WHO IS HE?
Born in August 1923, Lord Attenborough (he was knighted in 1976) shot to fame as the terrified stoker in Lean and Coward's In Which We Serve and the psychotic baby-faced gangster 'Pinkie' in Brighton Rock before directing and producing such epic biopics like Young Winston, Gandhi, Chaplin and Cry Freedom.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
Attenborough is nothing short of a national treasure. His charitable works (which are many and began in his early twenties long before he made money), his disarmingly warm manner and his modesty have possibly focused public attention away from his considerable talent as a film-maker. Though not in Hollywood - after Gandhi won the coveted Oscars triple (best film, best director and best screenplay) Attenborough was able to direct anything he liked, and today his list of awards fills three pages of IMDB's database. In the UK he's at the heart of the film establishment as chairman of the BFI and RADA and co-founder of the National Film School.
WHAT SORT OF FILMS IS HE FAMOUS FOR?
Attenborough's films reflect passions for two things, history and ideas, joint concerns which came to most obvious fruition in Gandhi. Today Attenborough's long cherished but as yet unrealised project is, in his own words, a $60-70 million epic about the Norfolk-born political thinker Thomas Paine, whose writing inspired much of the American declaration of Independence.
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