--- name: "Tony Richardson" canonical: "https://film.one/person/tony-richardson" roles: ["Producer","Director"] born: "5 June 1928" died: "14 November 1991" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "producer" average_over: 0 updated: "2026-09-20T04:12:06.647014+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Tony Richardson Producer and director. Born 5 June 1928 in Shipley, Yorkshire, England, UK. Died 14 November 1991. ## Details - **Work:** Producer, Director - **Born:** 5 June 1928, Shipley, Yorkshire, England, UK - **Died:** 14 November 1991 - **Also known as:** Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson - **Academy Awards:** 2 Oscars (2 won) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Richardson, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q52411, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0724798/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/32765 ## Streaming the US now - **HBO Max:** [*Tom Jones*](https://film.one/film/tom-jones.md) (74) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Tony Richardson > Tony Richardson filmed bedsits for four years and then filmed the eighteenth century as though nobody had told him it was over. The early films are the ones to see; *Tom Jones* is the one to enjoy, and it paid for everything after. Albert Finney, in *Tom Jones* (1963), turns to the camera to complain about a woman, and later puts his hat over the lens. That is Tony Richardson in a single shot: a director who could not leave a scene alone, who liked a wipe, a freeze frame, a chase run at double speed and a narrator who kept talking over the top. It was not how he started. Four years earlier he had been filming bedsits. He came out of the theatre. In 1955 he co-founded the English Stage Company at the Royal Court and the following year directed the first production of John Osborne's *Look Back in Anger*; with Osborne and Harry Saltzman he then set up Woodfall to put that kind of play on film. *Look Back in Anger* (1959) was his first feature. *A Taste of Honey* (1961), from Shelagh Delaney, and *The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner* (1962), from Alan Sillitoe, followed, shot on location among the people the plays were about. Those three films are a good deal of what the British New Wave meant. Walter Lassally, who would shoot four of his films, was behind the camera for the best of it. Then came the holiday. He called *Tom Jones* exactly that to his cast and crew ("This is our holiday film."), and it looks like one. Lassally lights it so that people appear to sweat, John Addison's harpsichord rattles under a silent-comedy prologue, and Antony Gibbs cuts it fast and loose. The best of it is at the inn at Upton, where Finney and Joyce Redman eat a whole meal at each other without a word and Richardson, for once, stops cutting. We laughed out loud at that scene and then laughed again at how long he let it run, because it is the one place in the film where he trusts the actors more than the editing. Actors were what his theatre years gave him, and it shows every time he holds still long enough to let them work. The trouble is that the tricks became a habit. Our review of *Tom Jones* found the style a pleasure for an hour and a habit after, and the film slows to a walk once it reaches London. The reviews of what came next were harsher. *The Loved One* (1965) is where the flamboyance is usually said to have taken over, and *The Charge of the Light Brigade* (1968), a large, sour historical satire, had a troubled production and a hostile reception from which his career never quite recovered. He spent his later years mostly in America, and *Blue Sky* (1994), released after his death, is generally spoken of as a return of energy. We have not reviewed those films and will not judge them here. What he could do, at his best, was put a writer's voice on screen without sanding it down: Osborne, Delaney, Sillitoe and Fielding all come through sounding like themselves. What he could not do was sit still. Start with the bedsits, then take the holiday, and do not feel obliged to stay to the end of it. ## Biography Tony Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer. Born in Shipley, Yorkshire, he was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, and began his career directing for the BBC before co-founding the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in 1956. He became a leading figure in the British New Wave, directing stage and screen adaptations of works by the 'angry young men', including *Look Back in Anger* (1959), *A Taste of Honey* (1961) and *The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner* (1962). Richardson directed and produced the period comedy *Tom Jones* (1963), which won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. His other notable films include *The Charge of the Light Brigade* (1968) and *The Hotel New Hampshire* (1984). He was married to actress Vanessa Redgrave from 1962 to 1967. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, screenonline.org.uk, britannica.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Tom Jones* (1963), Fi1m 74, Director, Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/tom-jones.md) ## Complete filmography (35) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Blue Sky* (1994), Director - *Women and Men: Stories of Seduction* (1990), Director - *The Phantom of the Opera* (1990), series, Director - *Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun* (1988), Director - *The Penalty Phase* (1986), Director - *The Hotel New Hampshire* (1984), Director, Screenplay - *The Border* (1982), Director - *A Death in Canaan* (1978), Director - *Joseph Andrews* (1977), Director, Screenstory - *Dead Cert* (1974), Director, Screenplay - *A Delicate Balance* (1973), Director - *Right to Work March* (1972), Actor - *Ned Kelly* (1970), Director, Writer - *Hamlet* (1969), Director, Writer - *Laughter in the Dark* (1969), Director - *Red and Blue* (1968), Director - *The Charge of the Light Brigade* (1968), Director - *Red, White, and Zero* (1968), Director, Screenplay - *One Pair of Eyes* (1967), series, Actor - *The Sailor from Gibraltar* (1967), Director, Writer - *Mademoiselle* (1966), Director - *The Loved One* (1965), Director - *Girl with Green Eyes* (1964), Executive Producer - *Tom Jones* (1963), Director, Producer — Fi1m 74, [page](https://film.one/film/tom-jones.md) - *The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner* (1962), Director, Producer - *A Taste of Honey* (1961), Director, Producer, Screenplay - *Sanctuary* (1961), Director - *A Subject of Scandal and Concern* (1960), Director - *Saturday Night and Sunday Morning* (1960), Producer - *The Entertainer* (1960), Director - *Look Back in Anger* (1959), Director - *Theatre Night* (1957), series, Director - *Momma Don't Allow* (1956), Director, Writer - *Othello* (1955), Director - *Nijinsky: Unfinished Project*, Director ## Awards ### Academy Awards — 2 won - 1964: Best Director (won), for *Tom Jones* - 1964: Best Picture (won), for *Tom Jones* ### BAFTA Film Awards — 2 won - 1962: Best Screenplay (won), for *A Taste of Honey* - 1962: Best Film (won), for *A Taste of Honey* *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/tony-richardson