Sir Ralph Richardson was limerick of the most esteemed British actors of the 20th century and united of his country's most celebrated eccentrics. Profoundly into old age, he continued to enthrall audiences with his extraordinary acting skills -- and to irritate neighbors with his piercing motorbike outings, sometimes with a repeat on his shoulder. He composed paintings, antiquities, and white mice; acted Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Sophocles; and instructed theatergoers on the finer points... of role-playing: "Acting," he said in a Time article, "is merely the knowledge of keeping a large catalogue of people from coughing." the Dickens characters he on occasion portrayed, Richardson had a distinctly memorable attribute: a bulbous nose that sabotaged his otherwise noble countenance and made him entirely virtuous for performances in tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies. In testament to his knowledge of metrics and versification, he married a woman named Meriel after his first helpmeet, Muriel, died. Fittingly, Ralph David Richardson was born in Shakespeare hinterlands -- the county of Gloucestershire -- in the borough of Cheltenham on December 19, 1902. There, his father taught artistry at Cheltenham Ladies' College.

When he was a teenager, Ralph enrolled at Brighton Principles to take up the easel and follow in his sire's brushstrokes. However, after receiving an inheritance of 500 pounds, he abandoned art institute to pursue his genuine be attracted to: creating verbal portraits as an actor. After joining a roving troupe of thespians, the St. Nicholas Players, he learned Shakespeare and debuted as Lorenzo in The Magnate of Venice in 1921.

By 1926, he had graduated to the Birmingham Repertory Thespian and, four years later, appeared on the lap of England's grandest of playhouses, London's Antique Vic. Ralph had arrived -- on the stage, at least. But another four years passed preceding the time when he made his first murkiness, The Ghoul, about a dead professor (Boris Karloff) who returns to pungency to locate an Egyptian marvel stolen from his grave. Richardson, portraying cleric Nigel Hartley, is there on the night Karloff returns to unleash mayhem and mischief.

From that less-than-auspicious origin, Richardson went on to roles in more than 70 other films, multifarious of them classics. Complete of them was maestro Carol Reed's 1948 film, The Fallen Fetish, in which Richardson won the Win out over Actor Award from the U.S. National Board of Reviewing for his portrayal of a butler suspected of murder.

Three years later, he won a British Academy Award for his role in administrator David Lean's Breaking the Rosy Barrier, about the early days of jet journey. In 1962, Richardson won the Cannes Film Festival's Superior Actor Award for his depiction of James Tyrone Sr., the flair of a dysfunctional family in playwright Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Trek Into Night. Because of Richardson's versatility, main studios often recruited him on urgent supporting roles in lavish productions, such as big cheese Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1954), Otto Preminger's Exodus (1960), David Lean's Dr. Zhivago (1965), and Basil Dearden's Khartoum (1966). While making these films, Richardson continued to appear as on the stage -- often varooming to and from the theater on one of his motorbikes -- in such plays as Shakespeare's Henry IV (Part I and II), Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, and Sheridan's School against Scandal. He also undertook a smorgasbord of motion picture and TV roles that demonstrated his completely-ranging versatility. Because of criterion, he played Deity in Time Bandits (1981), the Chief Rabbit in Watership Down (1978), the crypt keeper in Tales From the Basement (1972), the caterpillar in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972), Wilkins Micawber in TV's David Copperfield (1970), Simeon in TV's Jesus of Nazareth (1977), and Tarzan's grandfather in Greystoke: the Scandinavian Edda of Tarzan, Ruler of the Apes (1984).

In his cadaverous time, he portrayed Dr. Watson on the air. Sir Ralph Richardson died in 1983 of a accomplishment in Marylbone, London, England, leaving behind a rich film legacy and a theater composure that will continue to linger in the memories of his audiences.