Cyril Montague Pennington-Richards was born in London. He began his film career producing religious films for J. Arthur Rank's Religious Film Society. He entered the "mainstream" film industry as a cinematographer with Ireland's Border Line (1938), a low-budget vehicle for Irish comic actor Jimmy O'Dea. During World War II Richards was attached to the renowned documentary unit The Crown Film Unit, and was the cinematographer on Humphrey Jennings famous Fires Were Started (1943). After the war ended he continued as a cinematographer, working on many films directed by his former colleagues in the CFU, such as Brian Desmond Hurst's Theirs Is the Glory (1946), Jack Lee's The Wooden Horse (1950) and Pat Jackson's White Corridors (1951).

He was the cinematographer on Hurst's Scrooge (1951), considered by many to be the definitive version of the famous Charles Dickens novel. He worked with noted American director Edward Dmytryk, who was making films in England due to his being blacklisted during the notorious McCarthy "Red Scare" era in the US. Richards made his directorial debut with the comedy The Oracle (1953), and made his reputation with a series of modest, somewhat whimsical comedies over the next 20+ years. He made his final film, the modestly budgeted adventure Sky Pirates (1980), in 1977, after which he retired.