Sadly, the beloved actor-director and two-time Oscar-winner died on Sunday, five days short of his 91st birthday. “Wonderful man,” Kingsley beamed. “And it’s interesting that he alluded to that scene because, for me, that was the engine of the whole performance. And after he’d seen the film, Peter Brook, a colleague and another great director, said to me, ‘That’s the angriest performance I’ve ever seen on screen.’ And I shook his hand and said, ‘You got it.’”
I was lucky to interview Attenborough twice (the second was on the occasion of “A Chorus Line”), and I found him gracious and inspirational. He enjoyed the fact that I was a passionate cineaste who appreciated his craft and sense of humanity — and the fact that I was more open and less prejudicial than my more seasoned journalistic colleagues. He talked about capturing the psychopathic ventriloquist played by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the underrated “Magic”; the necessity of using star cameos for dramatic emphasis in the even more underrated “A Bridge Too Far”; and his acute understanding of the acting profession that made him more than qualified to tackle the celebrated “Chorus Line” musical. Judge the work, fair enough, but don’t judge me as being unqualified to make a musical, he lamented.
Read the rest of this piece including Attenborough’s own film picks of his best films here.
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
