Ian William Richardson was born on 7 April 1934 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He received his primary education at the old Edinburgh school of George Heriot. When he was eighteen, Richardson was drafted into the army, where he was assigned to the Broadcasting Service of the British Armed Forces as an announcer. Work on military radio helped the future actor to get rid of the Scottish accent and develop the correct pronunciation. On his return from the army, he entered the College of Dramatic Arts in Glasgow, and in 1958 began a professional acting career in the repertory theater in Birmingham.
In 1960, Richardson joined the troupe of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and soon became one of its leading actors. He achieved major success in 1964, playing Marat in Peter Weiss’s play Marat Garden, directed by famed theater director Peter Brook. He made his Broadway debut in December 1965. No less famous he received as the performer of the role of Wendys in the “Tragedy of the Avenger” by Thomas Middleton (1966-1967). Richardson has also worked with Trevor Nan, Peter Hall and other leading British theatre directors. During the years he spent in the troupe of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the actor played a huge number of roles in the classical repertoire. Among his Shakespearean heroes are Sir Andrew Agucik in Twelfth Night (1960), Cassius in Julius Caesar (1968), Prospero in The Tempest (1970), Buckingham in Richard III (1970), Berone in The Fruitful Effort of Love (1973), and Coriolanus (1967) and Richard II (1974) in the plays of the same name.
The first roles played by the actor in film and television were mainly repeated by his theatrical works in Peter Reage (1967) and Peter's play "Sehrath" in "Sa Reage" (1967). From time to time he appeared on the television screen in various productions and starred in several films, however, until the early eighties he was known mainly as a theater actor. In 1976, he was nominated for the prestigious Tony Theatre Award for his role as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady. He also played for some time at the London Old Vic Theatre, and in 1981 he again appeared on Broadway in a play based on Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. Wide popularity came to the actor in the eighties thanks to television. In 1982, he won the Royal Television Society Award for his role as Major Neuheim in the comedy series Private Schultz (1981, directed by Robert Chatwin), and soon millions of viewers saw him as Sherlock Holmes in the television films The Sign of Four (1983, directed by Desmond Davis) and The Baskerville Dog (1983, directed by Douglas Hickox). He played a high-ranking official Warren in Terry Gilliam’s utopia Brazil (1985), after which he began to periodically star in small, usually characteristic roles in feature-length British and then Hollywood films. In 1989, Richardson was promoted to the Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
No small fame brought him the role of the insidious and ambitious conservative politician Francis Urhart in a series of television films based on the novels of Michael Dobbs "House of Cards" (1990), "Going from the King" (1994) and "The Last Stage" (1995, all three - dir. Paul Sid. In 1991, after the release of the first film of this trilogy, Richardson was awarded the British Academy of Film and Television Award for Best Actor. No less popular was his wise and astute Dr. Bell, the mentor of the young Conan Doyle, who participated with the future writer in solving crimes in the television project "Death Rooms": "The Dark Origin of Sherlock Holmes" (2000), Paul Sid, "The Eyes of the Patient" (2001, Tim Fievel), "The Photographer's Chair" (2001, Paul Marcus), "The Kingdom of Bones" (2001, Simon Langton) and "The White Horse Combination" (2001, Mark Sid), "The Eyes of the Patient" often had a solid character. He is also known for such roles as Polonius in the farce "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" (1990, dir. Tom Stoppard), Esquire Frederick Fairley in the film adaptation of Wilkie Collins' novel "Woman in White" (1997, dir. Tim Faywell), the sinister representative of the other world Mr. Book in the fantastic film "Dark City" (1998, Alex Proyas), Lord Grown in the television version of Mervyn Peake's novel "Gormengast" Wilson (2000, d.) and the head of the London police "Huglaine Rege" (Huge, Charles, 2001). In 2002, the actor returned for a while to the troupe of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in John Barton’s The Empty Crown. Ian Richardson died on February 9, 2007 in London.
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