Richard Attenborough Infosite

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Richard Attenborough Quotes

• And as you sweetly say, David, somebody who I think was having a go at me said that the problem with Attenborough is that substance matters much more to him than style. It was the most charming compliment that I could ever have been given.

• And Forbesy and I were, as you've mentioned David, playing silly parts, and we were typecast, and we didn't feel the sort of movies that we were being asked to play in were things we wanted to play in greatly.

• And I believe we need heroes, I believe we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.

• And my making movies with actors who I think are tremendous because I believe that we, all of us, identify with subject not intellectually easily, but we identify with human beings who we believe are real human beings, four-dimensional human beings, that I understand.

• And that is how I employ my time in cinema, saying things about people who I think have touched us in terms of our value judgement and by example.

• And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.

• And therefore it's very important to me that I use what skill, trade, whatever you want to say it, that I have.

• And whereas I don't suggest for one second that Hemingway falls into the bracket of a heroic figure, he is nevertheless a very grandiose, a very flamboyant, a very theatrically evident figure, who unquestionably changed our views in relation to literature.

• Anyway, we decided to meet together and we formed a company called Beaver Films, Forbesy and I.

• At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling, it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although, of course, I adore them too.

• David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands.

• Denigration is so easy. Denigration is a cheap media passion being indulged at the moment beyond anything I can ever remember.

• Guy was a leading figure in cinema both in the UK and in the United States for over 40 years.

• I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.

• I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.

• I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.

• I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject.

• I do not have a brain that I long for in dealing with matters of which I am ignorant, that don't come within my ken and a rationale, a reason, and argument and so on, and I can't do that and I'm not in that bracket at all.

• I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.

• I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.

• I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.

• I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.

• I understand how to cast and I understand how to get performances out of actors.


 

Richard Attenborough Filmography

Actor

1942 - In Which We Serve
1946 - Journey Together
1946 - A Matter of Life and Death
1946 - School for Secrets
1947 - Brighton Rock
1947 - The Man Within
1948 - London Belongs to Me
1948 - The Guinea Pig
1949 - Boys in Brown
1950 - Morning Departure
1951 - The Magic Box
1951 - Hell Is Sold Out
1952 - Father's Doing Fine
1952 - Eight O’Clock Walk
1952 - Gift Horse
1955 - The Ship That Died of Shame
1956 - Private's Progress
1956 - The Baby and the Battleship
1957 - The Scamp
1957 - Brothers in Law
1958 - Dunkirk
1958 - The Man Upstairs
1958 - Sea of Sand
1959 - The League of Gentlemen
1959 - I'm All Right Jack
1959 - Danger Within
1959 - Jet Storm
1959 - SOS Pacific
1960 - The Angry Silence
1962 - Trial and Error
1963 - The Great Escape
1964 - Seance on a Wet Afternoon
1964 - Guns at Batasi
1965 - The Flight of the Phoenix
1966 - The Sand Pebbles
1967 - Doctor Dolittle
1968 - Only When I Larf
1968 - The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom
1970 - Loot
1970 - The Last Grenade
1970 - A Severed Head
1971 - 10 Rillington Place
1972 - Cup Glory
1974 - And Then There Were None
1975 - Rosebud
1975 - Brannigan
1975 - Conduct Unbecoming
1977 - Shatranj Ke Khiladi
1979 - The Human Factor
1993 - Jurassic Park
1994 - Miracle on 34th Street
1996 - Hamlet
1997 - Jurassic Park
1998 - Trespasser
1998 - Elizabeth
1999 - Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
2000 - The Railway Children
2001 - The Real Story
2002 - Puckoon
2009 - Jurassic Park 4
2009 - Ironclad

Director

1969 - Oh! What A Lovely War
1972 - Young Winston
1977 - A Bridge Too Far
1978 - Magic
1982 - Gandhi
1985 - A Chorus Line
1987 - Cry Freedom
1992 - Chaplin
1993 - Shadowlands
1996 - In Love and War
1999 - Grey Owl
2007 - Closing the Ring

Producer

2007 - Closing the Ring
1999 - Grey Owl
1996 - In Love and War
1993 - Shadowlands
1992 - Chaplin
1987 - Cry Freedom
1982 - Gandhi
1972 - Young Winston
1969 - Oh! What a Lovely War
1964 - Seance on a Wet Afternoon
1962 - The L-Shaped Room
1961 - Whistle Down the Wind
1960 - The Angry Silence

Useful Links:

Richard Attenborough 

Richard Attenborough - a biography 

Attenborough, Lord Richard (1923-) 

Richard Attenborough Centre 

Richard Samuel Attenborough