jurassicMultiple award-winning actor and director Richard Attenborough has died, five days short of his 91st birthday.

Attenborough, who was made a Life Peer in 1993, was born in 1923, and came to fame with his performance as Pinkie Budd in the film of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, opposite William Hartnell. In his long career, he appeared in a number of genre films, most famously as John Hammond in the first two Jurassic Park movies in 1993 and 1997, as well as  A Matter of Life and Death in 1946, the year before Brighton Rock; as Albert Blossom in the Rex Harrison film of Doctor Doolittle in 1967; and as Kris Kringle in the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street.

As a director and producer, he found acclaim for movies including Gandhi, Chaplin and Shadowlands (based on the life of C.S. Lewis), and was involved with many film and television foundations and charities.

Steven Spielberg paid tribute, noting, “Dickie Attenborough was passionate about everything in his life. Family, friends, his country and career. He made a gift to the world with his emotional epic Gandhi and he was the perfect ringmaster to bring the dinosaurs back to life as John Hammond in Jurassic Park.  He was a dear friend and I am standing in an endless line  of those who completely adored him.”

Leave a comment