Editing Ralph Richardson (section)

==Character and reputation==
As a man, Richardson was on the one hand deeply private and on the other flamboyantly unconventional. [[Frank Muir]] said of him, "It's the Ralphdom of Ralph that one has to cling to; he wasn't really quite like other people."<ref name="Quoted in Miller, p. 212"/> In Coveney's phrase, "His oddness was ever startling and never hardened into mere eccentricity."<ref name=mc/> Richardson would introduce colleagues to his ferrets by name, ride at high speed on his powerful motor-bike in his seventies, have a parrot flying round his study eating his pencils, or take a pet mouse out for a stroll, but behind such unorthodox behaviour there was a closely guarded self who remained an enigma to even his closest colleagues.<ref>Miller, p. 137; Stokes, John. "Typecast by his time", ''The Guardian'', 24 November 1995, p. A22</ref> Tynan wrote in ''[[The New Yorker]]'' that Richardson "made me feel that I have known this man all my life and that I have never met anyone who more adroitly buttonholed me while keeping me firmly at arm's length."<ref>''Quoted'' in Levin, Bernard. "Tynan, fizzing to the last", ''The Times'', 22 October 1980, p. 12</ref>

Richardson was not known for his political views. He reportedly voted for [[Winston Churchill]]'s [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative party]] in 1945, but there is little other mention of party politics in the biographies.<ref>Findlater, p. 128</ref> Having been a devoted Roman Catholic as a boy, he became disillusioned with religion as a young man, but drifted back to faith: "I came to a kind of feeling I could touch a live wire through prayer".<ref name=rituals>Hayman, Ronald. "Ralph Richardson: open to the appeal of rituals", ''The Times'', 1 July 1972, p. 9</ref> He retained his early love of painting, and listed it and tennis in his ''[[Who's Who (UK)|Who's Who]]'' entry as his recreations.<ref name=ww>[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U168526 "Richardson, Sir Ralph David"], ''Who Was Who'', online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2012, retrieved 30 January 2014</ref>

Peter Hall said of Richardson, "I think he was the greatest actor I have ever worked with."<ref>Hall, Peter. "Peter Hall on Ralph Richardson's Falstaff", The Guardian, 31 January 1996, p. A11</ref> The director David Ayliff, son of Richardson's and Olivier's mentor, said, "Ralph was a natural actor, he couldn't stop being a perfect actor; Olivier did it through sheer hard work and determination."<ref>[http://sounds.bl.uk/related-content/TRANSCRIPTS/024T-C1142X000149-0100A0.pdf Interview with David Ayliff], Theatre Archive Project, British Library, 18 December 2006</ref> Comparing the two, Hobson said that Olivier always made the audience feel inferior, and Richardson always made them feel superior.<ref name=eh/> The actor [[Edward Hardwicke]] agreed, saying that audiences were in awe of Olivier, "whereas Ralph would always make you feel sympathy{{space}}... you wanted to give him a big hug. But they were both giants."<ref name=eh>[http://sounds.bl.uk/related-content/TRANSCRIPTS/024T-C1142X000190-0100A0.pdf Interview with Edward Hardwicke], Theatre Archive Project, British Library, 6 November 2007</ref>

Richardson thought himself temperamentally unsuited to the great tragic roles, and most reviewers agreed, but to critics of several generations he was peerless in classic comedies. Kenneth Tynan judged any Falstaff against Richardson's, which he considered "matchless",<ref>Tynan, pp. 98 and 102</ref> and Gielgud judged "definitive".<ref>Gielgud (1979), p. 92</ref> Richardson, though hardly ever satisfied with his own performances, evidently believed he had done well as Falstaff. Hall and others tried hard to get him to play the part again, but referring to it he said, "Those things I've done in which I've succeeded a little bit, I'd hate to do again."<ref>Raynor, Henry. "Richardson on Orton's last play", ''The Times'', 17 December 1968, p. 14</ref>

{{Quote box |bgcolor=#DCD|salign=right|fontsize=89%| quote =It's very hard to define what was so special about him, because of this ethereal, other-worldly, strangely subversive quality. He was foursquare, earthy on the stage, a little taller than average height, yeasty. "As for my face," he once said, "I've seen better looking hot cross buns." But he seemed possessed of special knowledge.|source=[[Michael Coveney]]<ref name=mc>Coveney, Michael. "Ralph Richardson", ''The Stage'', 30 September 2010, p. 21</ref>|align=right| width=33%}}
A leading actor of a younger generation, [[Albert Finney]], has said that Richardson was not really an actor at all, but a magician.<ref name=mc/> Miller, who interviewed many of Richardson's colleagues for his 1995 biography, notes that when talking about Richardson's acting, "magical" was a word many of them used.<ref>Miller, p. 150</ref> ''The Guardian'' judged Richardson "indisputably our most poetic actor".<ref name=guardianobit/> For ''The Times'', he "was ideally equipped to make an ordinary character seem extraordinary or an extraordinary one seem ordinary".<ref name=timesobit/> He himself touched on this dichotomy in his variously reported comments that acting was "merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing" or, alternatively, "dreaming to order".<ref name=guardianobit/>

Tynan, who could be brutally critical when he thought Richardson miscast, nevertheless thought there was something godlike about him, "should you imagine the Almighty to be a whimsical, enigmatic magician, capable of fearful blunders, sometimes inexplicably ferocious, at other times dazzling in his innocence and benignity".<ref name=mc/> Harold Hobson wrote, "Sir Ralph is an actor who, whatever his failure in heroic parts, however short of tragic grandeur his Othello or his Macbeth may have fallen, has nevertheless, in unromantic tweeds and provincial hats, received a revelation. There are more graceful players than he upon the stage; there is none who has been so touched by Grace."<ref>Hobson, p. 70</ref>