His other notable screen work included a portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in two films (The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles), as well as significant roles in Brazil, M. Butterfly, and Dark City.

After a period at the Old Rep (also known as the Birmingham Repertory Theatre), he appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), of which he was a founding member, from 1960 to 1975.

[3] Although he later gained his highest profile in film and television work such as House of Cards (1990), Richardson was primarily a classical stage actor.

[4] His first engagement after training was with Birmingham Repertory Theatre,[5] where his performance of Hamlet led to an offer of a place with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He was The Herald in Peter Brook's production of Marat/Sade in London in 1964; in the New York City transfer he took the lead role of Jean-Paul Marat (and so became the first actor to appear nude on the Broadway stage),[1] a performance he repeated for the 1967 film Marat/Sade.

[1] A significant Shakespearean cameo role was a brief performance as Hamlet in the gravedigger scene as part of episode six, "Protest and Communication", of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation television series in 1969.

He also appeared on Broadway as onstage narrator in the original production of Edward Albee's play Lolita (1981), an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's book that was not critically well received.

[5] In 2002, Richardson joined Derek Jacobi, Donald Sinden and Diana Rigg in an international tour of The Hollow Crown,[3] and this was repeated the following year with Dame Janet Suzman in the female roles.

In the 1980s, he became well known as Major Neuheim in the award-winning Private Schulz[5] and as Sir Godber Evans in Channel 4's adaptation of Porterhouse Blue.

Richardson also performed the role of Sherlock Holmes for two of six planned television movies, The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles, in 1983, which were both critically acclaimed.

[11][12] Richardson's most acclaimed television role was as Machiavellian politician Francis Urquhart in the BBC adaptation of Michael Dobbs's House of Cards trilogy.

[3] He won the BAFTA Best Television Actor Award for his portrayal in the first series, House of Cards (1990),[13] and was nominated for both of the sequels To Play the King (1993)[14] and The Final Cut (1995).

[4][16] He received another BAFTA nomination for his role as Falkland Islands governor Sir Rex Hunt in the film An Ungentlemanly Act (1992),[17][4] and played corrupt politician Michael Spearpoint, British Director of the European Economic Community, in the satirical series The Gravy Train and The Gravy Train Goes East.

Other roles in this period include Polonius in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990),[20] Sir Mason Harwood in Year of the Comet (1992),[21] the French ambassador in M. Butterfly (1993), Martin Landau's butler in B*A*P*S (1997), a malevolent alien in Dark City (1998), The Kralahome in The King and I (1999), Cruella de Vil's Barrister, Mr. Torte QC, in the live-action film 102 Dalmatians (2000), and a corrupt aristocrat in From Hell (2001).

In 1999, Richardson became known to a young audience as the main character Stephen Tyler in both series of the family drama The Magician's House (1999–2000).

[4] He once more returned to fantasy in the recurring role of the villainous Canon Black in the short-lived BBC cult series Strange (2003).

During the last 15 years of his life he appeared five times on television acting opposite his son Miles Richardson, though this was usually with one or the other in a minor role.