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Richard Harris
Richard St John Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor, singer-songwriter, theatrical producer, film director and writer.
He appeared on stage and in many films, and is perhaps best known for his roles as King Arthur in Camelot (1967), as Oliver Cromwell in Cromwell (1970) and as Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) (Released in the United States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), his final film. He also played a British aristocrat and prisoner in A Man Called Horse (1970), Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator (2000), St. John The Apostle in Apocalypse Revelation (2002), and the gunfighter English Bob in Clint Eastwood's Western film Unforgiven (1992).
Harris had a top ten hit in Britain and the US with his 1968 recording of Jimmy Webb's song "MacArthur Park".
Harris, the fifth of nine children, was born in Limerick City, County Limerick, Munster, Irish Free State into a middle-class, staunchly Roman Catholic family. His parents were Ivan John Harris (b. 1896, son of Richard Harris, b. 1854, son of James Harris of St. Michael's, Limerick) and Mildred Josephine Harty Harris (b. 1898, daughter of James Harty, St. John's, Limerick, who owned a flour mill.) Harris' siblings include Patrick Ivan (born 1929), Noel William Michael (born 1932), Diarmid (Dermot, born 1939), and William George Harris (born 1942). He was schooled by the Jesuits at Crescent College. A talented rugby player, he was on several Munster Junior and Senior Cup teams for Crescent, and played for Garryowen. Harris might have become a provincial or international-standard rugby player, but his athletic career was cut short when he caught tuberculosis in his teens. He remained an ardent fan of the Munster Rugby and Young Munster teams then until his death, and attending many of its matches, and there are numerous stories of japes at rugby matches with the actors and fellow rugby fans Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.
After recovering from tuberculosis, Harris moved to England, wanting to become a director. He could not find any suitable training courses, and he enrolled in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) to learn acting. He had failed an audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), and had been rejected by the Central School of Speech and Drama because they felt he was too old at 24. While still a student, Harris rented the tiny "off-West End" Irving Theatre, and there directed his own production of Clifford Odets's play Winter Journey (The Country Girl). This show was a critical success, but it was a financial failure, and Harris lost all his savings in this venture.
As a result, Harris ended up temporarily homeless, sleeping in a coal cellar for six weeks. Accounts of Harris' contemporaries from his hometown of Limerick, however, indicate that Harris may have exaggerated these stories somewhat and that he actually stayed with a few aunts, sleeping on their living room sofas. After completing his studies at the Academy, Harris joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. He began getting roles in West End theatre productions, starting with The Quare Fellow in 1956, a transfer from the Theatre Workshop. Harris spent nearly a decade in obscurity, learning his profession on stages throughout the UK.
Richard Harris won the role of King Arthur in Camelot (1967), the film version of Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe's hit musical, after close friend and drinking buddy Richard Burton, who had played Arthur in the original 1960 Broadway production, turned down an offer to reprise the role in the film. Burton had had a huge success with Lerner & Lowe's show, winning a 1961 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. Harris later replaced Burton in the roadshow of the 1980 revival of the musical when Burton was unable to continue due to bursitis, a tour that ended up back on Broadway, with Harris as Arthur, in 1981.
When I'm in trouble, I'm an Irishman. When I turn in a good performance, I'm an Englishman.
Richard Harris
Richard St. John Harris
1 October 1930, Limerick, Ireland
25 October 2002, Bloomsbury, London, England, UK
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Was a pretty good rugby player in his day, still remembered in Limerick City for his tackling ability.
Father of director Damian Harris, actors Jared Harris, and Jamie Harris.
He was a guest professor at the University of Scranton in the mid-1980s, teaching Theatre Arts courses.
Received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Scranton in 1987.
Joined the Knights of Malta (SMOM), despite his two divorces.
Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Richard Burton were drinking buddies from the early 1970s till Burton's Death.
Was knighted by Denmark in 1985.
One of 9 children born to Limerick farmer Ivan Harris and his wife, the former Mildred Harty.
A bout with tuberculosis ended his ambition of becoming a professional rugby player.
Only agreed to take the part of Albus Dumbledor in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) after his then 11-year-old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again if he didn't.
While still a student, he rented the tiny "off-West End" Irving Theatre in London and directed his own production of Clifford Odets' "Winter Journey (The Country Girl)". The critics approved, but the production used up all his savings and he was forced to sleep in a coal cellar for six weeks.
His brother Dermot was married to actress Cassandra Harris and had two children. After his death she married Pierce Brosnan and they became Brosnan's stepchildren.
Died shortly before the U.S. premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).
He was awarded the 1990 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor for his performance in Henry IV.
Following his death, many of his family members wanted friend Peter O'Toole to take the role of Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004).
Was cremated and his ashes were scattered at his home in the Bahamas
Both he and his fellow Irish actor (and close friend) Peter O'Toole appeared in versions of "Gulliver's Travels": Harris played the title character in the 1977 film version Gulliver's Travels (1977) and O'Toole played the Emperor of Lilliput in the 1996 TV-film version Gulliver's Travels (1996) (TV), where Ted Danson played Gulliver.
Associate member of LAMDA.
Graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). He was rejected by the Royal Adademy of Dramatic Art.
Member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford Upon Avon, England, since the early 1960s. His last appearance on the Swan stage (RSC main) was in the mid-1990s.
Received the Laurence Olivier Award for his acclaimed performances at the Royal National Theatre, London, England.
Once said in an interview that he had a great fascination with authority figures and their use of power. During his career he portrayed King Arthur in Camelot (1967); Oliver Cromwell in Cromwell (1970); King Richard the Lionheart in Robin and Marian (1976); Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator (2000) and Headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).
An alcoholic, he gave up drinking completely in 1981 and returned to drinking Guinness a decade later.
It was his lifelong ambition to play Hamlet. He never did, although he referred to This Sporting Life (1963) as his Hamlet and The Field (1990) as his Lear. He later had one final attempt at an updated version of Lear with My Kingdom (2001).
He and Patrick Bergin were two of the only Irish actors to play Irishmen in Patriot Games (1992).
Was friends with Sir Sean Connery.
Is one of only two actors to appear in two Best Picture winners from the 1990s. He appeared in 1992's Best Picture, Unforgiven (1992), and 2000's Best Picture, Gladiator (2000). The only other actor to do this was Ralph Fiennes, who appeared in Schindler's List (1993) and The English Patient (1996). Fiennes later followed Harris into the Harry Potter films.
Appears in Patriot Games (1992) with James Fox, whose niece is his daughter-in-law.
Well known for being a "method actor", Harris was once told that he would play the role of a filthy character, and so he went for a long time without bathing to fit in to the character better, much to the chagrin of his co-stars, who claimed that they could smell him coming a long way away.
Harris did not enjoy his first time in Hollywood making The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). Production had to be halted several times due to the frequent illnesses of its star, Gary Cooper. He turned down the role of Commodus in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and was thirty-four when he starred in his first Hollywood movie, Major Dundee (1965).
He spent the last 12 years of his life living in Room 758 at the world-famous Savoy Hotel in London. His room was located in the "Courtside" section of the hotel. It did have a view of the river, but not as fine a view as the "Hotel" section riverside rooms. He only had his room cleaned once a week and very rarely notified the hotel that he was out of his room, so they had to check his door ten times a day to see if his "Do Not Disturb" sign flipped around to say "Make Up My Room".
After giving up drinking alcohol for a time in the 1970s, Harris put a bottle of vodka in every room in his house in London. The temptation was huge but he didn't touch a drop.
Producers were initially reluctant to cast Harris as King Arthur in Camelot (1967) due to his limited singing ability. Harris was cast after Richard Burton, who had played the part on Broadway in 1961, demanded too much money. The Irish actor insisted on doing his own singing live and later enjoyed a successful pop career, touring America in 1972.
He enjoyed a friendly rivalry with English actor Oliver Reed during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Reed would often refer to himself as "Mr. England." When Harris would hear him saying that, he would then refer to himself as "Mr. Ireland.".
In his youth he was a fan of Marlon Brando, and could imitate or parody his performance in On the Waterfront (1954) at the drop of a hat. However he did not get along with Brando while filming Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and blamed the American star's on-set behavior for the film going over budget and over schedule. During the 1960s he often criticized Brando's eccentric movie choices in interviews.
In 1979 he was diagnosed with hyperglycemia, a condition in which an excessive amount of glucose circulates in the blood plasma.
During the 1940s and early 1950s he went to see all the films of John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Later, however, he described both actors as "pantomine cowboys". The westerns he made, like _Man Called Horse, A (1970)_, were decidedly revisionist in tone.
Befriended Russell Crowe while filming Gladiator (2000).
Was dyslexic.
While living in England, Harris popped out for milk and when seeing the paper he noticed that Young Munster were playing in Thomond Park, Co. Limerick, Harris got the next available flight to Ireland. He spent the following 3 weeks on a drinking binge. All was unknown at the time to his wife, who had no idea where he was. When he finally returned to England, he rang the doorbell of his house. His wife answered the door and before she had a chance to say anything, he said, "Well, why didn't you pay the ransom?".
Father-in-law of actress Emilia Fox.
Turned down the role of Commodus in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), then went on to play Commodus' father Marcus Aurelius (who dies at his son's hands) in Gladiator (2000).
In an interview on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1962), Harris told a story about when he was a young actor playing Seyton in a theatrical production of "Macbeth." The lead actor was a real jerk to him, making constant demeaning references to Harris's Irish heritage. On opening night, Harris couldn't take it anymore. In Act V, Macbeth turns to him and says, "Wherefore was that cry?" Harris was supposed to reply, "The queen, my lord, is dead," after which Macbeth goes into his famous soliloquy about "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow." However, Harris decided instead to say, "Oh, don't worry. She's fine. She'll be up and about in ten minutes." He ruined the performance and was promptly fired.
He hated making Caprice (1967) with Doris Day so much that he never watched the film.
He never made it in Hollywood due to the critical and commercial failures of Camelot (1967) and The Molly Maguires (1970), although in the 1990s he was much in demand as a character actor.
By the time he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in August 2002 it was so advanced that there was no hope of recovery.
Uncle of actress Annabelle Wallis.
Mickey Rourke dedicated his 2009 BAFTA award for Best Actor to Harris calling him "a good friend, and great actor.".
There are too many prima donnas in this business and not enough action.
I'm not interested in reputation or immortality or things like that...I don't care what I'm remembered for. I don't care if I'm remembered. I don't care if I'm not remembered. I don't care why I'm remembered. I genuinely don't care.
No one gave me anything. I fought TB, I fought the devil. But I made people laugh. I don't want immortality. I've lived it all. I've done it all.
No one trusts me any more. I spent half the movie [Maigret (1988) (TV)] arguing with people and I was accused of causing big on-set rows. But what they won't tell you is I fought for [author Georges Simenon]. I fought for the maintenance of quality. I don't believe in lying down on the job. I've seen these so-called "nice" actors. Very able fellows like Ian McKellen and Kenneth Branagh. But they're like bank managers. So sweet and careful. Who needs them? We are suffering a plague of good taste. Give me Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke any day. They project danger. That's what makes acting - and life - interesting.
[his response to hearing he had been Oscar nominated for This Sporting Life (1963)] I've struck a blow for the Irish rebellion!
I would give up all the accolades - people have occasionally written and said nice things - of my showbiz career to play just once for the senior Munster team. I will never win an Oscar now, but even if I did I would swap it instantly for one sip of champagne from the Heineken Cup.
Someone asked me once "What is the difference between Tom Cruise now and you when you were a major star?" I said there is a great difference. Look at a photograph of me from the old days and I'm going to one of my film premieres with a bottle of vodka in my hand. Tom Cruise has a bottle of Evian water. That's the difference - a bottle of Evian water.
What I hate about our business today is the elitism. So-called stars ride in private jets and have bodyguards and dietitians and beauticians. Tom Cruise is a midget and he has eight bodyguards all 6 feet 10, which makes him even more diminutive. It's an absolute joke.
I can see the difficulties of making a movie. Directors and producers have to put up with a lot of rubbish from temperamental actors.
[on his Major Dundee (1965) co-star Charlton Heston'] Heston's the only man who could drop out of a cubic moon, he's so square. The trouble with him is he doesn't think he's a hired actor, like the rest of us. He thinks he's the entire production. He used to sit there in the mornings and clock us with a stopwatch.
[upon being carried out on a stretcher from the Savoy Hotel, to people entering the hotel] It was the food!
I was a sinner. I slugged some people. I hurt many people. And it's true, I never looked back to see the casualties.
[On playing Professor Dumbledore] I'll keep doing it as long as I enjoy it, my health holds out and they still want me. But the chances of all three of those factors remaining constant are pretty slim.
I feel most alive when I'm working on a film.
I hate movies. They're a waste of time. I could be in a pub having more fun talking to idiots rather than sitting down and watching idiots perform.
I consider a great part of my career a total failure. I went after the wrong things - got caught in the 60s. I picked pictures that were way below my talent. Just to have fun.
I made films I did not want to see, I took planes to places I didn't want to visit, I bought houses I didn't live in. I was numb, and it didn't seem to matter. (2000)
Actors take themselves so seriously. Samuel Beckett is important, James Joyce is - they left something behind them. But even Laurence Olivier is totally unimportant. Acting is actually very simple, but actors try to elevate it to an art.
If ever I was miscast in my life, it was in the role of husband. I was the worst husband in the world.
[On his life] I wish I could remember it.
[On turning seventy] I can be eccentric now and get away with it.
I have no friends in this business. I don't go to their clubs, don't go to their hangouts and don't mix at all. I am part of the business but I am apart from it. If anyone ever asks my advice, I tell them, 'Don't take yourself too seriously.'
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Harris made his movie debut in 1958 in the film Alive and Kicking, and played the lead role in The Ginger Man in the West End in 1959. He hated filming The Wreck of the Mary Deare so much that he refused to return to Hollywood for several years, turning down the role of Commodus in The Fall of the Roman Empire. He had a memorable bit part in the movie The Guns of Navarone as a Royal Australian Air Force pilot who reports that blowing up the "bloody guns" of the island of Navarone is impossible by an air raid.
For his role in the film Mutiny on the Bounty, despite being virtually unknown to film audiences, Harris reportedly insisted on third billing, behind Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando. He did not get along with Brando at all during filming.
Harris's first starring role was in the movie This Sporting Life in 1963, as the bitter young coal miner, Frank Machin, who becomes an acclaimed rugby league football player. For his role, Harris won the award for best actor in 1963 at the Cannes Film Festival. Harris followed this with a leading role in the Italian film, Antonioni's Il deserto rosso (1964), and he also won notice for his role in Sam Peckinpah's "lost masterpiece" Major Dundee (1965), as an Irish immigrant who became a Confederate cavalryman during the Civil Warl; again, he did not get along with co-star Charlton Heston at all.
Harris next performed the role of King Arthur in the film adaptation of the musical play Camelot. Harris continued to appear on stage in this role for years, including a successful Broadway run in 1981–82. In 1966, Harris starred as Adam's son Cain in John Huston's film The Bible: In the Beginning.
Harris recorded several albums of music, one of which (A Tramp Shining) included the seven-minute hit song "MacArthur Park" (Harris insisted on singing the lyric as "MacArthur's Park"). This song had been written by Jimmy Webb, and it reached #2 on the American Billboard Hot 100 chart. It also topped several music sales charts in Europe during the summer of 1968. "MacArthur Park" sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. A second album, with music mostly composed by Webb, The Yard Went on Forever, was published in 1969. Harris also wrote and arranged the orchestral accompaniment for one of the tracks, a scathing commentary on the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland delivered as a spoken-word poem written by Dr T James and entitled "There are Too Many Saviours on My Cross".
Some memorable movie performances followed this, among them a role as a reluctant police informant in the coal-mining tale The Molly Maguires (1970), starring with Sean Connery. Harris starred in the Man in the Wilderness in 1971, the Juggernaut in 1974 (a British suspense movie about the hijacking of an ocean liner), in 1976 in The Cassandra Crossing, along with the actresses Sophia Loren and Ava Gardner, and in a B-movie, Orca, in 1977. Harris achieved a form of cult status for his role as the mercenary tactician Rafer Janders in the movie The Wild Geese (1978).
In 1973, Harris published a widely-acclaimed book of poetry, I, In The Membership Of My Days, which was later re-published as an audio recording of his reading his own poems. In 1989, Harris played the beggar King J.J. Peachum in Mack the Knife, the third screen adaptation of The Threepenny Opera.
By the end of the 1980s, Harris had gone for an extended time without a significant movie role. He was familiar with the stage plays of fellow Irishman John B. Keane, and had heard that one of them, The Field, was being adapted for film by director Jim Sheridan. Sheridan was working with actor Ray McAnally on the adaptation, intending to feature McAnally in the lead role of Bull McCabe. When McAnally died suddenly during initial preparations, Harris began a concerted campaign to be cast as McCabe. The campaign succeeded, and the movie version of The Field was released in 1990. Harris earned an American Academy Award nomination for his performance, but lost to Jeremy Irons for Reversal of Fortune. In 1992, Harris had a supporting but memorable role in the film Patriot Games, as an Irish-American radical.
Harris appeared in two films which won the Oscar for Best Picture. First, as the gunfighter "English Bob" in the 1992 Western, Unforgiven; second, as the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000). He also played a lead role alongside James Earl Jones in the 1995 Darrell Roodt film adaptation of Cry, the Beloved Country. In 1999, Harris starred in the film To Walk With Lions. After Gladiator, Harris gained further fame playing the supporting role of Albus Dumbledore in the first two of the Harry Potter films, and as Abbé Faria in Kevin Reynolds' 2002 film adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. The film Kaena: The Prophecy (released in 2003) was dedicated to him posthumously as he had voiced the character Opaz before his death.
Concerning his role as Dumbledore, Harris has stated that he did not intend to take the part, at first, since he knew that his own health was in decline, but he relented and accepted it because his 10-year-old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again if he did not take it. In an interview with the Toronto Star in 2001, Harris expressed his concern that his association with the Harry Potter movies would outshine the rest of his career. He explained by saying: "Because, you see, I don't just want to be remembered for being in those bloody films, and I'm afraid that's what's going to happen to me."
In 1957, he married Elizabeth Rees-Williams, the daughter of David Rees-Williams, 1st Baron Ogmore. Their three children are the actors Jared Harris, once married to Emilia Fox, the actor Jamie Harris, and the director Damian Harris, once married to Annabel Brooks and partner of Peta Wilson. Harris and Rees-Williams divorced in 1969, after which Elizabeth married Sir Rex Harrison. His maternal niece is actress Annabelle Wallis.
Harris' second marriage was to the American actress Ann Turkel, who was 16 years younger than he. This marriage also ended in a divorce.
Despite his divorces, Harris was a member of the Roman Catholic Knights of Malta, and was also dubbed a knight by the Queen of Denmark in 1985.
Harris often told stories about his haunted London home, The Tower House, which was sold later to the musician Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. According to Harris, the tower was haunted by an eight-year-old boy who had been buried in the tower. The boy often kept Harris awake at night until he one day built a nursery for the boy to play in, which calmed the disturbances to some extent.
Harris was a vocal supporter of the IRA from the early 1970s until the bombing of Harrod's in 1983, after which he disavowed them.
Harris was a longtime alcoholic until he became a teetotaler in 1981, although he did resume drinking Guinness a decade later. He gave up drugs after almost dying from a cocaine overdose in 1978. A memorable incident concerning his massive alcohol consumption was an appearance on The Late Late Show where he recounted to host Gay Byrne how he had just polished off two bottles of fine wine in a restaurant and decided that he would then be going on the wagon: "And I looked at my watch and it was... Well isn't that spooky! It was the same time it is now: 11:20!"
Harris is also attributed with an anecdote in which he was found lying drunk in a street in London. A passing policeman asked him what he was doing, and he replied that the world was spinning. The policeman inquired as to how lying in the street was going to help, and he said "I'm waiting for my house to go by." In a 1994 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, Harris said he had his driver's licence permanently suspended for knocking over a double-decker bus in Dublin, Ireland.
Harris died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma on 25 October 2002, aged 72, two and a half weeks before the American premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harris was a lifelong friend of actor Peter O'Toole, and his family reportedly hoped that O'Toole would replace Harris as Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. There were, however, worries of insuring O'Toole for the 5 remaining films, and he was ultimately replaced as Dumbledore by the Irish-born actor Sir Michael Gambon.
For years, whenever he was in London, Harris resided at the Savoy Hotel. According to the hotel archivist Susan Scott, as Harris was being taken from the hotel on a stretcher, shortly before his death, he warned the diners, "It was the food!"
Harris's remains were cremated, and his ashes were scattered in The Bahamas, where he had owned a home.
On 30 September 2006, Manuel Di Lucia, of Kilkee, County Clare, a long-time friend, organized a bronze life-size statue of Richard Harris, at the age of eighteen, playing rackets. The sculptor was Seamus Connolly and the sculpture (unveiled by Russell Crowe) stands in Kilkee, Ireland.
Another life-size statue of Richard Harris, as King Arthur from his film, Camelot, has been erected in Bedford Row, in the center of his home town of Limerick. The sculptor of this statue was the Irish sculptor Jim Connolly, a graduate of the Limerick School of Art and Design.
At the 2009 BAFTAs, Mickey Rourke dedicated his Best Actor award to Harris, calling him a "good friend, and great actor."
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