Age, Biography, and Wiki
Sir David Attenborough was born on May 8, 1926, making him 99 years old as of 2025. He is best known for his work on the "Life" series and other groundbreaking documentaries like "Planet Earth" and "The Blue Planet." Attenborough's biography is marked by a lifelong passion for natural history, which has been reflected in his extensive career in television and conservation. He is the brother of late actor Lord Richard Attenborough.
| Occupation | Environmentalist |
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| Date of Birth | 8 May 1926 |
| Age | 99 Years |
| Birth Place | Isleworth, Middlesex, England |
| Horoscope | Taurus |
| Country | England |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific measurements such as height and weight are not widely reported for Sir David Attenborough, he is often recognized for his distinctive voice and authoritative presence on screen.
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Dating & Relationship Status
David Attenborough was married to Jane Elizabeth Oriel from 1950 until her passing in 1997. They had two children, Robert and Susan. Attenborough has spoken about the challenges of balancing family life with his demanding career, often spending long periods away from home for filming.
He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at the Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and natural specimens. He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection. He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond adjacent to the department. A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of "The Amber Time Machine", an episode of his series Natural World.''
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| Wife | Jane Ebsworth Oriel (m. 1950-1997) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, David Attenborough's net worth is estimated to be around $15 million according to some sources, although other estimates suggest it could be higher, up to $35 million. His annual salary for 2022 was reported to be around $1.6 million for a limited amount of TV work. Attenborough's income primarily comes from his work as a broadcaster, naturalist, and documentary filmmaker.
Career, Business, and Investments
Sir David Attenborough's career spans over six decades, with significant contributions to television and natural history filmmaking. He began his career in the 1950s with the BBC, where he eventually became the Controller of BBC2, introducing color television to Britain and launching iconic shows like "Monty Python's Flying Circus." His documentary series, including "Life on Earth," "The Living Planet," and "Planet Earth," have been globally acclaimed. Attenborough is also a prolific writer, having authored several books on natural history and conservation.
In addition to his television work, Attenborough has been a strong advocate for environmental conservation, using his platform to raise awareness about climate change and the need to protect biodiversity.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme. With the advent of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls. The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.
Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976. In 1979, he visited China and reported to the West for the first time about China's one-child policy.
In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One. The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957.
In 2020, Attenborough narrated the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The film acts as Attenborough's witness statement, reflecting on his career as a naturalist and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020. Further work for Netflix includes the documentary titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet, released on 4 June 2021. In October 2020, Attenborough began filming in Cambridge for The Green Planet. In 2021, Attenborough narrated A Perfect Planet, a five-part earth science series for BBC One.
Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland." He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its director-general, John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies.
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with which he has had a close association throughout his career. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Durham University (1982) and the University of Cambridge (1984) and honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford (1988) and the University of Ghent (1997).
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
David Attenborough's work as an author has strong parallels with his broadcasting career. In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work included accounts of his animal collecting expeditions around the world, which became the Zoo Quest series. He wrote an accompanying volume to each of his nine Life documentaries, along with books on tribal art and birds of paradise. His autobiography, Life on Air, was published in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number of his works which is available as a self-narrated audiobook. Attenborough has contributed forewords and introductions to many other works, notably those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
Social Network
While Sir David Attenborough may not be active on personal social media platforms, his work and legacy are widely shared and discussed across various social media channels, maintaining a strong presence that inspires and educates audiences worldwide.
After leaving the navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television and had seen only one programme in his life.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough) and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there were not any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents." Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted.
In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. He commented: "The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said 'Don't be ridiculous!' These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in."
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.
Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans. However, the increased urgency of environmental messaging in films such as Extinction: The Facts, which depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, Climate Change – The Facts and A Life on Our Planet from 2019 and 2020 received praise. In Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough discusses the devastating impact that deforestation is having on the planet and the species.
Attenborough considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the Onchocerca volvulus parasitic worm:
Attenborough's television credits span eight decades. His association with natural history programmes dates back to The Pattern of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s. His most influential work, 1979's Life on Earth, launched a strand of nine authored documentaries with the BBC Natural History Unit which shared the Life strand name and spanned 30 years. He narrated the long-running BBC series Wildlife on One. In his later career, he provided narration for several high-profile BBC wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary format with Flying Monsters in 2010, and again in his 2025 cinema release of "Ocean With David Attenborough".
Education
Attenborough studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, graduating in 1947. Following his studies, he served in the Royal Navy for two years before entering the world of broadcasting.
In summary, Sir David Attenborough's impact on the world of natural history and conservation is profound, with a career that continues to captivate and educate audiences globally, despite his advanced age. His net worth reflects his successful career as a broadcaster and naturalist, while his dedication to environmental causes remains a lasting legacy.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth.
He accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course. In 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa. That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals. After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth.
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Attenborough was initially sceptical about the human influence on climate change and stated that a 2004 lecture finally convinced him humans were responsible. He remained silent on the issue until 2006. Attenborough attended and spoke at COP26 as the "People's Advocate" for the event and urged world leaders to act to reduce emissions. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal. In his 2020 documentary film David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Attenborough advocates for people to adopt a vegetarian diet or to reduce meat consumption to save wildlife, noting that "the planet can't support billions of meat-eaters."
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation. In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to control, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of it. He further explained to the science journal Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in".
Attenborough has joined the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and other top scientists in signing a campaign statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The statement calls for "creationism to be banned from the school science curriculum and for evolution to be taught more widely in schools".
In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997. Robert was a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970 and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000), and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.