By Richard Attenborough
We stopped to fill up the car at a petrol station on a remote country road in South Africa and I got out to go to the gents.
Standing at the urinal, I was joined by two beefy white men, both rather drunk.
They took up position on either side of me.
Illegal gesture: Richard Attenborough was breaking apartheid laws by holding Winnie's hand
Sensing one of them staring, I gave him a friendly grin. I didn't catch what he said at first, partly because of this thick Afrikaaner accent.
Then he said it again: 'You commie bastard nigger f***er ... you bin asking for trouble ... now you gonna geddit.'
My brain went into overdrive. It was two against one and they were younger and fitter than me. But I was sober and, even at 60, hopefully quicker on my feet.
As the first meaty fist began to descend, I feinted to one side before making a dash for the exit. I burst through the chest-high saloon-type doors and heard them swing back and hit the first of my would-be assailants on the rebound.
Richard with Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel listening to Gordon Brown speaking before the unveiling of a statue of the former President of South Africa last year
Having gained valuable seconds, I pelted towards the car with my wife Sheila in it, shouting at our friend in the driver's seat to start the engine.
She did and, with great presence of mind, leaned across to open the passenger door. I piled in and we sped off, tyres screaming, until we got to a safe house in Johannesburg.
Shortly afterwards, Sheila and I left South Africa, persuaded that it was not safe to stay.
All the way to the airport, we were shadowed by security police vehicles, each containing two impassive white men in dark suits and glasses.
The lead car tailgated us, continually nudging our bumper.
I have never in my entire life been so glad to board a British Airways jumbo as I was that day. As the plane lumbered into the sky, I heaved a huge sigh of relief.
Then, as the lush city of Johannesburg began to recede beneath us, I had a glimpse of the barren and bleak black township of Soweto and its endless rows of shanty dwellings.
I knew at that moment, with absolute certainty, that I would not be intimidated. These bullies would not stop me. I had to make Cry Freedom.
Richard Attenborough in the film Brighton Rock in 1947
The idea for this film exposing the then apartheid regime in South Africa came after I was introduced to Donald Woods, a South African journalist, and he handed me a book he had written about the dead black activist, Steve Biko.
He wanted me to make a film about him. At that point, my knowledge of Biko was minimal.
I knew he was the founder of some kind of liberation movement, had read reports of his death in police custody and was aware of accusations of a cover-up by the South African authorities.
Only later did I discover that Woods was the chief accuser and the book he'd handed me contained the evidence that Steve had been murdered.
I have to admit it remained unread for nearly a year. I was busy travelling the world promoting my new film, Gandhi.
But then there was a row about its premiere in South Africa after I learned - embarrassingly, from the press at Heathrow Airport - that it was to be a whites-only event. A government 'exemption' was needed for it to be multi-racial.
I was so sickened by the very idea that black and white South Africans were not allowed to sit in the same cinema without a 'special dispensation', that I finally sat down and read Biko from cover to cover.
It was an amazing piece of work, written in secret, smuggled out of South Africa and published after a penniless Donald, his wife and five kids had been granted refugee status in Britain.
I next read Donald's autobiography in which he described how, as a well-off and respected editor of a newspaper, he had risked everything by attacking in print the strong-arm tactics employed by the white minority government against the black majority.
Priding himself on his evenhandedness, he also used his editorials to decry the increasingly militant Black Consciousness Movement, headed by the young black fire-brand, Steve Biko.
Biko challenged the editor to meet him to debate their differences, man to man - not easy since Biko was a 'banned person' living under house arrest.
But they met and, to Woods's initial discomfort, Steve proved more than his intellectual equal, well able to demolish many of his most sincerely held beliefs.
And, although the younger man scorned white liberals who attached themselves to the black cause, he and Donald forged an unlikely friendship.
Then, four years later, Steve disappeared, picked up by BOSS, the South African Bureau of State Security.
As Donald was to discover, he was held naked and manacled in solitary confinement before dying from massive head injuries.
The Minister of Justice announced that the death was self-inflicted due to a 'hunger strike'.
An outraged Donald demanded an inquest, but this time he'd pushed the apartheid regime too far and he, too, was declared a banned person and forbidden to be with more than one person at any time.
This edict cruelly included his wife, Wendy, and their five children.
He decided he had to get out of South Africa after an acid-impregnated T-shirt sent through the post as an anonymous birthday present badly burned his six-year-old daughter.
He fled in disguise across the border and, having rejoined his family, flew on to London.
What I found fascinating about this story was how these two men, Biko and Woods, had formed a real friendship across the racial divide and how Donald had chosen to jeopardise everything he held dear - family, career, home, even his own life - to reveal the truth about Steve's death.
I had inherited my code of behaviour from my parents and had never had cause to doubt it. I had always strived, as best I could, to uphold their principles.
Donald, on the other hand, had had to face up to the realisation that his parents' racism was immoral and then do all he could to bring it to an end. This was what I wanted to bring to the screen.
And this was why I had come in secret to South Africa - to find out more. I was warned that the people I was going there to meet would be watched round the clock and their homes bugged.
I had to be very careful indeed because a former member of the security police had warned me that they were were quite capable of arresting me on some trumped-up charge. Worst-case scenario, Sheila and I could simply disappear.
It was Donald's idea that we should not travel directly to South Africa but fly first to Nairobi in Kenya and then take a short-haul flight to Swaziland to visit a ground-breaking multi-racial school I was closely associated with and for which I was a fund-raiser.
From there, we slipped over into South Africa via a little used border crossing. We drove to Johannesburg, and from there flew on to Cape Town.
There, friends of Donald took us to a place I will never forget, a construction site which was hell in the making, covering 18 square miles and encircled by a concrete and barbed-wire fence.
It was to be a black shanty town - source of all the cheap labour on which comfortable life in Cape Town depended.
Naively, I asked my companions why the brand-new highway that ended at the gate was four lanes wide.
What kind of vehicles was it expected to take? 'Tanks,' was the chilling answer.
So far, my undercover research into the horrors of apartheid had gone unnoticed.
The flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town had been an internal one, and no passports were needed. I kept my hat on and my head down and no one recognised us.
But at our hotel, to my dismay, I noticed the word 'Attenborough' screaming at me from a front-page headline of an Afrikaans newspaper.
I got someone to translate it: the story said Sheila and I had been spotted dining in a restaurant with an opposition politician, and it went on to speculate, wholly inaccurately, about the reason for our visit.
I was shaken. It was nearly a decade since I'd appeared on the screen in any big role and I sincerely believed I'd be able to travel around South Africa without attracting any attention.
More caution was needed. So when we went to see Steve Biko's widow, we began by driving to one hotel, walking through the entrance and straight out again through the back door, where another car was waiting to take us to our meeting place.
In the lounge of a different hotel, we sat around a small table to talk. Ntsiki was a shy, dignified and quietly spoken woman who'd given Steve two sons. With her was Steve's mother.
They listened intently as I told them that, as a white man, I wanted to open the eyes of other white people all over the world to the terrible injustices of apartheid.
I also hoped, by depicting the friendship between Steve and Donald Woods, to show that change was possible.
And demonstrating the facts about Steve's death might even bring his killers to justice.
After I'd finished, the two women spoke to each other in a language I didn't understand and then asked if they might have some time alone. Sheila and I retreated out of earshot.
Then Ntsiki beckoned us back. 'Ma-Biko and I would like you to make your film,' she said formally. 'You came all this way to ask our permission and for that we thank you. We ask only one thing. Make it strong.'
Sheila and I next flew into Bloemfontein, and my heart sank at the airport as we were greeted by flashbulbs and reporters shouting questions.
Next morning, we managed to slip away in a hire car to drive to the remote town of Brandfort. We were on a mission to meet a key figure in the black struggle.
Sheila drove and I kept an eye out behind, making sure no one was tailing us.
Following our written instructions, we pulled into a parking area which boasted a single public phone kiosk.
Suddenly, a black car containing two white men in dark suits and glasses pulled in, then another, which stopped at right angles to the first. A third arrived, effectively boxing us in.
No one got out of the cars and, thoroughly spooked, we remained in ours. Within minutes, a Volkswagen van arrived.
A black woman clad in purple robes and looking like an empress descended from it and made her stately way to the exact centre of the car park, where she stood immobile in the blazing sun.
This was Winnie, wife of the imprisoned black leader Nelson Mandela. As a banned person, she was only ever allowed to be with one person, so Sheila remained in our car while I went over to greet her.
We then set off to her home in a nearby black township. The Volkswagen led the way, we followed and the three black cars followed us.
Winnie's house - I'd call it a hut - was a small brick-built box with a corrugated roof, a patch of vegetation and an outside tap.
Outside, as she had warned me, a television crew from the state-run South African Broadcasting Corporation was waiting.
They apparently knew I was coming. The interviewer told me Mrs Mandela had already spoken to him and he hoped I would do the same. I said I would consider it but wanted to spend some time with her first.
Winnie was engagingly light-hearted, with no sign of the violent and sadistic streak that would eventually bring about her downfall years later in post-apartheid South Africa.
She'd been here, under house arrest, for almost seven years since the police raided her Soweto home at dawn and spirited her and her belongings away.
We moved on to the film and I outlined the story and what I hoped to achieve.
She asked how soon I would make it. 'If all goes according to plan,' I said, 'shooting will start in October.'
When I got up to leave, she again warned me about the TV crew outside. Did I plan to talk to them? I considered.
They'd already filmed me and, as Winnie had already given them an interview, it seemed churlish to refuse.
She led the way out of the house and paused on the doorstep for me to catch up.
Incorrigibly tactile, I took her hand. Then I gave the man from SABC the most bland interview of my life.
The following afternoon, we flew unrecognised to Johannesburg, to be met by another of Donald's friends.
On the drive to his house in Pretoria, he told us that all day SABC had been trailing pictures of me and Winnie, promising sensational revelations in the evening news bulletin.
I brushed it off, telling him what I'd said during the interview: nothing, absolutely nothing, just plain boring. But boring it wasn't.
The white anchorman gave a rundown of my film credentials over a shot of me and Winnie entering her house. A little of my uninformative interview followed.
Then he asked rhetorically: what was Mr Attenborough really doing in South Africa?
He proceeded to answer this with a whole series of preposterous and inflammatory accusations.
I'd come as a communist agitator, he said, financed by Moscow to bring about armed insurrection.
I'd even informed Mrs Mandela, the banned wife of a terrorist, now serving life imprisonment, when the revolution was due to begin.
My voice could be heard saying: 'If all goes according to plan, shooting will start in October.'
They then showed me and Winnie leaving her hut, hand in hand. The anchorman ranted on, demanding that the authorities take immediate action against me.
I must be thrown out of the country and never allowed to return.
I exploded with apoplectic steam. My host stopped me in mid-flow, putting a finger to his lips and jerking his head in the direction of the French windows leading into the garden.
My head was reeling. This man was an accredited diplomat of the U.S. State Department, and he was telling me his house was bugged.
And I'd just seen a totally rigged piece of reportage being broadcast to the whole of South Africa by the state television service.
Out in the garden, he explained how I'd been duped. There was no way the SABC was ever going to broadcast their interview with Winnie.
As a banned person, nothing she said could be published in any form.
And if the security police wanted to arrest me, they certainly had cause: I'd been filmed touching her - holding her hand - which was also illegal.
He asked how close the television team had been to the house while we were inside, and I told him they'd been about 20 feet away.
That almost certainly meant, he said, that my voice had been picked up by other microphones, planted inside Winnie's home.
And that meant that it must have been the police who recorded what I said and supplied the tape to the TV network.
This was an increasingly frightening country to be in, and common sense said I should have left there and then.
But I was b*****ed if I was going to let the likes of that TV anchorman determine what I did or didn't do.
It was on the return journey from another meeting with one of Biko's associates that I had my sinister encounter with those two beefy bullies in the gents.
But all their intimidation had achieved was to make me absolutely certain that I would film Cry Freedom come hell or high water.
The film was released in 1987, and four years later, Sheila and I were on our way to a celebration hosted by Oliver Tambo, president of the African National Congress, in North London.
When we stopped at traffic lights, Sheila was aware that the passenger in the rear of the minicab alongside was smiling and waving at me.
There was something familiar about him but, before I could put a name to the face, the lights turned green and we pulled away.
I was still racking my brains when we stopped at the next set of lights and there he was again.
He opened his window; I opened mine. 'Richard!' he exclaimed. 'You do not know me, but I know you. We shall talk at the party.'
And then it hit me: it was Tambo's guest of honour, Nelson Mandela.
This was the man who had strode out of prison just 15 months ago after 27 years of incarceration.
This was the man who turned his prison into a university and his jailer into a friend. This was the man who ended apartheid.
Our cars arrived at the Tambos' house. On the pavement, I hugged Nelson; he hugged me.
'I want to thank you, Richard,' he said. 'Your film had more impact on the white population than any speech I ever made in my life.'
I was completely overwhelmed by his generosity. Was it true? Of course not. But I like to think Cry Freedom did help the struggle.
• Abridged extract from Entirely Up To You, Darling by Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins, published by Hutchinson on Thursday at ?20. Copyright 2008, Richard Attenborough and Diana Hawkins.
To order a copy for ?18 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.
Steve McQueen: Terrified Richard taking him on a motorbike ride
Fear at full throttle with Steve McQueen
Just as I was finally starting to film Gandhi in 1980, I received the news I'd been dreading - at the age of 50, Steve McQueen was dead.
We first met in the summer of 1962 in Bavaria on the set of The Great Escape.
This was my big international acting breakthrough.
Just three members of the all-male cast were billed above the title: Steve as the Cooler King, Jim Garner as the Scrounger and me as Big X.
Right from the outset, both on-screen and off, there was intense macho rivalry between the Brits and the Yanks.
It came to a head when the two separate groups were lounging around in the sun during a break from shooting.
As always, when time hung heavy, Steve was riding his 500cc Triumph, zooming off between the PoW camp huts and returning to skid around us Brits in ever decreasing dusty circles.
Finally, those piercing blue eyes hidden behind dark glasses, he came to a halt beside me and sat there, twisting the throttle provocatively.
'Wanna ride?' I hesitated. It was 30 years since I'd ridden pillion and, having ended up in hospital as a result, had sworn I'd never do it again.
But national honour was at stake and I knew I couldn't refuse the challenge. 'You bet,' I said heartily.
The next 15 minutes were the most terrifying I can remember as I clung on for dear life, but they cemented a deep friendship.
Steve was a speed freak. He was devastated when the insurers ruled against him performing the most famous motorbike stunt in movie history - but never took the credit for it, always careful to point out it was performed by his double, Bud Ekins.
He had to settle for dressing up as a German chasing Bud in that scene. There's a belief that screenwriters disliked Steve because he was always angling to make his parts bigger.
That, in my experience, was untrue. He was forever fighting to cut lines because he knew, better than anyone, that one telling look is worth any amount of dialogue.
I last saw him a few months before he died. I was on a flying visit to Hollywood and we arranged to meet at his favourite restaurant.
Because I'd been delayed, it seemed strange not to see him when I arrived. About to sit down, I caught sight of a ravaged old man beckoning from one of the bar stools. A shiver ran through me: the old man was Steve.
How do you say farewell to one of your closest friends? What do you talk about that last time? I'll tell you.
We ribbed each other about the day he scared the s*** out of me on his motorbike. He reminded me about the time I dragged him to a football match at Stamford Bridge.
He didn't mention that he had cancer and had only six months to live. When we hugged outside, neither of us said goodbye. I valued his friendship profoundly and miss him more than I can say.
He was one of the great screen actors of all time.
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