Cockneys, cowards and criminals

As he approaches his 80th birthday, Steve Pratt looks at the life of a remarkable actor and film maker.

ONE name sprung readily to mind as producers began looking for an actor to impersonate Santa Claus in the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street - Richard Attenborough. He was the obvious casting - tubby, red-faced, portly and with a bushy white beard.

This was proof, if any were needed, of the versatility of an actor and film-maker who began his screen career more than 60 years ago playing Cockneys, criminals and cowards. A black-and-white portrait of the young actor from the 1947 thriller Brighton Rock typifies those early roles. He was actually 24 but playing 17-year-old spiv Pinkie Brown. The mad-eyed look, bleeding cut across his cheek and open razor in his hand paints a very different image to the avuncular Attenborough we know today. Again, in 1971, he reminded cinemagoers just how chilling he could be, as serial killer John Chrisite in 10 Rillington Place.

He's been called a one-man British film industry, although he makes the point that many of the movies he directed contained not one penny of British money. He's an award-winning actor and director, and someone equally at home watching his beloved Chelsea Football Club or running meetings as chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

He risked bankruptcy to fulfill his long-held dream to make a film about Gandhi. He was in the original cast of what's become the longest-running play in the world, The Mousetrap. And was persuaded to act for the first time in 15 years by his friend, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, in monster hit Jurassic Park.

Despite all that, he's remembered as someone who cries a lot at awards ceremonies and calls everybody "darling" - not, he insists, because of any luvvie affliction, simply because he forgets people's names. The cheery, avuncular appearance makes us forget a remarkable career stretching back over 60 years. One that has demonstrated time and time again a steely determination to fight against the tide and refuse to take no for an answer. A long-time Labour supporter, he continues to lobby the Government on behalf of the British film industry.

His 80th birthday on August 29 is being taken as a timely opportunity to recall his achievements in a two-part Arena documentary on BBC2 over the Bank Holiday, together with TV re-runs of many of his films, both as an actor and director. These will serve to remind us what a potent force in movies he has been and perhaps one should add, to avoid making this sound like an obituary, continues to be.

As the candles are lit on his birthday cake, he's preparing to direct a new film, Closing the Ring, with Dennis Hopper and Shirley MacLaine. Retirement doesn't figure in his plans. When I last interviewed him three years ago, he conceded he'd have "to give up in the not too distant future". Clearly he was fibbing and, quite honestly, he seems to have more bounce and energy than men half his age.

He was born in Cambridge, where his father was a don at Emmanuel College, and grew up in Leicester, after his father became principal of Leicester University College. His mother was a founder member of the Marriage Guidance Council, of which Attenborough has had no need, having been married to actress Sheila Sim since 1945. He has two brothers - one is the naturalist David Attenborough - and two sisters, German Jewish girls adopted by his parents during the Second World War.

The influence of his politically-active parents has been reflected time and time again in his work on screen and in his personal life. They believed in the principle of putting something back, he recalls. He's done that too, not just through charity work but by raising political and social issues as a film-maker.

"I want cinema to contribute to argument, to antagonism, to anger, whatever, but always related to human affairs and human decency," is how he puts it.

Having acted since from the age of 12 and attended RADA, he owed a meeting with Noel Coward for his first screen appearance in In Which We Serve. His youthful looks saw him cast in roles younger than his age, even playing a 13-year-old in The Guinea Pig when he was in his mid-20s.

Attenborough worked steadily, if unspectacularly, in British movies until he and his friend, writer and actor Bryan Forbes, decided to take their future into their own hands. In the days before every star had to have their own production company, the pair formed Beaver Films. The pictures they made were brave choices. Films like The Angry Silence, which dealt with industrial relations, and The L-Shaped Room, a gritty slice of life. Attenborough became a producer to be reckoned with, while continuing to act, sometimes in Hollywood films such as The Great Escape, The Flight Of The Phoenix and The Sand Pebbles.

The Sixties were also the time when the idea of making a film about the Indian leader Gandhi began to form in his mind. It became an obsession. The man, he felt, summed up everything he cared about and was interested in. The more the money men rejected the idea as uncommercial, the more determined he became to make the film, spending his own money in the development stages.

Eventually, he did film Gandhi in 1982, after years of negotiations with producers, distributors and film financiers to raise the $22m budget. He was rewarded by seeing it become an international box office hit and winner of eight Oscars, including a best director award for Attenborough himself.

He'd turned to directing in the late 1960s, starting with the anti-war satire Oh, What A Lovely War!, based on the stage musical. He raised the money for that by telling producers that various British knights, including Olivier, had agreed to be in it. They hadn't, but fortunately agreed when he eventually asked.

As a director, Attenborough favours fact over fiction. He dealt with real people in Young Winston (Churchill's early years), Chaplin (the screen comic legend) and Shadowlands (writer CS Lewis), as well as recreating a wartime battle in A Bridge Too Far. Cry Freedom illustrated South African apartheid through the story of activist Steve Biko and journalist Donald Woods. And, if his version of stage hit A Chorus Line didn't work on screen, he earned applause for attempting the impossible in his usual no-nonsense manner.

He's never taken the easy option on directing projects. His work has something to say or a point to make, but wrapped up in an entertaining package. He's as at home with large scale epics - marshalling a crowd of 350,000 people for Gandhi's funeral - as he is with intimate stories.

One reason he keeps working must be to keep alive another dream project. For years he's wanted to make a film about 18th century radical writer Thomas Paine. The subject is not only considered uncommercial but expensive, a fatal combination in an industry that favours sequels, franchises and remakes.

Three years ago he told me he was happy with the screenplay, while admitting it would take a few years to raise the money. "But while I am still breathing, I will do it. I am determined. It's such a great story," he declared in his usual positive way. He kept banging on people's doors until they gave him the money to make Gandhi - and it's impossible to think they won't eventually give in over Paine too.

Attenborough at 80 on TV

Arena: The Many Lives Of Richard Attenborough, BBC2, Sunday, and Monday, 8pm.

Whistle Down The Wind, Saturday, BBC2, 2.55pm.

Gandhi, Sunday, BBC2, 5pm.

A Bridge Too Far, Sunday, BBC2, 9pm.

In Which We Serve, Monday, BBC2, 11am.

Dunkirk, Monday, BBC2, 5.50pm.

Seance On A Wet Afernoon, Tuesday, BBC2, 1pm.

Young Winston, Tuesday, C4, 12 .50pm.