at 82, there was no getting around the memory of a brush with such a staggering talent. For this movie fan, as 1985 dawned, Finney was the haunted New York detective in “Wolfen,” dealing with a rash of grisly killings. He was George Dunlap, the husband in “Shoot the Moon,” a domestic drama of chilling veracity. And later he would be the indomitable mob boss Leo O’Bannon in “Miller’s Crossing.”As the son of a British bookmaker, Finney was also a man of the Turf who turned some of his early acting money into racehorses like Straight Master, winner of the 1968 William Hill Gold Cup. A decade later, Finney found himself in constant demand by Hollywood studios and looking for an entertaining way to invest his American dollars. Enter the Taylors and their young stallion Seattle Slew, who was about to stand his first season in 1979.Reached at their home in Ketchum, Idaho, a few days after Finney’s passing, Mickey Taylor was asked for his version of the actor’s involvement with Thoroughbreds, and perhaps an anecdote or two from their shared experiences. Instead, Taylor replied:“He was my best friend.”And so the story turned.“He was staying in the Bel-Air Hotel,” Taylor began. “I walked in, he said hi and can I get you a drink. I said he probably didn’t have what I drink – Jack Daniels. He said, ‘That’s good. So do I.’ ”Whiskey and horses. Good times and travel. Finney and the Taylors became inseparable as the sons and daughters of Seattle Slew filled the game with an intensity not seen since the days of Ribot. Finney invested in a breeding right to Slew and before long was selling the babies or racing a few, either in his own name or in partnership with Karen and Mickey.“That winter when we got to know each other, we had an apartment across from Santa Anita,” Karen recalled. “We played the tape of Seattle Slew’s races so much that we broke the tape. We hit it off from the beginning.”She described Finney as very hands-on when it came to their horses, whether at the Taylor farm near Yakima, Wash., or in Kentucky, where Seattle Slew held court.“He and Seattle Slew got on very well,” Karen said. “He would visit him all the time, and especially the last two years before the end.”Seattle Slew died in May of 2002, while Finney and the Taylors continued to share bloodstock – including an interest in the Seattle Slew stallion Vindication – until 2010. Among the sons and daughters of Seattle Slew to carry Finney’s colors were the Grade 3 winner So She Sleeps and the stakes-placed sprinter Synastry.“We have so many memorable memories with him at Christmas and Thanksgiving,” Karen said. “There was a real connection of the heart. We’d always have a room I called ‘Albert’s room.’ Mickey called Albert ‘Pop’ and Albert called Mickey ‘Son,’ even though they were only nine years apart.”Nearing the end of his acting career, Finney managed to work in two Bournes and a Bond. He received his fifth Oscar nomination in 2000 for Supporting Actor in “Erin Brockovich.”“He’d always try and put in a little something for me in his movies,” Mickey said. “He had his character in ‘Erin Brockovich’ do the Teaberry Shuffle, which I’d do when I had a little too much to drink. And in ‘Skyfall,’ his gamekeeper says something about the ‘guns in Idaho.’ ”“He did call us toward the end to say goodbye,” Karen added. “It was so heartfelt. He was the most kind, down-to-earth friend you could have.”“And,” added Mickey, “I’m wearing his mukluks.”