His sharp, dark features and small stature saw him typecast as villains from the Middle and Far East, particularly for Hammer Film Productions.

(1959), I'm All Right Jack (1959), Cleopatra (1963), Lord Jim (1965), Khartoum (1966), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), and Man of La Mancha (1972).

[7] He made numerous television appearances in programmes such as The Buccaneers, Danger Man, The Avengers (as a sinister Eastern delegate in the 1967 episode "Death's Door"),[8] The Saint, The Champions, Department S, and Randall and Hopkirk, and the Granada series The Jewel in the Crown (1984, as Pandit Baba, a scholar agitating for an end to British rule in India).

[9] In the early 1970s, Maitland moved to Italy and established residence in Rome, whereupon he appeared in many Italian productions, including in Federico Fellini's Roma and Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect.

Like several of his fellow UK actors relocated to Italy, like Cyril Cusack and Edmund Purdom, Maitland moonlighted as an English-language dubber.