Producer and Director
In the late 1950s, Attenborough formed a production company, Beaver Films, with Bryan Forbes and began to build a profile as a producer on projects including The League of Gentlemen (1959), The Angry Silence (1960) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961), also appearing in the first two of these as an actor.
His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and his acting appearances became sporadic as he concentrated more on directing and producing. He later directed two epic period films: Young Winston (1972), based on the early life of Winston Churchill and A Bridge Too Far (1977), an all-star account of Operation Market Garden in World War II. He won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Director and as the film's producer, the Academy Award for Best Picture for his historical epic, Gandhi and another Golden Globe, this time as Best Director, for the same film in 1983, a project he had been attempting to get made for 18 years. Attenborough also directed the screen version of the musical A Chorus Line (1985) and the anti-apartheid drama Cry Freedom (1987), based on the life and death of the prominent anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko and the experiences of Donald Woods. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films.
His most recent films as director and producer include Chaplin (1992) starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Charlie Chaplin and Shadowlands (1993), based on the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham, (the star of the latter was Anthony Hopkins, who had appeared in four previous films for Attenborough: Young Winston, A Bridge Too Far, Magic and Chaplin) and between 2006-07 Attenborough spent time in Belfast, Northern Ireland, working on his last film as director and producer, Closing the Ring, a love story set in Belfast during the Second World War and starring Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer and Pete Postlethwaite.
Read more about this topic: Richard Attenborough
Famous quotes containing the word director:
“When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go. You heard of that market crash in ‘29? I predicted that.... I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said; nerves, I said. Then I asked myself, “What’s General Motors got to be nervous about?” “Overproduction,” I says. “Collapse.””
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)