Emily Richard

Emily Richard, born Anne Richards on 25 January 1948 in London, England, was a British actress best known for her work with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She died on 2 October 2024, at the age of 76. The second of three daughters born to Ronald Richards, a merchant navy ship captain, and his wife Nancy, née Brooks, a fashion consultant, Richard grew up in north London. She was educated at Channing School in Highgate before a brief period at secretarial college. She subsequently enrolled at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in 1966 at the age of 18, but departed after one year having been told she was too timid for the stage. She went on to sell programmes at West End theatres before acquiring an agent.

Her first professional role came in a 1968 touring production of Toad of Toad Hall, in which she played Mole. The engagement earned her her Equity card, and it was at this point that she adopted the stage name Emily Richard. In 1971 she appeared at the Apollo Theatre in Charley's Aunt alongside Tom Courtenay. A member of the BBC Radio Repertory Company, Richard worked extensively in radio, including a performance as Tess in Tess of the d'Urbervilles. In 1976 she was among sixty actresses who auditioned for the role of Leela in Doctor Who; though producer Philip Hinchcliffe selected her as his first choice, she was unavailable and the role went to Louise Jameson.

Richard's association with the Royal Shakespeare Company brought some of her most prominent stage work. In 1978 she appeared in Chekhov's The Three Sisters and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night on a small British tour for the RSC alongside Ian McKellen, Edward Petherbridge, Roger Rees, Rose Hill, and Bob Peck. In April 1980 she returned to The Three Sisters at the Donmar Warehouse, with a cast that included Roger Rees, Edward Petherbridge, Bob Peck, and Timothy Spall. That same year, in November 1980, she originated the role of Kate Nickleby in the RSC's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby at the Aldwych Theatre, an eight-hour stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel featuring Roger Rees, Timothy Spall, John Woodvine, Edward Petherbridge, Ben Kingsley, Fulton Mackay, David Threlfall, Bob Peck, Rose Hill, and Christopher Benjamin.

Richard reprised the role of Kate Nickleby in June 1981 when the production transferred to Broadway, opening at the Plymouth Theatre on 22 September 1981 for a fourteen-week run. That Broadway engagement marked her sole appearance on the New York stage. The cast for this run included Alun Armstrong and Ian McNeice, while Ben Kingsley and Timothy Spall had departed the production. A filmed version of the stage production was subsequently broadcast by Channel 4 in November 1982 as four two-hour episodes on consecutive nights.

In 1982 Richard appeared at the Open Air Theatre in London's Regent's Park in Shaw's The Admirable Bashville and The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, as well as in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew. That same year she appeared in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Donmar Warehouse alongside Ian McKellen, Edward Petherbridge, and Edward Hardwicke. In 1984 she performed in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, a production that featured Kenneth Branagh, Roger Rees, Edward Petherbridge, Frances Barber, and Frank Middlemass. A 1993 RSC production of Macbeth at the Barbican Theatre, with Derek Jacobi and Cheryl Campbell, was among her later stage credits.

Her screen career encompassed both film and television. Television appearances included Armchair Theatre (1969), Emmerdale Farm (1973), Father Brown (1974), The Glittering Prizes (1976), Lorna Doone (1976), Enemy at the Door (1978–80), Angels (1982), The Cleopatras (1983), The Dark Side of the Sun (1983), Oscar, in which she played Constance Wilde (1985), Casualty (1996), and Wycliffe (1997). On film, she appeared in Hansel and Gretel (1987) and in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987), in which she played Mary Graham, the mother of the character Jim, portrayed by Christian Bale.

Richard was married to actor Edward Petherbridge, with whom she appeared in Nicholas Nickleby for the RSC in 1980, in the Lord Peter Wimsey play Busman's Honeymoon in 1988, and in Pomp and Circumstance. The couple had two children.