He once said: 'If you have been on stage playing Hamlet at 24, as I did, that experience is so traumatic and scary that nothing you encounter again can ever equal it.' It was the start of a 15-year association with the RSC at Stratford and the Aldwych Theatre in London, appearing in all its major productions including the title roles in Hamlet, Richard I and Richard II. Two years later, he was recruited by Peter Hall for the company that was to become the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Asked why he wanted to become an actor, he replied 'Because I can conceive of no other career I could possibly exist in.'īy 1958, Richardson had joined the Birmingham Repertory Company where he was chosen to replace Albert Finney. He once said: 'You were alright in Edinburgh so long as you stayed within the bounds of your own social status.'Ī chance encounter with an actress, Nancy Mitchell, led to a successful audition at Glasgow's College of Dramatic Art. When he returned to Edinburgh with his plummy accent, he found it difficult to fit in. After a spell with the Army's Special Investigations Branch, the military equivalent of the CID, he transferred to Forces radio where he became an announcer.Īnother establishment figure: as Sherlock Holmes It was during Richardson's own National Service in the 1950s that his now familiar delivery was first honed. His mother, however, was the instigator of his career on the boards by encouraging him to join a local amateur dramatic group while his father was serving abroad at the start of World War II. His father was a strict Scottish Presbyterian with very fixed views on life. His father, John Richardson, worked for the biscuit company, McVitie and Price, and when Ian was growing up in Edinburgh in the 1930s, John was loading biscuits on to a horse and cart. Yet, he was born in Scotland to a working-class family with no acting tradition. With his threatening, sardonic look and his cut-glass accent, Ian Richardson became a household name in the BBC's House of Cards trilogy.Īs the Machiavellian Prime Minister, Francis Urquart, his line 'You might well say that but I couldn't possibly comment', became something of a catchphrase when the series was broadcast in the 1990s.īy now, Richardson had become well-known for playing upper-crust types, most notably as Bill Haydon in the BBC adaptation of John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Ian Richardson in his most famous role as Francis Urquart

Ian richardson hamlet full movie