Richard Attenborough

Richard Attenborough (born August 29, 1923, Cambridge, England—died August 24, 2014, London) was an English actor, director, and producer known for his dynamic on-screen presence, nuanced work behind the camera, and charity efforts.

Attenborough—the eldest of three brothers, one of whom was nature documentarian Sir David Attenborough—was raised in Leicester, England, where his father was principal of the local university. In 1942 he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), and that year he also made his film debut in Noël Coward’s In Which We Serve. He had made his stage debut in 1941.

Following a stint (1943–46) in the Royal Air Force during World War II, part of which was spent with the RAF film unit, Attenborough established himself as a character actor, which included creating the role of Detective Sergeant Trotter in the original West End production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap (1952). He also garnered accolades for his film portrayals of a sociopathic thug in Brighton Rock (1947); a soldier in the comedy Private’s Progress (1956) and its sequel, I’m All Right Jack (1959); and a squadron leader engineering a breakout from a German POW camp in The Great Escape (1963). Attenborough won Golden Globe Awards for best supporting actor for The Sand Pebbles (1966) and for his comedic turn as a circus owner in Doctor Dolittle (1967). After a lengthy acting hiatus, he returned to the screen in American director Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993), playing the obliviously hubristic owner of a dinosaur theme park, a role he reprised in the 1997 sequel. He then played Kris Kringle in a 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and appeared as Sir William Cecil in Elizabeth (1998).

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Attenborough was also noted as a director. In 1969 he directed his first film, the musical Oh! What a Lovely War (1969). Gandhi (1982)—his biographical film about Mohandas K. Gandhi—earned eight Academy Awards, including those for best picture and best director. Further directorial efforts included A Bridge Too Far (1977), the antiapartheid film Cry Freedom (1987), the Charlie Chaplin biopic Chaplin (1992), and Shadowlands (1993), a depiction of the relationship between American poet Joy Gresham and English writer C.S. Lewis. He also helmed Closing the Ring (2007), a World War II romance told in flashbacks.

Attenborough served as vice president (1973–95) and president (2002–10) of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and as president (2003–14) of RADA. He was on the board of the education organization United World Colleges and in 1987 became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1967, was knighted in 1976, and was granted a life peerage in 1993. In 1998 he received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for theatre/film.