Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd was born in Dublin in 1919. His father Andrew William Palethorpe Todd was a British officer and successful rugby player for the Irish national team before the First World War. Richard spent his childhood in India before the family moved to Devon, England. He attended Shrewsbury School in Shropshire and later Sandhurst Military Academy. His love of acting was greater, however, and so he studied it at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. The early years of his acting career saw him mainly on regional stages, before he co-founded the Dundee Repertory Theatre in Scotland in 1939. The Second World War interrupted his acting activities. In 1941, he was promoted to lieutenant and served as of May 1943 in the 7th Parachute Battalion of the British 6th Airborne Division. During the night of June 5th to 6th 1944, Todd was one of the first Allied soldiers to land in France on D-Day. In Operation Tonga, he served in Major John Howard's unit on the hard-fought Pegasus Bridge and defended it until the arrival of the relief force, led by Lord Lovat. This encounter was portrayed in two films after the war, Richard Todd an actor in both of them. In the film The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, he even played Major Howard. After the war, Todd went back to the Dundee Repertory Theatre. Afterwards, he made his debut in London's West End in the role of Lachlan MacLachlan in the play The Hasty Heart by John Patrick. After an interlude on New York’s Broadway, he returned to England. In 1950, Todd received an Oscar nomination and the Golden Globe Award for Best Up-and-Coming Actor for the cinema version of The Hasty Heart. One of his colleagues in this movie was the American Ronald Reagan, who would become U.S. President 30 years later. The two were bound by a deep friendship. In the early 1950s, starting with Robin Hood and his daredevil companions, he starred in three adventure films produced by Walt Disney in Great Britain. He became widely known in 1954 in the role of Wing Commander Guy Gibson in Michael Anderson's film May 1943 The Dam Busters. Originally Ian Fleming had wanted him to embody the first James Bond, as he was far more like the blue-eyed aristocratic agent than Sean Connery. Fleming later changed his mind after Connery convinced him during his audition for the Bond role with his unique and masculine gait. Todd also appeared on television in Virtual Murder, Silent Witness and Doctor Who. He was married and divorced twice: from 1949 to 1970 to Catherine Grant-Bogle, a colleague at the Dundee Repertory (the couple had a son, Peter and a daughter, Fiona). From 1970 to 1992 he was married to Virginia Mailer (here, too, two sons were born: Andrew and Seumas). His son Seumas (1977-1997) died of suicide; his son Peter (1952-2005) also killed himself. Todd’s last home was a farm in Lincolnshire, England. The Walt Disney Company named him "Disney Legend" in 2002.
