Attenborough plays the entrepreneur behind the park in Jurassic Park, a character who could easily be a straightforward villain. He plays him as a genuine enthusiast whose failure is imaginative rather than moral, which makes the film's argument about control considerably more interesting than a story about greed would be.
He was a British actor and director whose career began in the nineteen forties, and he had largely stopped acting to direct by the time of this role. As a director he made large historical productions, including a biographical epic about Indian independence that won multiple Academy Awards, and he was a central figure in the British film industry for decades.
Recurring subjects: conviction, men who believe entirely in a project, and warmth used to make a flawed figure sympathetic. His acting is generous and unguarded, and as a director he favoured scale in service of a moral argument rather than for its own sake.
He won Academy Awards for directing and producing a historical epic, and his acting career spans some of the most significant British films of the postwar period. His performance in the dinosaur film introduced him to a generation that had no idea about the rest, and the character remains one of the most quoted in blockbuster cinema.
For viewers who want a familiar face with an enormous career behind it. Suited to families approaching the dinosaur film, and to anyone who should then watch what he directed.
