On the big screen, Suchet was memorable as the spy in "The Little Drummer Girl" (1984), a Soviet contact in "The Falcon and the Snowman" (1985), and the French-accented hunter, Lafleur, in "Harry and the Hendersons" (1987). In 1988, he was the South African antagonist to Barbara Hershey in "A World Apart" and followed with a supporting turn as the Bishop in "To Kill a Priest" (1988; released in the USA in 1990). But his first screen lead came in 1997 when he played a homeless man mistaken for a great film director in Jonathan Nossiter's acclaimed independent "Sunday" (1997).
The actor trained for the stage at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and began his career in 1969 as an assistant stage manager at a small theater in Chester. By 1973, he had joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Tybalt in "Romeo and Juliet". Featured roles followed, including The Fool in the 1974 RSC production of "King Lear" that traveled to the USA. Over the years, Suchet has returned to the RSC many times, in roles increasing in stature, including playing Shylock in a 1978 production of "The Merchant of Venice". More recently, he starred opposite Dame Diana Rigg in a 1996-97 revival of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Suchet made his feature film debut in 1978 playing Barsad in a remake of "A Tale of Two Cities" that aired in the USA on CBS in 1980 under the umbrella of "Hallmark Hall of Fame". While he had amassed credits that included a 1972 episode of the internationally syndicated series "The Protectors", his first role of substance was as scientist Edward Teller in the 1980 BBC miniseries "Oppenheimer" (aired in the USA on PBS in 1982). Playing Poirot has dominated his body of TV work, but Suchet also portrayed Sigmund Freud in "The Life of Freud" (BBC, 1986), had the lead in the TV version of Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" (BBC-2 and PBS, 1992) and enacted Leopold Bloom in an adaptation of "James Joyce's 'Ulysses'" (PBS, 1993). In 1996, he could be seen on TNT as Aaron to Ben Kingsley's "Moses".