The American Century - Atticus Finch

Atticus Finch is a fictional character in author Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird. A preliminary version of the character also appears in the novel Go Set a Watchman, which is the unedited first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird;, written in the mid 1950's but not published until 2015. Atticus is a lawyer and resident of the fictional Maycomb County, Alabama, and the father of Jeremy Finch and Jean Louise Finch. Lee based the character on her own father, Amasa Coleman Lee, an Alabama lawyer, who, like Atticus, represented black defendants in a highly publicized criminal trial. In 2003 the American Film Institute voted Atticus Finch, as portrayed by Gregory Peck in the 1962 film adaptation, as the greatest hero in American film.