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Richard Attenborough [1923-2014] English

Rank: 102
Actor

Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, CBE was an English actor, film director, film producer, entrepreneur, and politician. He was the President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
As a film director and producer, Attenborough won two Academy Awards for Gandhi in 1983. He also won four BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globe Awards.

Christmas, Age, Attitude, Family, Independence, Movies, Sad

Quote	Tags	Rank
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.	Family	101
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.	Age	102
I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.		103
I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.		104
I can't write, I can't paint, I don't compose.		105
There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.	Movies	106
I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.		107
I prefer fact to fiction.		108
I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.		109
And I believe we need heroes, I believe we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.		110
If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.		111
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.		112
What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.	Sad	113
In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie.		114
I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject.		115
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.		116
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.		117
Well, I think In Love and War, which had a wonderful performance by Sandy, Sandra Bullock, who the authorities and, the supposed authorities, in cinema didn't want to know about.		118
Pier Angeli was in the movie called Sea of Sand that Guy Green directed where this idea came up.		119
I'm a passionate trade unionist.		120
I was on my own union council for twenty-odd years.		121
I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.		122
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, an argument and so on - and I can't do that, and I'm not in that bracket at all.		123
Well, you cannot think of cinema now, and you cannot think of cinema in the UK and not place Chaplin in the most extraordinary elevated context, if there can be such a thing, in that he was a genius, he was unique.		124
I very, very, very rarely lose my temper. I do get cross sometimes when encountering something that I feel is improper, that I feel is lacking in justice and equity, and this all sounds very pompous and over the top - but these are the things that really upset me: intolerance, prejudice etc. I suppose in more mundane matters, I'm impatient.		125
If someone says they're going to ring me at 10 o'clock and it's 10 past and they haven't rung, I'm irritated.		126
I'm not an intellectual in any sense, I have constraints of erudition. I'm not able to deal with things outside my ken, and that makes me irritable. I'm irritable about the fact that I never went to university.		201
You act in a movie, and at the end of the day, the director and editor decide what your performance is.		202
I'm 4 ft. 2 in. and not exactly a matinee idol.		203
When I'm directing a movie, nothing else matters.		204
I think there were times when, if circumstances had developed, I might have been tempted into politics. I am a fan of Tony Blair. I think Gordon Brown is a fine man, but I think he's headed for one hell of a bloody struggle.		205
When me and Sheila got married, all we had was an oval table, four chairs, a bed, and a painting by Matthew Smith.		206
I think 'E.T.' is a quite extraordinary piece of cinema.		207
I don't really like the Oscars; it's a commercial promotional event. It helps immeasurably to sell films, but it's hardly the Nobel prize.		208
I know I'm regarded as an establishment figure, but I was crucified by the establishment for 'Oh! What a Lovely War', 'Gandhi' and 'Cry Freedom.'		209
Irreverence is an essential part of our culture.		210
The family is the focal point of our existence. And up until Jane and Lucy's death, there were always 16 of us together for Christmas.	Christmas	211
I adored my mother. I absolutely adored her and admired her.		212
Throughout my life, I always remember that consideration of people who were less fortunate than we. We lived in an atmosphere of awareness, and we certainly did not live a life whereby we ignored, or felt that we could ignore, that which was in evidence around us.		213
My family were liberal with a small 'l' but passionately doers. I wanted to be a doer.		214
My father thought Gandhi was a great man. I suppose subconsciously, consciously even, I was aware that I wanted to please him and Ma, so I thought doing something like 'Gandhi' would be phenomenal.		215
I'm not a pyrotechnical director; I'm not good with all those innovative things. What I am interested in is how actors can touch the heads and hearts of an audience.		216
There are things I want to say: They are very important to me, and, not being a writer, I do it through movies.		217
I lived in an atmosphere where Mama brought 60 Basque refugee children to England during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.		218
'E.T.' depended absolutely on the concept of cinema, and I think that Steven Spielberg, who I'm very fond of, is a genius.		219
'Gandhi' was a well-made film but surely not my best. It had flaws, which I understand two-and-a-half decades after I directed it. I will never call it a propaganda film for the Indian Congress, but it could have been made better had I concentrated on certain minute details.		220
My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the world has a movement of non-cooperation sans violence received so much support from masses as Gandhi's movement in India did. He was, to a great extent, responsible for freeing his nation from the British Raj.		221
I know Pandit Ravi Shankar was very upset with me, as I did not use his compositions in 'Gandhi.' I thought that the London Philharmonic Orchestra would prove more effective than his music. It was one of my biggest miscalculations.		222
Ben Kingsley was my ideal choice for Gandhi, and he really lived up to the expectations of an international audience. I did not find any Indian actor worthy to perform the role of Gandhi in the early Eighties, though there were brilliant performers like Naseeruddin Shah in India.		223
I have no great interest in being remembered as a great creative filmmaker.		224
I want to be remembered as a storyteller.		225
In the late 1940s, there weren't any pop stars, and TV didn't exist.		226
I like to make films about people who changed the lives of others and asserted human dignity.		301
I'm not a great director or an auteur; I'm an ensemble director. I do think I can get wonderful performances out of actors.		302
If I were able to write, I probably would. But movies have given me a part of my life where I can express feelings and bring convictions to an audience as if I could write. So I made 'Gandhi' about human relations, prejudice and the empire. In 'Cry Freedom' I expressed my horror and disgust about apartheid.		303
What actually happened with 'Miracle' was that someone saw me in 'Jurassic Park' and said, 'We want someone with a white beard - how about him?' I've got a round face, white hair, a white beard. I can wear half-moon glasses and waddle a little, cope with a cane, raise my hat.		304
The old adage about acting - that it's 98% energy and 2% talent - is true, you know.		305
Say what you will about 'Miracle on 34th Street'; I can take my grandchildren to it. If I had a maiden aunt, I could take her, or my ma and pa if they were alive.		306
The problem is, you see, I've just got so many subjects I want to direct.		307
We used to indulge hopelessly as a family at Christmas. When the children were little, I dressed up as Father Christmas. They knew it was a gag, but they loved it. I remember stealing into their bedrooms at 1 A.M. and filling the stockings up at the end of the bed.	Christmas	308
I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived. He lived in the 18th century; as you all know, he was an Englishman who was involved in the writing of American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the French Constitution, wrote the great book called 'The Rights of Man' - commercial over.	Independence	309
I never want to make the kind of film whose impact ends when the audience leaves the cinema.		310
I always wanted to make films that might change or at least focus people's views.		311
I don't use film in the way that the great auteurs do. I use film, the camera, to record as effectively and as perceptive as I am able what I want to say through the actors.		312
I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero.		313
If someone does something in an entertainment/pop ambience, that person becomes someone who has an impact on the conduct and attitude of a huge number of people who peripherally come in contact with them.	Attitude	314
I'm simply saying that heroes are people whose activities, whose attitudes, and whose judgment you just think, 'Wow. That's good. That's right. That's real.'		315
I adore my family; they are my joy. However, I am committed to my work. If, on a Saturday morning when I was ostensibly going to be with the children, and something arose at RADA or at UNICEF or at the orphanage or whatever, I would allow the other pressures to take precedent.		316
If you are playing in 'Charley's Aunt,' and your favourite aunt died that lunchtime, you'll still have to go on the stage and play 'Charley's Aunt.'		317

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