Robbin’ the rich, givin’ to the poor
Top 10 screen Robin Hoods
1 Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Flynn may have been the brightest, most highly paid A-list star of his Hollywood heyday, but he imbued his underdog hero with a charm – and a winning pair of green tights – that made him a cinematic benchmark.
2 Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922)
When it was released, Robin Hood broke records for its $1.4million budget, which included the cost of building the enormous castle created to film Fairbanks’s robust hero.
3 Brian Bedford (voice) in Robin Hood (1973)
Moral ambiguities were nowhere to be found in Disney’s animation (below right). Bedford gave the studio’s sprightly vulpine Robin Hood humour and heroism that meant his character inspired child viewers born long after the Seventies.
4 Adam Morris in Maid Marian and her Merry Men (1989-1994)
Less a nod for Morris (whose Robin was recast as an incompetent former tailor) than for Tony Robinson’s rambunctious series as a whole. The Blackadder alumnus posited a pleasingly scruffy Marian as the do-gooder leader of the pack and adopted a daft wig to play a snivelling Sheriff. Two decades on, it still stands up.
5 Russell Crowe in Robin Hood (2010)
Crowe’s English accent may be as unconvincing as Dick Van Dyke’s, but Ridley Scott’s blockbuster, which took more than $320million worldwide, is a worthwhile endeavour nonetheless. It marked the end of the British director’s historical epic phase, which had begun with Gladiator a decade earlier.
6 Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
This Robin Hood proved a Bafta-winning success (for Alan Rickman, who played its Sheriff) and became the secondhighest-grossing film of 1991. These days, it is a fine example of Costner at his cheesiest – just how did he maintain that blow-dry in the forest?
7 Michael Praed in Robin of Sherwood (1984-1986)
Swashbuckling, swoony and with a believable anarchist streak, a long-haired Praed transformed Robin Hood into an Eighties heartthrob on both sides of the Atlantic.
8 Cary Elwes in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)
This Mel Brooks parody was a welcome reprieve after Costner’s earnest offering, and acts as a handy guide to the Robin Hoods of cinematic yore. Elwes is an admirable winking straight-man in tights.
9 Richard Greene in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-1959)
Before there was Praed, there was Richard Greene. The matinée idol jumped into the hero’s jerkin for a whopping 143 episodes in the late Fifties, which were all shown on ITV.
10 Sean Connery in Robin and Marian (1976)
Connery was on Bondhiatus in the midseventies when he swapped the pistol for the crossbow and lent a sensitive credibility to Robin, who in this Richard Lester-directed film was enamoured of Audrey Hepburn’s Marian.