He then went on to become a very successful child actor starring in numerous television programmes such as Soldier and Me, A Bunch of Fives, Wings, The Doombolt Chase, The Feathered Serpent, Flesh & Blood and Lupin in A Diary of a Nobody.
He also appeared in Dr Who with Tom Baker as Varsh in the Full Circle episodes.

 

After working with Daniel Day-Lewis in Class Enemy at Bristol Old Vic, at the age of 23, he decided to follow in his mother's footsteps and go to RADA.

Also at RADA at the time were actors of the future -- Sarah Woodward, 
Imogen Stubbs, Ralph Fiennes, Sean Bean, Janet McTyre, Kenneth Branagh, Joely Richardson, Alex Kingston and Iain Glen.

 

On graduating, he went straight into a nationwide tour of Billy Liar with Kevin Wateley playing Billy. He then moved on to be a standby for Anthony Sher and Harvey Fierstein in the London production of Torch Song Trilogy at the Albery Theatre. When Harvey came over to reprise his Broadway role, Richard performed for six weeks playing Arnold Bekoff for his matinees.

His early theatre roles included Jean in Miss Julie,(Latchmere Theatre, London) Loveborg in Hedda Gabler, (Haymarket Theatre, Leicester)Allmers in Little Eyolf for The National Theatre of Norway, Giovanni in Tis Pity She's a Whore,(Dundee Rep) and Felix in The Normal Heart. (Channel Theatre Company.

In the TV series Maigret, he got the chance to perform opposite Michael Gambon playing the serial killer Marcel Moncin in Maigret Sets a Trap.

 

However, his work has mainly been in theatre:
Roles in the UK include Lord Illingworth in Wilde's A Woman of No Importance at Leicester Haymarket, Ragnor in The Master Builder for the Peter Hall Company, with Alan Bates, Gemma Jones and Victoria Hamilton in the West End and Canada, Caliban in Nancy Meckler's production of  The Tempest for Shared Experience. In 1998 he fulfilled a lifetime's ambition to play Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music to sell-out houses at the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester.

Other roles include Valentin in The Kiss of The Spider Woman directed by Michael Cashman; George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme; directed by Gwenda Hughes. Parris in The Crucible; Brachiano in The White Devil; Guy Burgess in Single Spies opposite Dylis Laye at the Leicester Haymarket, directed by Paul Kerryson. Hamish in Ayckbourn's Things We Do For Love at Salisbury Playhouse directed by Natalie Wilson.

 

In 2001 he moved to The United States to play Don Pedro in Aquila Theatre Company's Off-Broadway production of Much Ado About Nothing and went on to play Prospero in The Tempest for Aquila on the 2002/2003 national tour.

 

In June 2002 he played Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing for the Elkins Shakespeare Festival in West Virginia.

From 2002 -2009  he became an associate company member for Aquila Theatre Company in New York and toured with them over the next few years.  Roles include Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest in New York,  Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse in A Comedy of Errors at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California and The Baruch Theatre in NYC. Iago in Othello, the Antipholus twins in A Comedy of Errors at the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival and Peachey Carnehan in the first stage adaptation of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King on a USA nationwide tour and a run at The Baruch Theatre, NYC. 

In 2005 he appeared at the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia in Tom Stoppard's Night and Day. This was followed by a guest lead in the long-running NBC series Law & Order where he played Derek Winston, a cool English hip-hop record producer! 

In April 2005 he went to The White House to perform Shakespeare with Aquila for President Bush and Laura Bush.
 

Richard has also done many seasons for the Summer Theatre of New Canaan, Roles include Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Friar Lawrence in Romeo & Juliet, King Henry in King Henry lV Part One and Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

 

 

Other roles for Aquila include Claudius in Hamlet; and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and the American Victorian actor, Richard Mansfield, in a new play by Louis Butelli based on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde;  Brutus in Julius Caesar at Neuss Shakespeare Festival in the Globe Theatre; and The Iliad in The Festival of the Aegean on the Greek island of Syros.  Doc Daneeka, Major Major, the Italian Old Man, in Joseph Heller's Catch 22 on the Aquila Theatre USA nationwide tour and at the Lucille Lortelle Theatre on Christopher Street in New York.

A new feature film A Big Bad Swim was shown at the 2006 Tribeca and Seattle Film Festivals in which Richard played a cynical dog-hating misogynist writer.

 

In 2007 he was Praed in Mrs Warren's Profession at the Denver Center Theatre Company in Colorado.

 

In 2009 Richard played Sheldon Kominski in One Wrong Move, an episode of Flashpoint for CTV and CBS.

 

In October/November 2010 he took on the challenging role of Kemp in Morris Panych's Vigil at the STC in Sudbury, Ontario.

 

In 2011 he starred in Dreadful Sorry playing Conrad directed by Robert Richmond. 
In the Spring of 2011, he moved back to Toronto to play the Father in the North American premiere of the hit London play, The Railway Children directed by Damian Cruden. He also made guest appearances on television in Showcase's Lost Girl and Warner Bros' Nikita.

 

In 2012 he created along with writer, Heidi Reimer, and director Robert Richmond a solo show called Strolling Player. They opened at Factory 163 in Stratford Ontario. It then played at the Kaufmann Arts Centre and subsequently at the Red Sandcastle Theatre in Toronto.

In 2013 he played the Chorus in Robert Richmond's record-breaking production of Henry V at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC.
In March, he returned to the STC in Sudbury to play Henreich Mann opposite Jessica Moss in The Clockmaker. In April he was back at the Folger playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night for which he received a Helen Hayes nomination for Best Supporting Actor.  
In July he took his show Strolling Player to the Toronto Fringe Festival where it played eight performances at the Tarragon Extra Space. He returned to Washington DC in July to play Banquo in the Folger's audio recording of Macbeth.
In September he remounted Strolling Player at The Red Sandcastle in Toronto, where it ran to great critical acclaim from 12th September - 28th September.  

 

In 2014 he was in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre's production of Richard lll.  He performed Strolling Player at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop in Washington DC in March.  He also played Claudius in Hamlet at the USC in South Carolina.

In 2015 he played Anton Chekhov in I Take Your Hand in Mine in Toronto. In the summer he performed in Comedy of Errors and Romeo & Juliet for the St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival.  September saw Richard take Strolling Player to the UK  where he performed it in The Stables Theatre in Hastings. In November he appeared in Talking Heads in A Chip in the Sugar at the Campbell House Museum in Toronto.
Richard also worked on several roles for Ubisoft's Assasin's Creed: Syndicate.

 

2106 began with Richard playing Gaev in The Cherry Orchard at Canadian Stage.  In the spring he played the dual roles of Prospero and Caliban in The Tempest at the Drayton Hall Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina.  In the summer, he returned to the St Lawrence Shakespeare Theatre where he played Julius Caesar in the play of the same name, and Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing. In the fall Richard played Jim in Breathing Corpses at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto in the Fall of 2016 for which he won a MyTheatre Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor.

In 2017 he played Anton Chekhov in I Take Your Hand in Mine at the Tarragon Extra Space in Toronto. At the St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival he appeared as Enobarbus in Anthony & Cleopatra, and Rochefort in The Three Musketeers.
In October of 2017, Richard was appointed Artistic Director of The St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott, Ontario.
In November Richard appeared in the finale of Mary Kills People.

In February 2018 Richard directed A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM for The Chekhov Collective at The Citadel in Toronto, which opened in February 2018. 
In the summer he was in charge of his first season of The St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival.  He directed As You Like It, with Andrea Donaldson directing The Taming of the Shrew.  Richard introduced microphones for the first time to the festival and also extended the stage with a wooden stage extension for As You Like It.  He incorporated the Land Acknowledgement at the beginning of performances for the first time at SLSF.
He also presented the Monday Night Live series inside the empty historic building of Glasgow House on the main street in Prescott.  Events included a staged reading of Rose Napoli's play Shrew with Diane D'Aquila, Rose Napoli, Elizabeth Saunders and Jamie Mac; Love Stories: Stirling and Words, Song and Magic. As part of the new festival Tudorfest, Richard presented Pierre Brault's Will Somers and The Rag & Bone Puppet Theatre's The Tempest. He ended the season by directing the community production of Oliver!

 

Richard currently lives in Canada with his wife, the writer Heidi Reimer and their two daughters, Maia and Aphra.  He divides his time between New York, London, Toronto and Prescott.