Richard Attenborough: A Life

From the intimacy of his home study to the vast scale of his greatest movies, Richard Attenborough: A Life is an homage to the actor, writer, exuberant director, producer, philanthropist, humanitarian and passionate family man, from those who knew him best.

Politicians, peers and performers including Stephen Spielberg, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Penelope Wilton, Gordon Brown, Geraldine James, Lord Puttnam and Lord Grade offer their own very personal recollections of the dynamic ‘life force’ that had such a profound influence on their own lives and careers.

In 1982 Richard Attenborough’s remarkable epic Gandhi swept the board at the Oscars and represented the pinnacle of his movie-making career as a director and producer. Its subject was indicative of a man whose guiding principle, inherited from his parents, was to create films about subjects for which he cared deeply, and was determined to go to any lengths to make.

But Attenborough’s film career, encompassing sixty five years and seventy five movies, began decades earlier. He studied at RADA where, generations later, actor Tom Hiddleston describes him as ‘the Marlon Brando of young UK acting talent’. Ingénue turned ‘50s matinee idol, his mesmerising acting performances ranged from his debut in Noel Coward’s war-time drama In Which We Serve, Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock and his chilling rendition of serial killer Ian Christie in 10 Rillington Place and continued into the 1990s with his great friend Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.

He moved apparently seamlessly to combine his on-screen star quality with becoming one of the most admired and loved film directors of his time, with credits ranging from Oh! What a Lovely War to A Bridge Too Far, Shadowlands, Chaplin and Cry, Freedom.

Credited as the saviour of the British film industry as well as national institutions RADA and BAFTA, Attenborough was also a political activist beyond the world of the arts. His natural liberal outlook and great personal charm led him to infiltrate the establishment but never become part of it, a tireless lobbyist for dozens of charitable causes and champion of injustice. When Channel 4 launched in 1982, Attenborough became a Board Member and later Chairman of this iconoclastic new broadcaster, and later shaped the emergence of Film4.

Alongside his glittering, garlanded, multi-faceted public life, Attenborough is also revealed in private as a man with a deep social conscience, always striving to seek out the next challenge, and devoted to the bedrock of his life, his family.

Producer/Director: David Batty
Executive Producer: Chris Shaw
Production Company: ITN