Richard Attenborough

Richard Attenborough had two brothers, naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough and John Attenborough. During the Second World War, his parents also adopted two German Jewish girls who had been brought to Britain as part of the Kindertransport.

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Richard Attenborough was a close friend of Diana, Princess of Wales, and privately coached her to help her become more confident about public speaking in the early years of her marriage. She always called him "Dickie".

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Richard Attenborough reprised his Jurassic Park (1993) character John Hammond for Universal Studios' Jurassic Park: The Ride attraction. He appears in a short film at the start of the ride and tells you that the NEW Jurassic Park (the ride you are on) is completely safe and that no incident like the one in Costa Rica in 1993 ever happened.

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Richard Attenborough directed four actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Ben Kingsley, Denzel Washington, Robert Downey Jr. and Debra Winger. Kingsley won the Oscar for his performance in Gandhi (1982).

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12/02: Richard Attenborough said he would come back in front of the camera only once more, despite claiming he would never act again, for a single role: Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films.

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Richard Attenborough was the last Second World War veteran to win the Oscar for Best Director.

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26.12.04: Members of Richard Attenborough's family — his daughter Jane, son-in-law Michael Holland, grandchildren Sam, Lucy and Alice, and Michael's mother Jane — were holidaying in Phuket, Thailand, when the region was struck by the South Asian tsunami on Boxing Day 2004. Lord Attenborough lost his daughter, his mother-in-law and his 14-year-old granddaughter Lucy in the tragedy. His 17-year-old eldest granddaughter Alice was seriously injured, while his son-in-law and grandson escaped unharmed.

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According to his brother David Attenborough, Richard could no longer walk before he died and could not move in a wheelchair. He still had all his other faculties, however, and was as outgoing as ever.

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1978: Richard Attenborough officially retired from acting. He agreed to return to acting in Jurassic Park (1993), saying he was a great fan of Steven Spielberg and had always felt bad that Gandhi (1982) won the Best Picture award over E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg had previously wanted him for the role of Tootles in Hook (1991), but he was busy directing Chaplin (1992) at the time.

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Steven Spielberg called Richard Attenborough an influence.

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Directing Gandhi (1982) was Richard Attenborough's passion in life.

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Richard Attenborough was the former father-in-law of actress Jane Seymour.

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Richard Attenborough was the father of director Michael Attenborough (born 1950) with Sheila Sim, and of daughters Jane Attenborough (born 1955) and actress Charlotte Attenborough (born 1959). All of them, along with his brother David, lived 15 minutes apart.

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1952: Richard Attenborough played the first leading role in Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap", now the world's longest-running play.

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Richard Attenborough died on 23 August 2014 at Denville Hall care home in Northwood, London, at lunch, five days before his 91st birthday. He had moved into the care home in March 2013 after his health deteriorated. His wife Sheila had lived there since June 2012.

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Richard Attenborough was Life President of Chelsea Football Club.

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Before Steven Spielberg entrusted the post-production of Jurassic Park (1993) to his friend George Lucas, he thought he would have to split his time between that work and directing Schindler's List (1993). At one point Spielberg asked the newly emerged Attenborough to serve as a second-unit director on Schindler's List (1993). This would have reunited him with Ben Kingsley, whom he had directed in Gandhi (1982), the film that beat E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) for Best Picture and Best Director. Attenborough's services turned out to be unnecessary, though he did have his own connection to the material. Attenborough himself was not Jewish, but he had two Jewish sisters: after the Second World War his parents adopted two young girls whose parents had died in the Holocaust.

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Richard Attenborough played a small role as a maniac wearing glasses in A Bridge Too Far (1977). It was his only acting role in a film he directed.

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After Joseph Mazzello played his grandson in Jurassic Park (1993), Attenborough cast him as Douglas Gresham in his next directing project, Shadowlands (1993).

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In August 2008, Richard Attenborough was readmitted to hospital when his heart stopped beating for a time, and in December 2008 he was hospitalised again after a fall left him in a coma for several days.

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Richard Attenborough was 25 years old when he played the 14-year-old Jack Read in The Outsider (1948).

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Richard Attenborough is one of six actors who have won an Oscar for Best Director, alongside Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner and Robert Redford.

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In 2003, Richard Attenborough was appointed President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), a post that had been vacant since Princess Diana's death in 1997.

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Richard Attenborough is one of ten directors to have won the Golden Globe, Directors Guild, BAFTA and Oscar awards for the same film, taking them for Gandhi (1982). The other directors to achieve this are Mike Nichols for The Graduate (1967), Miloš Forman for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Oliver Stone for Platoon (1986), Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List (1993), Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain (2005), Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity (2013) and Roma (2018), Alejandro G. Iñárritu for The Revenant (2015) and Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water (2017).

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Richard Attenborough attended Princess Diana's funeral along with Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

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Richard Attenborough was a close friend of the British actor Sir John Mills for many years and gave a tribute at his funeral in April 2005.

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Richard Attenborough died only thirteen days after his Hamlet (1996) co-star Robin Williams.

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In 2008, the UK Regional Critics' Film Awards were renamed the Richard Attenborough Film Awards in his honour.

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As of 2024, Richard Attenborough is the only actor to have won two Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actor without ever being nominated for an Oscar.

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Richard Attenborough received an honorary doctorate from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

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In 1990, Richard Attenborough was made a Freeman of the City of Leicester, England.

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Richard Attenborough trained at RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), of which he later became President.

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In 1993, Richard Attenborough became a Fellow of King's College, London.

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Richard Attenborough is the godfather of Emma Forbes.

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In 2004, 57 years after Richard Attenborough appeared in Brighton Rock (1948), his son Michael Attenborough directed a musical version of Graham Greene's novel.

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Richard Attenborough became a Fellow of the British Film Institute for his outstanding contribution to film culture.

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Richard Attenborough directed Anthony Hopkins in five films: Young Winston (1972), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Magic (1978), Chaplin (1992) and Shadowlands (1993).

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Richard Attenborough and his grandson Will Attenborough both appeared in films titled Dunkirk, made roughly sixty years apart, which detail the evacuation of British soldiers from battle in World War II: Richard in Dunkirk (1958) and Will in Dunkirk (2017).

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He was appointed CBE in the 1967 Queen's Birthday Honours, was knighted in the 1976 Queen's New Year Honours, and became a life peer in the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours.

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Steven Spielberg offered Attenborough the role of Tootles in Hook (1991), but he had to turn it down because he was going to direct Chaplin (1992). Arthur Malet was cast instead. Spielberg later had Attenborough take the role of John Hammond in Jurassic Park (1993), his first acting role since The Human Factor (1979).

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From 2002 he was the third president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

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He appeared in six films with his brother-in-law Gerald Sim: The Angry Silence (1960), Whistle Down the Wind (1961), Only Two Can Play (1962), Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), The Last Grenade (1970) and A Bridge Too Far (1977), which Attenborough also directed.

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In an AFI poll he named Charles Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925) as his favourite film.

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He was awarded honorary D.Litt degrees by the Universities of Leicester, Kent and Sussex in 1970, 1981 and 1987 respectively.

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Of the twelve films he directed, Magic (1978), A Chorus Line (1985) and Closing the Ring (2007) were the only ones not based on real events.

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He was 26 years old when he played a schoolboy in 'The Guinea Pig', in which his wife Sheila Sim played the school's house mistress.

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He and his family lived in Richmond Green in Surrey, next to his brother David.

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He appeared alongside Candice Bergen in The Sand Pebbles (1966) and later directed her in Gandhi (1982).

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He was part of the 500 Club on Albemarle Street in London.

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Carl Foreman, in his first directorial effort Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), offered him the chance both to direct Young Winston (1972) and to play Lord Randolph Churchill in the film. He turned down the second offer.

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He was Tom Attenborough's grandfather.

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He initially nearly turned down directing 'A Bridge Too Far' because he was preparing to make 'Gandhi', after which a state of emergency was declared in India, allowing him to make 'Bridge', which had the largest budget of any film up to that time.

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He won 5 BAFTAs and 8 Oscars.

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He appeared in five films with John Mills: In Which We Serve (1942), Operation Disaster (1950), The Baby and the Battleship (1956), Dunkirk (1958) and Hamlet (1996). He also directed him in three films: Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Young Winston (1972) and Gandhi (1982).

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He appeared in 10 Rillington Place (1971) alongside Pat Heywood, Robert Hardy and Basil Dignam, and later directed them in Young Winston (1972).

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Richard Attenborough made his stage debut as a fairy in Iolanthe while still at school.

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Goldcrest raised two-thirds of the $22 million needed for Gandhi, with the rest of the money coming from India.

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He was initially considered by director Alexander Mackendrick for the role of Harry in The Ladykillers (1955). The role ultimately went to Peter Sellers.

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He appeared in three films with his wife Sheila Sim: Dancing with Crime (1947), The Outsider (1948) and The Magic Box (1951).

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He took the role in Dr Dolittle as a last-minute change.

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His mother, Mary, was president of the Leicester Little Theatre.

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His father, Frederick, was the MA Director of University College in Leicester.

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When he achieved no academic success, his father gave him an ultimatum: he must apply for the Leverhulme Scholarship to RADA and win it, or return to further academic study. He entered RADA at 17. While there he met and fell in love with fellow student Sheila Sim, and married her in 1945.

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In 2003 he was awarded the Patricia Rothermere Award at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards for lifetime service to theatre.

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He directed his brother-in-law Gerald Sim in seven films: Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Young Winston (1972), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Gandhi (1982), Cry Freedom (1987), Chaplin (1992) and Shadowlands (1993).

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He is the brother-in-law of the actor Gerald Sim.

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When he began planning to make Gandhi, he approached Peter Finch, Albert Finney, Tom Courtney, Alec Guinness and Dirk Bogarde for the role of Gandhi.

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He became chairman of BFI Goldcrest and vice-chairman of British Channel 4 television.

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A memorial service was held for him at Westminster Abbey in London on 17 March 2015.

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While in the RAF he was taken off duty because he starred in a recruitment film, 'Journey Together'.

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Together with John Mills he ran the 500 Restaurant and club on Albemarle Street in London.

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Richard Attenborough had only one long-term film contract, with The Boulting Brothers, whom he met when he was assigned from RAF Training Command to John Boulting's RAF film unit to appear in 'Journey Together'.

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During the Second World War, Richard Attenborough served as a flight sergeant air gunner in the RAF, during which he was temporarily reassigned to star in an official RAF film.

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Richard Attenborough had been involved with the University of Sussex in some capacity since 1970; on 20 March 1998, he was elected the university's Chancellor, succeeding the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, who had held the post since 1985.

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Richard Attenborough appeared alongside John Gielgud in The Human Factor (1979), Hamlet (1996) and Elizabeth (1998), and later directed him in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and Gandhi (1982).

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To secure financing from Joseph E. Levine for his dream project Gandhi (1982), Richard Attenborough directed both A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Magic (1978).

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Richard Attenborough appeared alongside Robert Flemyng in The Outsider (1948) and The Magic Box (1951), and later directed him in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Young Winston (1972) and Shadowlands (1993).

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Richard Attenborough appeared alongside Michael Byrne in Conduct Unbecoming (1975) and later directed him in A Bridge Too Far (1977).

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Richard Attenborough was considered for the roles of Dr. Hans Fallada, Dr. Bukovsky, Sir Percy Heseltine and Dr. Armstrong in Lifeforce (1985).

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Richard Attenborough had taken the role of Archbishop Langton in the period action-drama Ironclad (2011), but had to withdraw after a debilitating fall down the stairs of his home, which led to complications and his death. Charles Dance replaced him.

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At the age of 25, Richard Attenborough played a 14-year-old schoolboy in The Guinea Pig.

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Richard Attenborough directed his former daughter-in-law Jane Seymour in two films: Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and Young Winston (1972).

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Richard Attenborough appeared alongside Joseph Mazzello in Jurassic Park (1993) and later directed him in Shadowlands (1993).

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Richard Attenborough appeared alongside Michael Denison in The Magic Box (1951) and later directed him in Shadowlands (1993).

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Richard Attenborough appeared with Laurence Olivier in The Magic Box (1951) and David Copperfield (1970), and later directed him in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and A Bridge Too Far (1977).

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Richard Attenborough appeared alongside Saeed Jaffrey, Tom Alter and Barry John in The Chess Players (1977) and later directed them in Gandhi (1982).

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His first major success was Brighton Rock.

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Johnny Depp met with Richard to discuss the lead role in his Chaplin film, though he knew he would not be free to take it.

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He was satirized by Greg Proops.

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For the role of RSM Lauderdale in Guns at Batasi, he spent a great deal of time at Chelsea Barracks watching RSM's at work and studying their movements.

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He and Sheila Sim were students at RADA, but although they were aware of each other, they never met in class. Their first time together was when RADA staged a season of Shakespeare plays for evacuated children in Wales, and they appeared together in Twelfth Night, though they did not marry until 1945. In the meantime, he had joined the RAF as a flight sergeant/air gunner.

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He appeared with Marianne Stone in Brighton Rock (1948) and later in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969).

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He was a great supporter of Chelsea Football Club.

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Biography: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 78-84. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1988.

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He was the father-in-law of Karen Lewis-Attenborough and Graham Sinclair.

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9/05: He attended the funeral of British film producer Lord John Brabourne.

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He was chairman of Goldcrest Films and the British Film Institute, and vice-chairman of Channel Four Television.

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The budget of the film Gandhi was 22 million dollars; two-thirds of it came from Goldcrest and the rest from India.

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