Emily Richard

Emily Richard (born Anne Richards; 25 January 1948 – 2 October 2024) was a British actress and a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

One of three sisters, Richard was born in London, where she attended drama school in 1966, aged 18, but she was asked to leave after a year as she was "too timid". She then sold programmes in theatres in London's West End. Having acquired an agent, her first professional role was as Mole in a theatre production of Toad of Toad Hall. A member of the BBC Radio Repertory Company, Richard worked extensively for radio and once played 'Tess' in Tess of the d'Urbervilles in that medium.

Early life Anne Richards grew up in north London, the second of three daughters born to merchant navy ship captain Ronald Richards and his wife Nancy (née Brooks), a fashion consultant. She was educated at Channing School in Highgate before moving onto a brief spell at secretarial college. She then joined the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art but left after one year, having been told that she was too timid for the stage. In 1982 she 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, and in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew. Also in 1982 Richard appeared in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Donmar Warehouse in London with Ian McKellen, Edward Petherbridge and Edward Hardwicke. in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (November 1980) at the Aldwych Theatre, an epic eight-hour stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Nicholas Nickleby with Roger Rees, Timothy Spall, John Woodvine, Edward Petherbridge, Ben Kingsley, Fulton Mackay, David Threlfall, Bob Peck, Rose Hill and Christopher Benjamin. They had two children.

Richard died on 2 October 2024, at the age of 76.