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Actor-director Richard Attenborough dies at 90

aking turns as an actor, producer and director and picking up a mantlepiece full of awards along the Tway, Richard Attenborough, 90, was a much-loved and long admired fixture in the British film industry. From his first acting role in 1942 war movie “In Which We Serve”, the acclaimed “Brighton Rock”, through to the multiple Oscar-winning “Gandhi”, which he directed, and Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park”, he dominated the British film industry during a long and hugely success- ful career. A member of the House of Lords, he was also tireless in his charity work, including as a goodwill ambassador to UNICEF, was president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and life president of Chelsea football club. A man with strong family ties, he married his wife Sheila at 21, and lived in the same house for five decades in south-west London, an area that was also home to his younger brother David, the famous naturalist and wildlife presenter. But tragedy struck in 2004 when one of Attenborough’s three chil- dren, Jane Holland, and her daughter Lucy died in the Asian Boxing Day tsunami. Famously open with his emotions, he said he never quite got over their deaths. Born in Cambridge in This October 29, 1998 file photo shows British film August 1923, he made his big screen debut in 1942 director Richard Attenborough, who received the with “In Which we Serve”, the Noel Coward-David Lean prize for Theatre/Film, as he makes a speech during tribute to the Royal Navy at war, and appeared in more In this Monday, April 11, 1983 file photo, British actor and director Richard Attenborough the award ceremony of the tenth Premium Imperial than 60 films over the next 50 years. The clean-cut holds his two Oscars for his epic movie “Gandhi” at the 55th annual Academy Awards in Los Awards in Tokyo. —AFP young Attenborough became a regular feature in the Angeles. —AP/AFP photos cheerful, stiff-upper-lip cinema of the postwar years, but he achieved greater distinction in murkier roles, particularly as the villain Pinkie in the 1947 adapta- tion of Graham Greene’s novel “Brighton Rock”. By the 1960s he had come to the attention of Hollywood and obtained regular character roles in such as films as John Sturges’s war epic “The Great Escape” and Robert Aldrich’s “Flight of the Phoenix”. He had also acquired a taste for production, forming his own company with Bryan Forbes to make “The Angry Silence” and other social realist films such as Forbes’ own “The L-Shaped Room”.

His biggest success In 1962 Attenborough was approached by an associ- ate of the family of Mahatma Gandhi about making a film about the life of the founder of independent India. Although he had no familiarity with the subject, or with India, he met Pandit Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi the following year. It would take another two decades for the project to be realised—by 1980 Atten- borough had secured the money, and “Gandhi” became his biggest success. The 1982 film won eight Oscars, including best director and best actor for Ben Kingsley, five Golden Globes, five Baftas (the British Academy of Film and Television Art) and brought him world acclaim. By this point Attenborough was an old hand at di- recting—his first attempt in 1969 was “Oh! What a Love- ly War”, a satire set on Brighton Pier, and he later delved further into patriotism with the 1972 “Young Winston”, the first of what was to become a lengthy series of biop- ics. He continued acting occasionally, pausing to direct the 26-million dollar war epic “A Bridge Too Far” (1977) and “Magic” (1978), starring Anthony Hopkins, while In this May 17, 1970 file photo, British actor Richard Attenborough (center) who portrays mass murderer John Reginald Christie in the lead role of “10 picking up a knighthood along the way. After “Gandhi”, Rillington Place” stands alongside John Hurt (right) and Judy Geeson in London, England. he tried his hand at something much more light- hearted in “A Chorus Line” (1985), before turning back to the more weighty, though politically-safe, biopic “Cry Freedom” (1987), about murdered anti-apartheid activ- ist Steve Biko. Other projects included “Chaplin” (1992), a critical flop, the well-crafted weepie “Shadowlands” (1993) about the writer CS Lewis, and an account of the early years of Ernest Hemingway, “A Time to Love” (1997). Attenborough stayed behind the camera throughout the 1980s, but was enticed back onto the big screen by for Spielberg’s dinosaur blockbuster “Jurassic Park” in 1993 and its sequel. In 1994, he played Santa Claus in the family drama “Miracle on 34th Street”, and support- ing roles in Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet” and Shekhar Kapur’s “Elizabeth” followed later. As he passed 80, Attenborough slowed down but kept working, includ- ing writing his memoirs, “Entirely Up to You, Darling”, with close friend Diana Hawkins. Towards the end of his life Attenborough moved into a care home with his wife. Outside the world of movies, Attenborough was a lifelong supporter of Chelsea Football Club and was In this Wednesday, April 9, made life president in 2008 after serving as a director 2008 file photo, British ac- since 1969.—AFP tor and director Richard At- tenborough arrives at the Galaxy British Book Awards in London.