‘Dear Dickie’ letters reveal 18-year toll of Gandhi film
IT WAS the labour of love that won eight Oscars to crown a brilliant career in cinema.
But behind Richard Attenborough’s 1982 epic Gandhi lay an 18-year struggle, revealed in the private correspondence of the actor-director published for the first time by The Mail on Sunday.
Lord Attenborough had become obsessed with the idea of making a film about Mahatma Gandhi and the campaign for independence after an Indian civil servant put the idea to him in 1962.
Attenborough then spent many years desperately trying to get the project off the ground, leaving him away from home for long periods before filming eventually began in 1980.
In one touching letter dated January 1965, his actress wife Sheila wrote to him: ‘It is somewhat sad that we should spend our 20th anniversary separate but a date is just a date and we can celebrate when you come home…
‘I am really very thrilled about the Gandhi project and so proud of the way you have done everything.
‘I do wish, my love, that it comes out the way you want it.’
In the same letter, she added that their then ten-year-old daughter Jane – who would die in Thailand in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami – was beginning to understand what her ‘daddy is trying to do’ after listening to Attenborough speak on the radio of his admiration for Gandhi.
Attenborough persevered to see the film dominate the 1983 Oscars, winning among others Best Film and Best Actor for its star – the then unknown Ben Kingsley.
Lord Attenborough’s director son Michael last night said: ‘From the moment in 1962 when my father became hooked on the idea of making a film about Gandhi, we, as a family, shared a colossal, deeply challenging journey with him till the moment it went into production in 1980.’ He added: ‘When the film won eight Oscars, the first people my father called were his family.’
The previously unpublished papers, held by the University of Sussex, also reveal the unlikely star names considered for another passion project, the life of Charlie Chaplin. The contenders to play the silent film star included Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Dustin Hoffman, Danny DeVito, Robert De Niro and the comedians Robin Williams and Billy Crystal.
It is not clear if these actors knew they were in the running for the role, but Attenborough and his team produced visual mock-ups.
Gary Oldman was one of two Britons considered – the other being Kenneth Branagh, who even met up with Attenborough and in 1990 and mocked up his own image of himself as Chaplin.
The 1992 film Chaplin was eventually to star Robert Downey Jr.