He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company on graduation and remained in a junior capacity from 1964 to 1966, playing among other things Fortinbras in David Warner's 1965 "Hamlet". He then left the company for eight years and worked in London, both on the stage (in John Mortimer's "The Judge", Christopher Hampton's "Savages" and Tony Richardson's production of "Hamlet" with Nicol Williamson), and on TV in many single dramas. He returned to the RSC in 1974 to play Angelo in "Measure for Measure", beginning a relationship with the company as a leading actor which culminated in his own performance of Hamlet in 1980/81: he also played Berowne in "Love's Labour's Lost", Edgar in "King Lear", and in new work by David Rudkin, David Edgar and Howard Brenton and classic works by Sean O'Casey, Euripides and William Congreve. He then left the company for a further eight years before appearing in Stephen Poliakoff's "Playing with Trains", and ten years after that in the title role of "Timon of Athens". In the meanwhile he appeared at the National Theatre in 1984 in Tolstoy's "Strider", for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award, in Thomas Otway's "Venice Preserv'd", and also premiered his solo show "Anton Chekhov" which he has been regularly touring internationally ever since. He also played Raskolnikov in Yuri Lyubimov's famous adaptation of "Crime and Punishment", and Henry in Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing" in London's West End and played the title role in Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" on BBC TV in 1985.