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After an early leading role in Peter Greenaway's cult success Drowning by Numbers, Richardson's first major role in front of a mass audience was as Joanna Farley in a 1989 television episode of Poirot, the Agatha Christie-based detective series. She later appeared as a fictional Finnish princess, Anna, in the 1991 comedy King Ralph. A year later, she appeared in Shining Through alongside her future brother-in-law Liam Neeson, where both played Nazis. In 1993, she appeared as Lady Chatterley in a television drama of the same title, opposite Sean Bean.

In 1996, Richardson played the fashion designer Anita in the popular Disney film 101 Dalmatians opposite Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil. In 1998, in the popular television drama The Echo, she played sultry Amanda Powell. The next year, she played in the sci-fi/horror movie Event Horizon as Lieutenant Starck, executive officer of the research and rescue ship Lewis & Clark, sent to rescue crew of the long-thought-lost experimental ship Event Horizon.

One year later, Richardson played opposite Mel Gibson in the successful film The Patriot, loosely based on the American Revolution. Later that year she was modelling a necklace, when director Charles Shyer noticed her resemblance to doomed 18th-century French Queen Marie Antoinette. Thus, she secured the role of that queen in the 2001 film The Affair of the Necklace. Also in 2000, she played opposite Hugh Laurie in Maybe Baby, Ben Elton's movie adaptation of his book Inconceivable.

In 2003, Richardson took on the major role of playing Julia McNamara in the controversial television drama Nip/Tuck, based on the lives of two dysfunctional plastic surgeons in Miami. Her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, has appeared in several episodes, playing her character's mother.

In 2005, Richardson starred in Lies My Mother Told Me, based on a true story about a murderous con artist. In 2007 she played the mother in "The Last Mimzy" with Timothy Hutton, Chris O'Neil and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn.

(wikipedia.org)