Richard Attenborough: tributes paid to ‘the quintessence of kindness’

Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Ben Kingsley, Michael York and Saeed Jaffrey have offered their tributes to the late actor and director, who died earlier this week
  
  

Richard Attenborough on the set of Closing the Ring (2007), his final film as director, which starred Christopher Plummer and Shirley MacLaine
Richard Attenborough on the set of Closing the Ring (2007), his final film as director, which starred Christopher Plummer and Shirley MacLaine Photograph: /Bfi Photograph: Bfi

Christopher Plummer

I’m privileged to have known and worked with Richard Attenborough, a great British character actor of enormous range, a talented and devoted director, a caring, passionate, gentle and very dear man. I shall miss him dreadfully.

Shirley MacLaine

He made the world a better place. I wish he would come back. Even God is blessed to have him.

Michael York

York and Attenborough in Conduct Unbecoming (1975)

Dickie, a one-man entertainment empire, was at least as significant as those humanitarian titans he brought to life on screen. He was also the quintessence of kindness and modesty, and it was a privilege to have known and worked with him

Ben Kingsley

Richard Attenborough trusted me with the crucial and central task of bringing to life a dream it took him 20 years to bring to fruition. When he gave me the part of Gandhi it was with great grace and joy. He placed in me an absolute trust and in turn I placed an absolute trust in him and grew to love him. I along with millions of others whom he touched through his life and work will miss him dearly.

Saeed Jaffrey

Jaffrey and Attenborough in The Chess Player (1977)

He was such a wonderful human being. He was gentle, not a Hitler-esque cruel director. I never saw him get angry; he wasn’t a tortured human being in any way. Because he’d been an actor himself, he made a gardener director. He knew exactly what the plants were, how much sun and how much earth and water they needed. He let them grow and blossom in their own time. I loved him and I shall miss him like anything.

 

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