Richard Attenborough Filmography

Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin

Actors: Sydney Pollack, Charles Chaplin, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey, Jr., Woody Allen, Milos Forman, Marcel Marceau

Synopsis: American film historian and author Richard Schickel directs the documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin. Schickel offers an exploration into Chaplin's life, from his childhood in London until his death in 1977. The film also contains insight on his multifaceted film career and Read More

Puckoon

Actors: Sean Hughes, Elliott Gould, Daragh O'Malley, John Lynch, Griff Rhys Jones

Synopsis: Based on the best-selling novel by Irish comedian Spike Milligan, Puckoon is a political satire about a town cut in half by the partitioning of Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State in 1924. The action takes place in a town known as Puckoon where an ordinary fellow named Dan Madigan wakes up Read More

Light Keeps Me Company

Actors: Woody Allen, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Richard Attenborough

Synopsis: This moving, finely-wrought portrayal of legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist was directed by his son Carl-Gustav Nykvist -- a noted filmmaker himself. Spanning from long forgotten kiddie flick in 1945 to Woody Allen's Celebrity (1997), Nykvist's career came to an abrupt end when he was Read More

The Railway Children

Actors: Jenny Agutter, Michael Kitchen

Synopsis: A Masterpiece Theatre remake of the 1970 screen adaptation of E. Nesbit's beloved children's book, The Railway Children follows the fortunes of three resourceful children in turn-of-the-century England. An affluent family, the Waterburys fall upon difficult times when Mr. Waterbury (Michael Read More

Humphrey Jennings: The Man Who Listened to Britain

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Actors: Donny Osmond, Maria Freidman, Richard Attenborough, Robert Torti, Ian McNeice, Joan Collins

Synopsis: Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's first musical blockbuster comes to video in this production starring Donny Osmond, who racked up over 1,800 stage performances in the title role. Based on the Biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, Joseph (Osmond) is the favorite son of Jacob Read More

Grey Owl

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Pierce Brosnan, Annie Galipeau, Nathaniel Arcand, Vlasta Vrana, David Fox, Stewart Bick

Synopsis: Archibald Belaney was a British man who grew up fascinated with Native American culture -- so much so that in the early 1900s he left the United Kingdom for Canada, where he reinvented himself as Archie Grey Owl and lived in the wild as a North American Indian trapper. He eventually became an Read More

Elizabeth

Actors: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Fiennes, Richard Attenborough

Synopsis: This British-made historical drama depicts the rise of young Elizabeth Tudor to Queen of England, a reign of intrigue and betrayals. In 1554, Queen Mary I (Kathy Burke) tries to restore Catholicism as England's single faith. With no heir to the crown, she maneuvers to keep her Protestant Read More

Diana: Queen of Hearts

Crew: Presented by

Synopsis: Featuring Lord Richard Attenborough as narrator, this is a video portrait of Princess Diana, who died prematurely in a tragic automobile accident in August 1997. The video clips, photographs, and interviews are a commemoration of Diana's life from her younger years at her home at Park House in Read More

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Vince Vaughn, Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite

Synopsis: Just when you'd think that scientists would realize dinosaurs and humans don't mix, along comes The Lost World: Jurassic Park to prove you wrong. In this sequel, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) summons chaos theorist and onetime colleague Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to his home with some Read More

Hamlet

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Brian Blessed, Julie Christie, Derek Jacobi, Kate Winslet, Richard Briers

Synopsis: At least the 22nd time William Shakespeare's most famous tragedy has been brought to the screen, Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Hamlet was the first to preserve Shakespeare's entire text, uncut and unabridged. Moving the action into the 19th century, Branagh cast himself in the title role Read More

In Love and War

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Sandra Bullock, Chris O'Donnell, MacKenzie Astin, Emilio Bonucci, Ingrid Lacey

Synopsis: This romantic historical drama is based on the diaries of Agnes Von Kurowsky, who while serving as a nurse during World War I had a love affair with a young man who would later become one of the great literary figures of the 20th century, Ernest Hemingway. In 1918, 18-year-old Hemingway has Read More

Down Came a Blackbird

Crew: Producer

Synopsis: In this psychological drama, a woman tries to get on with her life after she is captured and tortured in a nameless South American country. It begins as US journalist Helen McNulty and her photographer/lover Jan travel to the country to find a rebel leader. Instead they are captured during a Read More

Miracle on 34th Street

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Elizabeth Perkins, Dylan McDermott, Mara Wilson, Robert Prosky

Synopsis: The 1947 holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street is transplanted to the 1990s with few changes in this family-oriented remake. The screenplay by the prolific John Hughes sticks close to the original outline, centering on Macy's executive Dorey Walker (Elizabeth Perkins) and her young daughter Susan Read More

Shadowlands

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Edward Hardwicke, Michael Denison, John Wood

Synopsis: This lavishly mounted adaptation of the play by William Nicholson tells the true story of the doomed love affair between novelist and noted Christian scholar C.S. Lewis and a Jewish-American poet. Anthony Hopkins stars as C.S. "Jack" Lewis, an Oxford professor and successful author of the Read More

Jurassic Park

Actors: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck

Synopsis: Steven Spielberg's phenomenally successful sci-fi adventure thriller is graced by state-of-the-art special effects from the team of Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri from George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic. The film follows two dinosaur experts -- Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Read More

Chaplin

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Robert Downey, Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Geraldine Chaplin, Kevin Dunn, Anthony Hopkins

Synopsis: Partly based on Charlie Chaplin's My Autobiography, this humorous and dramatic biopic features an all-star cast including Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Anthony Hopkins, Kevin Kline, Diane Lane, and Chaplin's real-life daughter, Geraldine Chaplin, who portrays his mentally ill Read More

Cry Freedom

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Kevin Kline, Penelope Wilton, Denzel Washington, Kevin McNally

Synopsis: Richard Attenborough directed this dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko (Denzel Washington Read More

Mother Teresa

Actors: Richard Attenborough

Synopsis: This biographical look at the late Mother Teresa, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Missionaries of Charity, provides an exhaustive glimpse at her round-the-world travels. With footage taken over a five-year period, director Ann Petrie shows Mother Teresa engaged in her Read More

A Chorus Line

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Douglas, Terrence Mann, Alyson Reed, Cameron English, Vicki Frederick

Synopsis: Broadway's celebratory musical about rejection makes it to the screen in a fizzless adaptation by Richard Attenborough that misses the whole point of the Broadway show -- i.e. the dancing and the dancers. Instead, the dancers become a limp Greek chorus for the dead love affair between a Read More

Gandhi

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard

Synopsis: It was Richard Attenborough's lifelong dream to bring the life story of Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi to the screen. When it finally reached fruition in 1982, the 188-minute, Oscar-winning Gandhi was one of the most exhaustively thorough biopics ever made. The film begins in Read More

The Human Factor

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Joop Doderer, John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, Robert Morley, Ann Todd

Synopsis: This routine espionage drama is based on a novel by Graham Greene about a low-level British informant who is caught in a trap. Castle (Nicol Williamson) has a desk job in British intelligence. Around him are heavyweights like Col. Daintry (Richard Attenborough), Sir John Hargreaves (Richard Read More

Magic

Crew: Director

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith, Ed Lauter, E.J. Andre

Synopsis: Anthony Hopkins is a ventriloquist psychologically tormented by his dummy in the Richard Attenborough thriller Magic (a film with a story that may seem familiar to those who have seen the Michael Redgrave segment of Dead of Night, or the Cliff Robertson episode "The Dummy" from The Twilight Zone Read More

The Chess Players

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Amjad Khan, Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Shabana Azmi

Synopsis: Based on a story by Munshi Premchand, and much influenced by Vsevolod Pudovkin's 1925 film Chess Fever, this satirical film by noted Indian director Satyajit Ray is set in colonial India in 1856. The British Resident of the East India Company (Richard Attenborough) has observed that the monarch of Read More

A Bridge Too Far

Crew: Director

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox

Synopsis: It's late 1944, and the Allied armies are confident they'll win the World War II and be home in time for Christmas. What's needed, says British general Bernard Law Montgomery, is a knockout punch, a bold strike through Holland, where German troops are spread thin, that will put the Allies into Read More

Conduct Unbecoming

Actors: Michael York, Richard Attenborough, Trevor Howard, Stacy Keach, Christopher Plummer

Synopsis: Based on a play by Barry England, the British Conduct Unbecoming revolves around a sexual violation--which may or may not have occurred. In British India, highborn Mrs. Scarlett (Susannah York) accuses 2nd Lt. Millington, a Bengal Lancer officer (James Faulkner) of raping her. Lieutenant Arthur Read More

Rosebud

Actors: Peter O'Toole, Richard Attenborough, Cliff Gorman, Claude Dauphin, John V. Lindsay

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Joan Hemingway and Paul Bonnecarrere, Rosebud opens with five young women vacationing aboard a luxurious yacht called the Rosebud. All five of the women are the daughters of wealthy and powerful men; one of them is the daughter of an influential American senator. Their vacation Read More

And Then There Were None

Actors: Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer, Richard Attenborough, Gert Fröbe, Stéphane Audran

Synopsis: An Italian-French-Spanish version of the much-filmed Agatha Christie story, this film is strangely set in Iran, not Great Britain. Ten guests are invited to a remote desert inn and informed that the mysterious host has described in a nursery rhyme how they will all die during the gathering. One by Read More

Brannigan

Actors: John Wayne, Richard Attenborough, Judy Geeson, Mel Ferrer, John Vernon

Synopsis: This offbeat John Wayne vehicle casts the Duke as Detective Jim Brannigan, an Irish-American detective at large in London. After the requisite culture-clash routines, it's down to business as Brannigan teams with Scotland Yard official Commander Swann (Richard Attenborough) to corral a crook who Read More

Young Winston

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Michael Audreson, Robert Lankesheer, Simon Ward, Robert Shaw, Anne Bancroft, John Mills, Jack Hawkins, Ian Holm

Synopsis: This historical drama is an account of the early life of Winston Churchill (Simon Ward), including his childhood years, his time as a war correspondent in Africa, and culminating with his first election to Parliament. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide Read More

A Severed Head

Actors: Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, Ian Holm, Claire Bloom, Jennie Linden

Synopsis: This sophisticated black comedy sex romp is based on the novel by Iris Murdoch, which she also turned into a stage play (with J.B. Priestley). Ian Holm, is hapless wine-taster Martin Lynch-Gibbon who has both a mistress (Jennie Linden) and a nymphomaniac wife, Antonia Lynch-Gibbon (Lee Remick). Read More

10 Rillington Place

Actors: Ray Barron, Richard Attenborough, Judy Geeson, John Hurt, Pat Heywood, Isobel Black

Synopsis: 10 Rillington Place is the true story of British mass murderer John Reginald Christie, played with chilling "normality" by Richard Attenborough. Throughout the late '40s, Christie lures middle-aged women to his London flat promising to cure their ailments with nitrous oxide, then kills them Read More

The Last Grenade

Actors: Stanley Baker, Alex Cord, Honor Blackman, Richard Attenborough, Rafer Johnson

Synopsis: In this grim wartime drama, two vengeful soldier's of fortune engage in a deadly competition to see who can kill the other first. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Loot

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Lee Remick, Hywel Bennett, Roy Holder, Milo O'Shea

Synopsis: Joe Orton's black comedy farce has been adapted to the screen in a fast-paced, but ultimately ineffective, adaptation. Hywed Bennett and Roy Holder are two lay-abouts named Dennis and Hal who decide to improve their lot in life by robbing a bank. After pulling the job, they have to hide the loot Read More

David Copperfield

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Cyril Cusack, Edith Evans, Pamela Franklin, Susan Hampshire

Synopsis: This lackluster 1970 version of Charles Dickens' classic novel, David Copperfield (made as a film twice before) turns Dickens' picaresque tale into an extended flashback, with David Copperfield (Robin Phillips) as a young man, brooding on a deserted beach, recalling his youth. The characters are Read More

Oh! What a Lovely War

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Ralph Richardson, Meriel Forbes, Wensley Pithey, Ruth Kettlewell, Ian Holm

Synopsis: Oh! What a Lovely War is an every-man-for-himself adaptation of Charles Chilton's 1963 play, as staged in London by Joan Littlewood. The tragedy of World War I is redefined in bawdy music-hall terms, beginning with a verbal free-for-all involving the Crowned Heads of Europe. The war is presented Read More

The Magic Christian

Actors: Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, Isabel Jeans, Christopher Lee, Caroline Blakiston, Raquel Welch

Synopsis: This zany British comedy finds a homeless hobo (Ringo Starr) being adopted by the world's richest man, Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers). Setting sail on the luxury liner The Magic Christian, Sir Grand tests the limit of human avarice. With money to motivate the greedy, Laurence Harvey combines his Read More

Only When I Larf

Actors: Richard Attenborough, David Hemmings, Alexandra Stewart, Nicholas Pennell, Melissa Stribling

Synopsis: Richard Attenborough, David Hemmings and Alexandra Stewart play three con artists planning a big-time scam. The object is to sell ammunition to a group of African militants -- or at least to pretend to. The trick is to keep at least one step ahead of the militants, lest the tricksters end up full Read More

The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom

Actors: Shirley MacLaine, Richard Attenborough, James Booth, Freddie Jones, William Rushton

Synopsis: The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom stars Shirley MacLaine as Harriet Blossom, the wife of a moderately successful British brassiere manufacturer Robert Blossom (Richard Attenborough). When Harriet's sewing machine breaks down, her husband decides to save a few quid by sending one of his own employees to Read More

Doctor Dolittle

Actors: Rex Harrison, Samantha Eggar, Anthony Newley, Richard Attenborough, Peter Bull

Synopsis: Rex Harrison, although not at all like the portly man described in Hugh Lofting's charming series of children's stories, is sheer perfection as the kindly animal doctor in Leslie Bricusse's musical fantasy Doctor Dolittle. Sadly, Harrison is the only thing nearing perfection in this overstuffed Read More

The Sand Pebbles

Actors: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Candice Bergen, Marayat Andriane

Synopsis: Steve McQueen received his only Academy Award nomination for his performance in this epic-scale war drama, based on the novel by Richard McKenna. In 1926, as China teeters on the edge of political revolution in the midst of a civil war, the USS San Pablo, is ordered to patrol the Yangtze Read More

The Flight of the Phoenix

Actors: James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Kruger, Ernest Borgnine

Synopsis: Based on Elleston Trevor's novel, The Flight of the Phoenix opens with a well-staged plane crash in the middle of the Sahara desert. The pilot (James Stewart) and the navigator (Richard Attenborough) do their best to maintain order among the survivors, a group of oil men not well-suited for Read More

Séance on a Wet Afternoon

Crew: Producer

Actors: Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, Margaret Lacey, Nanette Newman, Maria Kazan, Patrick Magee, Mark Eden, Lionel Gamlin

Synopsis: Kim Stanley plays a crooked medium who has become slightly unhinged since the death of her son. Craving money and publicity, she concocts a scheme with her weak-willed husband (Richard Attenborough). The pair will kidnap a wealthy young girl, collect the ransom, then use her "powers" to help the Read More

The Third Secret

Actors: Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Richard Attenborough, Diane Cilento, Pamela Franklin

Synopsis: TV commentator Stephen Boyd doesn't believe the official verdict of suicide in the death of a famed London psychiatrist. Boyd tries to get to the truth by studying a list of the shrink's patients. While interviewing three of these worthies (Jack Hawkins, Diane Cilento and Richard Attenborough) Read More

Guns at Batasi

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Flora Robson, John Leyton, Mia Farrow

Synopsis: Richard Attenborough stars as a stalwart sergeant-major, stationed in British colony in Africa. When the colony declares its independence, Attenborough is assigned to keep the peace during the governmental transition. Trouble begins when an insurgent African officer (Errol John) attempts to Read More

The Great Escape

Actors: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson, James Coburn

Synopsis: The Great Escape is based on the true story of a group of Allied prisoners of war who managed to escape from an allegedly impenetrable Nazi prison camp during World War II. At the beginning of the film, the Nazis gather all their most devious and troublesome POWs and place them at a new prison Read More

Whistle Down the Wind

Crew: Producer

Actors: Hayley Mills, Alan Bates, Bernard Lee, Norman Bird, Diane Clare, Patricia Heneghan, Elsie Wagstaffe

Synopsis: Bryan Forbes' first directorial effort is set in a rugged Lancashire farm community. Three impressionable children, played by Hayley Mills, Diane Holgate, and Alan Barnes, come across a bearded vagrant named Arthur Blakey (Alan Bates) sleeping in their barn. Upon awakening, the ill-tempered bum Read More

The L-Shaped Room

Crew: Producer

Actors: Leslie Caron, Tom Bell, Anthony Booth, Brock Peters, Patricia Phoenix, Dame Cicely Courtneidge, Avis Bunnage

Synopsis: Considered ultra-mature film fare in 1962, The L-Shaped Room stars Leslie Caron as a unmarried, pregnant French girl. Arranging for an abortion (illegal at that time), she takes up residence in a ramshackle British boarding house where most of the other residents are also outcasts of society. Many Read More

Only Two Can Play

Actors: Peter Sellers, Mai Zetterling, Virginia Maskell, Richard Attenborough, Kenneth Griffith

Synopsis: Welsh librarian John Lewis (Peter Sellers), unhappily married to Jean Lewis (Virginia Maskell), falls in love with the glamorous Elizabeth Gruffydd Williams (Mai Zetterling). Zetterling is likewise saddled with a dull spouse, wealthy Vernon Gruffyd-Williams (Raymond Huntley). Finding themselves to Read More

The Dock Brief

Actors: Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough, Beryl Reid, David Lodge, Frank Pettingell, Tristram Jellinek

Synopsis: Peter Sellers starts out with one role and ends up with three in The Dock Brief (U.S. title Trial and Error), a satirical comedy based on the television play by John Mortimer. Sellers' principal role is as an incompetent barrister assigned to defend a wife murderer (Richard Attenborough). The Read More

All Night Long

Actors: Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, Patrick McGoohan, Marti Stevens, Betsy Blair

Synopsis: The British All Night Long is Othello to a jazz beat. Paul Harris is the Othello counterpart, a bandleader happily married to "Desdemona" Marti Stevens. Patrick McGoohan plays the film's funky Iago character, who covets Harris' job. McGoohan hopes to unnerve Harris by spreading rumors that Stevens Read More

The Angry Silence

Crew: Producer

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, Michael Craig, Bernard Lee, Alfred Burke

Synopsis: Richard Attenborough stars in this British drama as Tom Curtis, an ordinary man with a job in a factory. A new employee, Travers (Alfred Burke), begins complaining about conditions at the plant and stirs up disharmony among his fellow workers. Tom thinks that there's something fishy about Travers Read More

The League of Gentlemen

Actors: Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes

Synopsis: An engrossing suspenser with dashes of comedy, League of Gentlemen is about a daring group of highly trained army men, turned bank robbers. When Hyde (Jack Hawkins) is drummed out of the army after years of devoted service, he decides to get back at society in general. One by one, he finds seven Read More

S.O.S. Pacific

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, John Gregson, Eva Bartok, Eddie Constantine

Synopsis: Five passengers on a seaplane find that a crash has stranded them on an island used for nuclear testing in this disaster movie. Just to get to the island, they had to endure many hardships including a hurricane, a gun-battle, shark-infested seas, and a fire on the plane. Panic ensues when the Read More