LONDON (Reuters) - Actor and film director Richard Attenborough’s 14-year-old granddaughter has died in the Asian tsunami disaster and his daughter and her mother-in-law are missing, a family friend says.
The family party was staying in Phuket, the island resort on the south-western Thai coast devastated by Sunday’s giant waves.
A statement from Diana Hawkins, a colleague and family friend, said Attenborough’s granddaughter Lucy died at the scene.
"Lord (Richard) Attenborough and his wife, Sheila, have lost three members of their immediate family in the tidal wave disaster that hit the beaches of Thailand on Boxing Day morning.
"Their elder daughter, Jane, is missing, as is her mother-in-law, Jane Holland."
Advertisement starts
Advertisement ends
Richard Attenborough appeared in "Jurassic Park" as the crazed creator of the dinosaur fantasy land. He also starred as the chilling villain "Pinkie" in screen classic "Brighton Rock".
His many directing credits include the Oscar-winning epic "Gandhi" and the South African apartheid era work "Cry Freedom".
Miles of tsunami-shattered beach hotels on the Thai mainland north of Phuket island have begun yielding up their dead with at least 770 corpses, Thais and foreign tourists, recovered in the area around Khao Lak beach.
Thailand’s official death toll stands at 1,538 with 1,400 missing, many of them Thais working in the tourist trade.
More than 68,000 people are now believed to have been killed around the Indian Ocean by the tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
