![]() ![]() And, if you have a fine voice, you can always persuade people that you are tall, muscular and handsome.” ![]() He recalled the principal telling him that “by no stretch of the imagination” would he ever be a matinee idol: “You’re not muscular, you’re not particularly tall and you’re not particularly handsome. Asked why he wanted to become an actor, he replied, “I can conceive of no other career I could possibly exist in.”Īt the College of Dramatic Art, where he won the James Bridie Gold Medal in 1957, Richardson worked further on his voice. He auditioned successfully for the College of Dramatic Art in Glasgow. He found returning to Edinburgh difficult, once commenting, “You were alright in Edinburgh so long as you stayed within the bounds of your own social status.” Here he began to develop the vocal precision that would mark his professional performances. He spent much of his National Service (conscription) working as a continuity announcer for Forces Radio in Libya. He was serious about performance from the outset. ![]() His father was a strict Presbyterian, and Richardson struggled to convince his parents that acting was a sensible profession. With his father away at war, his mother encouraged him to join a local amateur dramatics company, where he first began to show promise. “I don’t think they had a clue what to do with me,” he told an interviewer. Having enjoyed primary school, he said he preferred to forget his time at Tynecastle High. Ian Richardson was born in Edinburgh in 1934, where his father worked for a biscuit company. Though he later found the success of this portrayal something of a burden, it says a great deal for his qualities as an actor that it was so compelling. His portrayal of the manipulative MP Francis Urquhart, scheming and murderous in his designs on power, struck a chord with a population sick of Thatcherism and its legacy. One of the finest classical actors of his generation, he acquired huge popularity through the television series House of Cards (1990) and its two sequels ( To Play The King and The Final Cut ). Ian Richardson, who has died suddenly aged 72, is a case in point. Even actors of great versatility and range are sometimes remembered for one or two roles. ![]()
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