Birth name:Richard Samuel Attenborough Birth:29 August 1923 Died:24 August 2014 Nationality:
Career / Biography
Richard Attenborough was a very successful British actor and director. He was married to the actress Sheila Sim. He studied acting at RADA and then joined the RAF film unit during World War 2. After the war he was regularly acting on the stage and having small roles in several films including In Which We Serve and A Matter Of Life And Death. He had a contract with the Boulting brothers and his first major role was as a gangster in Brighton Rock. Boys In Brown, was character study of life in a boys borstal. His next major role was in Ealing Studio's Dunkirk. In the Man Upstairs he plays a distrubed man undergoing a mental breakdown and film runs in real time. Only Two Can Play was a very different role in a romantic comedy with Peter Sellars. The Dock Brief was another film with Peter Sellars in a courtroom comedy thriller. He then appeared in one of his best known films, The Great Escape. In Seance on a Wet Afternoon he plays a henpecked husbandpersuaded to commit a crime and then wants to do the right thing. A strong character driven performance. The Flight Of The Phoenix was a big Hollywood film, an one of the few Hollywood films he made. In 10 Rillington Place he played a serial killer, and plays the character as a bland person, but an evil killer. Rosebud was Otto Preminger's film on internatinal terrorism. After this film he tooka break from acting to concentrate on being a director and producer, with films like Gandhi for which he won his only Oscar for Best Director. He did return to acting in the 1990's with Jurassic Park. He also acted in several other films, with relatively small roles, including in Elizabeth.
