Richard Attenborough

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Baron Attenborough, Baron Attenborough (29 August 1923 – July 24, 2014) was an English actor, filmmaker, and politician.

He was President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

Attenborough served in the film unit during the Second World War and joined the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

Several bombing attacks throughout Europe were carried out, as well as footage from the rear gunner's position.

Sir David Attenborough, a naturalist, documenter, and broadcaster, as well as John Attenborough, an executive at Alfa Romeo, was his older brother.

He was married to actress Sheila Sim from 1945 to his death. Attenborough, a film director and producer, received two Academy Awards for Gandhi in 1983, including Best Picture and Best Director honors.

Gandhi was named as the 34th best British film of the twentieth century by the British Academy.

He has also received four BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globe Awards.

He is best known for his appearances in Brighton Rock, The Great Escape, 10 Rillington Place, The Sand Pebbles, Miracle on 34th Street (1994) and Jurassic Park as an actor.

Early life

Attenborough was born in Cambridge on August 29, 1923, the eldest of three sons of Mary Attenborough (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who supervised Emmanuel College, Cambridge, wrote a common text on Anglo-Saxon law. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and studied at RADA.

When Frederick Attenborough, Principal of University College Leicester (1932-1941), took in two German Jewish refugee girls, Helga and Irene Bejach, who lived with them in College House and were adopted by the family after the war when it was discovered that their parents had been killed. The sisters immigrated to the United States in the 1950s and lived with an uncle, where they married and obtained American citizenship; Irene died in 1992 and Helga in 2005.

Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He was seconded to the newly formed Royal Air Force Film Production Unit at Pinewood Studios under the command of Flight Lieutenant John Boulting (whose brother Peter Cotes later directed Attenborough in the play The Mousetrap), where he appeared alongside Edward G. Robinson in the propaganda film Journey Together (1945). He then decided to fly with the Film Unit and after further training, where he sustained permanent hearing loss, he qualified as a sergeant, flying on several missions throughout Europe filming, from the rear gunner's position to recording the outcomes of RAF Bomber Command missions.

Personal life

Attenborough's father served as the principal of University College, Leicester, now the city's university. This culminated in a long association with the university, with Attenborough becoming a patron. The university's Embrace Arts at the RA center, which opened in 1997, has been named in his honour. He had two younger brothers, David, a naturalist and broadcaster, and John, a motor trade executive.

Sheila Sim, a married actress in Attenborough, was born in Kensington on January 22, 1945. They lived in Old Friars on Richmond Green in London from 1949 to October 2012.

He was asked to'improve his physical condition' for his role as Pinkie in Brighton Rock in the 1940s. He played for Chelsea Football Club for a fortnight, before becoming close friends with those at the club. He went on to become a director in the 1970s, helping prevent the club from losing its home turf by holding on to his club shares and donating them to Chelsea, worth over £950,000 to Chelsea. Attenborough was appointed Life President of Chelsea Football Club in 2008.

Jane Holland, the couple's elder daughter, was killed on December 26, 2004, along with her mother-in-law Audrey Holland, and Attenborough's 15-year-old granddaughter Lucy, who was on holiday in Khao Lak, Thailand.

On March 8, 2005, a service was held in Attenborough, and Attenborough gave a talk at the national memorial service on May 11, 2005. Samuel Holland, his grandfather who survived the tsunami without injury, and granddaughter Alice Holland, who sustained significant leg injuries, also participated in the service. In Richmond's parish church, a commemorative plaque was laid. Attenborough later described the Boxing Day of 2004 as "the worst day of my life." Michael (born 13 February 1950) and Charlotte (born 29 June 1959) Attenborough had two other children. Michael is a dramatist, deputy artistic director of the RSC and artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in London, and he has been married to actress Karen Lewis since 1984; they have two sons, Tom and Will. Charlotte, an actress, married Graham Sinclair in 1993 and has two children.

Despite his opposition to the Iraq War, he endorsed Labour in the 2005 General Election.

Attenborough collected Picasso ceramics from the 1950s. In 2007, an exhibition dedicated to family members who were killed in the tsunami, more than 100 items were on display at Leicester's New Walk Museum and Art Gallery.

In 2008, he released Entirely Up to You, Darling's informal autobiography, alongside his colleague Diana Hawkins.

Attenborough was admitted with heart disease and was fitted with a pacemaker in August 2008. He died at his home after a stroke in December 2008 and was admitted to St George's Hospital in Tooting, South West London, where he was admitted. Attenborough's comprehensive art collection, which included works by L. S. Lowry, Christopher R. Nevinson, and Graham Sutherland, sold as part of a "house clearance" auction in November 2009, raising £4.6 million at Sotheby's.

He sold his Rhubodach estate on the Scottish Isle of Bute in January 2011 for £1.48 million. David Attenborough said in May 2011 that his brother had been restricted to a wheelchair since his injury in 2008, but that he was also capable of speaking out. "He won't be making any more films," the director said.

Sheila Sim joined Denville Hall in Northwood, London, in June 2012, shortly before her 90th birthday, where she and Attenborough helped raise funds. Attenborough was revealed in October 2012 that it was selling Old Friars' family home, as well as the Beaver Lodge, which featured a sound-proofed cinema in the garden, for £11.5 million. "He and his wife used to love the house, but they now need full-time care," his brother David said. It's simply not feasible to have the house on any more. Attenborough and his wife married in December 2012, as revealed by their son Michael.

Attenborough died at Denville Hall on August 24, 2014, at the age of 90. He asked that his ashes be laid in a vault at St Mary Magdalene church in Richmond, alongside those of his daughter Jane Holland and his granddaughter, Lucy, who died in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. He was surviving by his wife of 69 years, their oldest and youngest children, six grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his younger brother David. Sheila Sim, his widow, died on January 19, 2016, aged 93.

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Acting career

Attenborough's acting career started on stage and he appeared in shows at Leicester's Little Theatre, Dover Street, prior to his going to RADA, where he remained Patron until his death. Attenborough's first major credited role was provided in Brian Desmond Hurst's The Hundred Pound Window (1944) playing Tommy Draper who helps rescue his accountant father who has taken a wrong turn in life. Attenborough's film career had begun in 1942, however, in an uncredited role as a sailor deserting his post under fire in the Noël Coward/David Lean production In Which We Serve (his name and character were omitted from the original release-print credits), a role that helped type-cast him for many years as a spiv in films like London Belongs to Me (1948), Morning Departure (1950) and his breakthrough role as Pinkie Brown in John Boulting's film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock (1947), a role that he had previously played to great acclaim at the Garrick Theatre in 1943. He played the lead at age 22 as an RAF cadet pilot in Journey Together (1945), in which top-billed Edward G. Robinson played his instructor.

In 1949, exhibitors voted him the sixth most popular British actor at the box office.

Early in his stage career, Attenborough starred in the West End production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which went on to become the world's longest running stage production. Both he and his wife were among the original cast members of the production, which opened in 1952 at the Ambassadors Theatre, moving to St Martin's Theatre in 1974; the production ran continuously for nearly seven decades, until it was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The Attenboroughs took a 10 per cent profit-participation in the production, which was paid for out of their combined weekly salary; Attenborough later wrote in his autobiography, "It proved to be the wisest business decision I've ever made... but foolishly I sold some of my share to open a short-lived Mayfair restaurant called 'The Little Elephant' and later still, disposed of the remainder in order to keep Gandhi afloat."

At the beginning of the 1950s Attenborough featured on radio on the BBC Light Programme introducing records.

Attenborough worked prolifically in British films for the next 30 years, including in the 1950s, appearing in several successful comedies for John and Roy Boulting, such as Private's Progress (1956) and I'm All Right Jack (1959).

In 1963, he appeared alongside Steve McQueen and James Garner in The Great Escape as RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett ("Big X"), the head of the escape committee, based on the real-life exploits of Roger Bushell. It was his first appearance in a major Hollywood film blockbuster and his most successful film thus far. During the 1960s, he expanded his range of character roles in films such as Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) and Guns at Batasi (1964), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Regimental Sergeant Major Lauderdale. In 1965 he played Lew Moran opposite James Stewart in The Flight of the Phoenix. In 1967 and 1968, he won back-to-back Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor, the first time for The Sand Pebbles, again co-starring Steve McQueen, and the second time for Doctor Dolittle starring Rex Harrison.

His portrayal of the serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place (1971) garnered excellent reviews. In 1977, he played the ruthless General Outram, again to great acclaim, in the Indian director Satyajit Ray's period piece The Chess Players.

He took no acting roles following his appearance in Otto Preminger's version of The Human Factor (1979) until his appearance as John Hammond in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993) and the film's sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). He starred in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street (1994) as Kris Kringle. Later he made occasional appearances in supporting roles, including as Sir William Cecil in the historical drama Elizabeth (1998), Jacob in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and as "The Narrator" in the film adaptation of Spike Milligan's comedy book Puckoon (2002).

He made his only appearance in a film adaptation of Shakespeare when he played the English ambassador who announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead at the end of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).

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