A s a young boy growing up in England, David Attenborough was fascinated by fossils and dreamed of becoming a palaeontologist one day. Instead, he accidentally became world-famous… and the voice of Planet Earth.
On May 8, the television documentarian celebrates 100 years and the milestone is not going to slip past without fanfare. Instead, on his birthday, the BBC screened a live event from London’s Royal Albert Hall, aptly titled David Attenborough’s 100 Years on Planet Earth.
It’s a level of recognition few people could ever hope to attain. But the natural historian shrugs off suggestions he’s a legend.
“If I’m a household name, it’s only because I’ve been doing it forever and fairly regularly,” he says.
“I keep popping up and that’s the only reason.”
A career beyond expectations
Over the past 72 years, Sir David has made more than 100 documentaries showcasing the wonders of the natural world – a job he jokingly once described as, “Swanning around the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things.”
His up-close encounter with gorillas in the forests of Rwanda for his BBC series Life on Earth is still regularly voted one of the greatest TV moments of all time. Yet in his twenties, when he first applied to the BBC as a behind-the-scenes producer, they turned him down.
The network encouraged him to apply for its television training scheme. He did and his application was successful. But even after he’d finished his training, there was little chance of ending up in front of the camera.
Exploring the Great Barrier Reef
Unbeknown to David, an executive attached a memo to his file stating that while he was intelligent and promising as a producer, he should never appear on screen because his teeth were too big. His break came in 1954 when he was working behind the scenes for a show called Zoo Quest and the host fell ill.
The bosses had no choice but to place David in front of the camera and he never looked back, bringing the wonders of the natural world into living rooms everywhere.
The first time he ever scuba-dived was to see Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and he recalls, “I was so taken aback by the spectacle before me, I forgot momentarily to breathe.”
Years before the beginning of his fabled career, David tied the knot with the love of his life, Jane, who, he says, was “very understanding” of him being away on assignment for months at a time. In the 1960s, they welcomed daughter Susan and son Robert, and David confesses he now regrets missing out on parts of their childhood.
When life changed at home
“I was away for three months at a time,” he tells.
“If you have a child of six or eight and you miss three months of his or her life, it’s irreplaceable. You miss something. “There used to be family jokes. You know… ‘You don’t remember that, Father, do you? Because you weren’t there!’”
David was here in New Zealand in 1997, filming the documentary The Life of Birds, when he received the shattering news that Jane had suffered a brain haemorrhage and was in a coma. He immediately flew home to the UK and when he got to her bedside, he held her hand for the last time. She gave his hand a squeeze before she died.
Living with loss
“The focus of my life, the anchor had gone… now I was lost,” he wrote in his 2002 memoir Life on Air.
His grief was crippling and, he says, it was his work that saved him. He still lives in the home he shared with Jane.
“This house is all bound up with her,” he shares.
“I feel her here as much as anywhere.”
A lifetime of purpose
Even at the age of 100, David is still working. Just last year, he became the oldest person to win a Daytime Emmy for his work on Netflix’s Secret Lives of Orangutans. David has two documentaries lined up this year and he’s as passionate as ever about bringing humankind back in touch with nature via their television screens.
“After living for nearly a hundred years on this planet, I now understand that the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea,” he reflects.
“If we save the sea, we save our world. After a lifetime of filming our planet, I’m sure nothing is more important.”
