Charleson was a noted actor on the British stage as well, with critically acclaimed leads in Guys and Dolls, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Fool for Love, and Hamlet, among many others.

The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography describes Charleson as "a leading player of charm and power" and "one of the finest British actors of his generation".

[11] He also sang solo as a boy soprano in church and in the Royal High School choir, which performed on the radio and in Edinburgh Festival concerts.

He traveled with the company to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York that same year, to appear as Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew, Ottavio in Scapino, and Brian Curtis in French Without Tears.

[7] In late 1974, he played the title role in Hamlet with the Cambridge Theatre Company, where he had previously performed that year in The School for Scandal and Six Characters in Search of an Author, and the production went on tour into 1975.

There he performed a hauntingly voiced Ariel in The Tempest; Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew; and Longaville in Love's Labour's Lost opposite Richard Griffiths as the King – all both in Stratford and at the Aldwych Theatre in London.

Also with the RSC, he was Lawrence Vail in an acclaimed production of Once in a Lifetime (1979) at the Aldwych Theatre, and he played Pierre in the Jane Lapotaire vehicle Piaf, giving a performance which caught the eye of the filmmakers of Chariots of Fire.

He was a glowingly reviewed Sky Masterson in Richard Eyre's enormously successful revival of the musical Guys and Dolls (1982),[7] opposite Julie Covington as Sister Sarah, with Bob Hoskins as Nathan Detroit and Julia McKenzie as Adelaide.

And he was a highly praised Brick, the repressed homosexual protagonist in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1988), opposite Lindsay Duncan.

[27][28][7][29][30] Director Richard Eyre, with some initial misgivings based on Charleson's health, had brought him in to replace Daniel Day-Lewis, who had abandoned the production.

[31][2] A further challenge was that Charleson's face was greatly swollen from septicaemia;[32][33] audience members and the rest of the public were told that he was recovering from a sinus operation.

[2][31] In 1979, producer David Puttnam and director Hugh Hudson had done months of searching for the actor to play the lead of the evangelical Scot Eric Liddell in their upcoming film about the 1924 Olympics.

[37] This mutual affinity led to Charleson's best-known film role and success – as the athlete and missionary Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire (1981).

Charleson's notable starring television roles in the 1970s include: Anthony in A Private Matter (1974), his first starring screen role, opposite Rachel Kempson; slick and cruel John Ross preying on Scottish immigrants to the New World in O Canada (1975) in the anthology series Churchill's People; and one of two British soldiers who find military life nearly unbearable in The Paradise Run (1976), directed by Michael Apted.

In the 1980s his notable starring TV roles included: Alexander the Great's close companion Hephaistion in the PBS miniseries The Search for Alexander the Great; serial killer Neville Heath in an episode of the murder-trial reenactment series Ladykillers (1981); naive Scot turned powerful South African magnate Jamie MacGregor in the miniseries Master of the Game (1984); romantic lead Clarence Dandridge in the period miniseries Louisiana (1984) opposite Margot Kidder; and protagonist Victor Geary in the stylish and clever Oxbridge Blues (1984), written by Frederic Raphael, directed by James Cellan Jones, and co-starring Amanda Redman, Rosalyn Landor, and Malcolm Stoddard.

He did notable solo singing work in productions including Much Ado About Nothing (1974), an episode of Rock Follies of '77 (1977), The Tempest (1978–1979), Piaf (1978–1980), Guys and Dolls (1982), A Royal Night of One Hundred Stars (1985), After Aida (1985–1986), Andrew Lloyd Webber's and Tim Rice's Cricket (1986), Sondheim: A Celebration (1988 benefit for Crusaid), and Bent (1989).

In The Sunday Times, John Peter named Charleson the Best Male Actor of 1989 for his Hamlet, along with Ian McKellen for his Iago in Othello.

[47] In his honour, the annual Ian Charleson Awards were established in 1991, to reward the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors aged under 30.

[50] In 1990, following his death, 20 of Charleson's friends, colleagues, and family members, including Ian McKellen, Alan Bates, Hugh Hudson, Richard Eyre, Sean Mathias, Hilton McRae, Ruby Wax, and David Rintoul, contributed to a book of reminiscences about him, called For Ian Charleson: A Tribute, published in October 1990.