His film career has included roles in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Pope Joan (1972), Hennessy (1975), Personal Services (1987), Testimony (1988), How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989), England, My England (1995), 101 Dalmatians (1996), Notting Hill (1999), The Body (2001), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) and Alien Autopsy (2006). He has also appeared in historical films such as Gladiator (2000) as Senator Gaius, Troy (2004) as Nestor, Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) as Lord Howard and The Duchess (2008) as General Grey.
Shrapnel is the son-in-law of British film Actress Deborah Kerr and film and television executive Tony Bartley, through his 1975 marriage to their younger daughter Francesca Ann Bartley. He and Francesca have three sons, the actors Lex Shrapnel (b. 1979) and Tom Shrapnel (b. 1981) and the Writer Joe Shrapnel (b. 1976). They live in Highbury, north London.
Shrapnel has also appeared extensively on television in roles in Elizabeth R, Z-Cars, Edward and Mrs. Simpson, Space: 1999, Inspector Morse, GBH, Coogan's Run and Foyle's War. He presented an episode of the 1983 BBC television travel series Great Little Railways. He gave performances in three entries in the BBC Television Shakespeare plays and as Creon in the BBC's productions of the Three Theban plays (1986) of Sophocles. He also played Pompey in the second episode of Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire and the Jail Warden in The 10th Kingdom, an epic fantasy miniseries.
Shrapnel played the character Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Felsham in the New Tricks episode The Fourth Man (2010). DAC Felsham is exposed as having been involved in Criminal conspiracy and he is arrested and escorted from the premises in the final moments of this episode.
As a stage actor, Shrapnel was a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company and most recently appeared as Sir Oliver Surface in The School for Scandal (directed by Deborah Warner) at the Barbican Centre in 2011. He Narrated the Episode on Wild Discovery.
