Richard Todd
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- For Richard Todd the football player, see Richard Todd (football player)
Richard Todd (born June 11, 1919) is a British actor.
Born Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd in Dublin, Ireland, his father Andrew William Palethorpe Todd was a British officer who gained three caps for Ireland at rugby before the First World War. He moved to Devon, England when very young and attended Shrewsbury School. During his early career he acted in regional theatres, before co-founding the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1939.
Richard Todd served as an officer and paratrooper in the British 6th Airborne Division during the Second World War. After landing in Normandy on D-Day as one of the first British officers, he met up with Major John Howard on Pegasus Bridge — he would later appear in two films in which this scene was recreated: in D-Day the Sixth of June (1956) he played the commanding officer of the unit in which both of them served, and in The Longest Day (1962) he played Major Howard himself.
After the war he gained fame in the London stage version of The Hasty Heart (as Lachlan MacLachlan), which took him to Broadway. He returned to England to appear in the film version and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role in 1949. He later appeared in the film The Dambusters as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, probably the role for which he is best remembered.
He has continued to act on television, including roles in Virtual Murder, Silent Witness, and in the Doctor Who story Kinda in 1982.
He has continued an active acting career into his eighties. He was married to the actresses Catherine Grant-Bogle, whom he met in Dundee Repertory (1949-1970, two children) and Virginia Mailer (1970-1992, two children). In 2006 he was reportedly living near Grantham and attended a preview of a new Robin Hood TV series made by the BBC.
[edit] Tragedy
On 25 April 2006 the Daily Mail did a feature on the tragic death of two of Todd's four children to suicide. Peter, Todd's eldest son from his first marriage, shot himself in the head on 21 September 2005 - the same method his half-brother Seumas had used 8 years earlier. Peter's reason was that his marriage was ending, Seumas's was thought to be a depressive reaction to severe acne and the anti-acne drug he was taking. Todd's mother also committed suicide when he was 19 though he says 'her death didn't affect me terribly badly ... we had been close but just before she died, we disagreed. She didn't want me to go on the stage. There were various differences and I had lost affection for her'. His sons' suicide has affected him very profoundly however and he admits to visiting their adjoining graves regularly. On his courage in getting on with life, Todd says 'it is rather like something that happens to men in war. You don't consciously set out to do something gallant. You just do it because that is what you are there for'.
[edit] Selected films
- The Hasty Heart (1949)
- Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950)
- The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952)
- The Sword and the Rose (1953)
- Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1954),
- The Dam Busters (1955) as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC
- A Man Called Peter (1955) as Peter Marshall
- The Virgin Queen (1955) as Sir Walter Raleigh
- D-Day, the Sixth of June (1956)
- Chase a Crooked Shadow (1957)
- Yangste Incident (1957)
- Danger Within (1958)
- The Longest Day (1962)
- Operation Crossbow (1965)
