Biography

Bryan Forbes

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Bryan Forbes was born on July 22, 1926 in Stratford, London, England as John Theobald Clarke. He was an actor, writer, and director, known for The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Whisperers (1967) and Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964). He was married to Nanette Newman and Constance Smith. He died on May 8, 2013 in Virginia Water, Surrey, England.
- IMDb mini biography by: unknown

Turned down the chance to direct the first James Bond movie, Dr. No (1962), because he thought it was going to be "just another bang-bang movie".
Served with Roger Moore in the British Army of Occupation in Germany in 1947.
Owned and operated a small book shop in the village of Virginia Water from 1968-91.
Had a bad relationship with writer William Goldman on The Stepford Wives (1975), claiming he found Goldman arrogant and reluctant to rewrite his first-draft screenplay. Goldman in turn claimed that Forbes ruined the film by casting his wife Nanette Newman in a key role and that Forbes did all the rewriting himself at nights during filming. Despite this antagonism, Goldman got on well with Forbes' closest friend, Richard Attenborough, when they worked together soon after on both A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Magic (1978). Many years later Attenborough hired Forbes to write the screenplay for Chaplin (1992), but his draft was subsequently rewritten by . . . William Goldman (and others). As he made clear on Sir Richard Attenborough (1992), Forbes was very upset by this; he had no screenplay credits since then.
In a BBC News report in 2004, it was reported that he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1975, but had been in remission for almost 30 years. He put his subsequent remission down to a gluten-free diet and a loving wife. He later revealed that the supposed MS had been a misdiagnosis.

An actor must have arrogance, conceit . . . I would never have made it as an actor, but I still have conceit.
If you treat the production of films like the production of shoes, you end up with Hush Puppies.
I may not have come up the hard way, but I have come up the whole way.
[in 2007] I was a writer who became an actor who became a screenwriter who became a director.
I remember saying to this particular savagely disturbed woman [who was protesting his movie The Stepford Wives (1975)], "You've missed the whole point. A, it's fantasy; B, if anybody looks stupid, it's the men. It's not an attack on women, it's an attack on women being exploited by men."