Attenborough, Richard Samuel, Baron of Richmond upon Thames

Attenborough, Richard Samuel, Baron of Richmond upon Thames (1923- ), British actor, director, and producer, born in Cambridge and educated in Leicester and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the brother of naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Richard Attenborough worked on stage from 1941 onwards, starting with Ah! Wilderness, and made his film debut in In Which We Serve (1942), written by Noel Coward, and directed by Coward and David Lean. Film stardom followed in 1947 in The Man Within, from the novel by Graham Greene. In both, Attenborough played the part of a coward, while his oily teenage killer in Brighton Rock (1947), also from a work by Greene, further helped typecast him, with only a few sympathetic roles open to him until Private’s Progress (1956), in which he made an effective leap into character acting. During this period he continued to make stage appearances, in, for example, Sweet Madness (1952) and The Mousetrap (1952-1954), from the Agatha Christie play.

In 1959 Attenborough formed a production company, Beaver Films, with British film actor, director, and scriptwriter Bryan Forbes. The company was dissolved in 1964. Attenborough’s film career further developed in the meantime: he co-produced and starred in The Angry Silence (1960), and from The Great Escape (1963) onward he appeared mainly in British and American films. He turned to directing with Oh What a Lovely War! (1969), which he also co-produced. His greatest success came with the Hollywood-funded Gandhi (1982), which won Academy Awards (Oscars) for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Ben Kingsley), among others. The subsequent films he directed (and co-produced) were also biographies or were inspired by incidents from real people’s lives: Cry Freedom! (1987), the story of the black South African activist Steve Biko; Chaplin (1992), the story of the troubled life of the great comedian; Shadowlands (1993), the moving love story of writer C. S. Lewis and American poet Joy Gresham; and In Love and War (1996), about the romance between Ernest Hemingway and a nurse, which served as the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). He directed Grey Owl in 1999, a true story set in Canada's vast wilderness.

After his performance in the Indian film Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977; The Chess Players), by Satyajit Ray, Attenborough left acting for a period, returning in the blockbuster Jurassic Park (1993) and Miracle on 34th Street (1994). In 1997 he reprised his role as John Hammond in the Jurassic Park sequel, Lost World, and in 1998 appeared as Sir William Cecil in the award-winning Elizabeth.

Attenborough has been involved with many organizations and charitable causes outside the film industry. He has published a number of books, including In Search of Gandhi (1982) and Cry Freedom, A Pictorial Record (1987). He was knighted in 1976 and made a peer in 1993.