[4] In 1982 she appeared at the Open Air Theatre in London's Regent's Park in Shaw's The Admirable Bashville and The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew.
[1][5] For the Royal Shakespeare Company Richard appeared in Chekhov's The Three Sisters (April 1980) at the Donmar Warehouse with Roger Rees, Edward Petherbridge, Bob Peck and Timothy Spall; and as Kate Nickleby[6] in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (November 1980) at the Aldwych Theatre, an epic eight-hour stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Nicholas Nickleby with Roger Rees, Timothy Spall, John Woodvine, Edward Petherbridge, Ben Kingsley, Fulton Mackay, David Threlfall, Bob Peck, Rose Hill and Christopher Benjamin.
[5] Among her film and television appearances are Armchair Theatre (1969), Emmerdale Farm (1973), Father Brown (1974), The Glittering Prizes (1976), Lorna Doone (1976), Enemy at the Door (1978–80), Angels (1982), The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1982), The Cleopatras (1983), The Dark Side of the Sun (1983), Oscar (as Constance Wilde) (1985), Casualty (1996) and Wycliffe (1997).
Her films include Hansel and Gretel (1987), and Empire of the Sun (1987) directed by Steven Spielberg, and in which she played Mary Graham, the mother of Jim (Christian Bale).
Richard was married to actor Edward Petherbridge, with whom she appeared in Nicholas Nickleby for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1980, as well as in the Lord Peter Wimsey play Busman's Honeymoon (1988), and in Pomp and Circumstance.