From producer to director: the films of Richard Attenborough

He moved into film producing in the late 1950s when, in partnership with director Bryan Forbes, he set up Beaver Films, producing The Angry Silence (1960) and Whistle down the Wind (1961). Attenborough made his directorial debut with 1969’s Oh! What a Lovely War, an ambitious musical satire set during the First World War. His second film, Young Winston (1972), charted the early years of Winston Churchill’s life, while 1977’s A Bridge Too Far was a wartime epic stretched across an even bigger canvas and featuring a massive all-star cast. Before the acclaim for Gandhi, Attenborough made a smaller film that proved his capacity for making thrillers as well as history pieces: Magic (1978) starred Anthony Hopkins on chilling form as a deranged ventriloquist. Based on the life of South African activist Steve Biko, Cry Freedom was a rare 1980s film that turned a critical eye on apartheid, while in the 1990s the director made a number of biographical films on famous subjects: Chaplin (1992), starring Robert Downey Jr as the eponymous silent film comedian; Shadowlands (1993), based on the life of C.S. Lewis; and In Love and War (1996), a First World War love story about the young Ernest Hemingway. Knighted in 1976, Attenborough was made a life peer in 1993. His final film, Closing the Ring (2007), is a wartime romance starring Shirley Maclaine and Christopher Plummer.