As president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, he directed such plays as "Peer Gynt" and "King John". Richardson graduated from Oxford in 1952 and joined the BBC as a producer. In 1956 he became associate director of the English Stage Company. The first play he produced was
John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger". This started a fruitful collaborative cycle which included work on several films. Richardson formed his own production company, Woodfall Films, in 1958, turning out high-quality features, such as
The Entertainer (1960),
A Taste of Honey (1961) and
Tom Jones (1963).