Background
Richard Harris was born on October 1, 1930, in Limerick; the son of Ivan and Mildred (Harty) Harris. His siblings included Patrick Ivan, Noel William Michael, Diarmuid, and William George Harris. His niece is actress Annabelle Wallis.
Richard Harris was born on October 1, 1930, in Limerick; the son of Ivan and Mildred (Harty) Harris. His siblings included Patrick Ivan, Noel William Michael, Diarmuid, and William George Harris. His niece is actress Annabelle Wallis.
Richard Harris was schooled by the Jesuits at Crescent College. A talented rugby player, he appeared on several Munster Junior and Senior Cup teams for Crescent, and played for Garryowen. Harris' athletic career was cut short when he caught tuberculosis in his teens.
After recovering from tuberculosis, Harris moved to Great Britain, wanting to become a director. He could not find any suitable training courses and 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, he rented the tiny "off-West End" Irving Theatre, and there directed his own production of Clifford Odets' play Winter Journey (The Country Girl). This show was a critical success but was a financial failure, and he 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 his contemporaries from his hometown of Limerick, however, indicate that he 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, he joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop.
Harris made his stage debut in 1956. His first film was Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), which was followed by noted supporting performances in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). He became an international star with his Oscar-nominated portrayal of a brutal, self-centered rugby player in This Sporting Life (1963), a performance still regarded by many as Harris’s finest. The film revealed Harris to be an actor who excelled at excess, a talent for which he was praised when playing roles that called for flamboyance - and for which he was derided as a "ham" when playing roles that required subtlety.
Harris had continued success in the 1960s with films such as Red Desert (1964), Major Dundee (1965), and Hawaii (1966). His role as King Arthur in the film version of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Broadway hit Camelot (1967) was one with which he was permanently associated and one that he often recreated. Camelot also revealed that Harris had a pleasant singing voice, which led to a recording career that included the critically praised album A Tramp Shining (1968), as well as the song "MacArthur Park," which became an international hit.
Harris’s notable films in the next few years included The Molly Maguires (1970), A Man Called Horse (1970), and the television film The Snow Goose (1971). By this time Harris’s appetites for alcohol and drugs had damaged his health and his career, and he accepted mostly supporting roles in minor films throughout the 1970s and ’80s. After a period of rehabilitation - during which he swore off drinking, discovered religion, and wrote poetry and short stories - Harris returned to form in the 1990s, beginning the decade with one of the best performances of his career in The Field (1990), for which he received another Oscar nomination. Other films such as Unforgiven (1992), Patriot Games (1992), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), Gladiator (2000), and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001; also released as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) earned Harris a newfound reputation as an engaging character actor.
Harris was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in August 2002, reportedly after being hospitalised with pneumonia. He died at University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, London on 25 October 2002, aged 72. He had fallen into a coma in his final three days. Harris' body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Bahamas, where he had owned a home.
Richard Harris is known for the variety of roles that he portrayed in his extensive entertainment career, like that of ‘Frank Machin’ in ‘This Sporting Life’, ‘King Arthur’ in ‘Camelot’, an English aristocrat in ‘A Man Called Horse’, a gunfighter in Clint Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’, ‘Marcus Aurelius’ in Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Albus Dumbledore’ in the first two movies of the ‘Harry Potter’ series. He won many accolades for his creative skills, like: Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actor (Musical/Comedy) for ‘Camelot’, Best Actor Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording for ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’. In 2013, Rob Gill and Zeb Moore founded the annual Richard Harris International Film Festival. Harris was dubbed a knight by the Queen of Denmark in 1985.
On 30 September 2006, Manuel Di Lucia, of Kilkee, County Clare, a longtime friend, organised the placement in Kilkee of a bronze life-size statue of Richard Harris. It shows Harris at the age of eighteen playing the sport of squash racquets. Another life-size statue of Richard Harris, as King Arthur from his film, Camelot, has been erected in Bedford Row, in the centre of his home town of Limerick.
(It is an autobiographical collection, the first poem bein...)
1972(A team of aging mercenaries hired by a wealthy industrial...)
1978("Bull" McCabe's family has farmed a field for generations...)
1990(This restored film version of James Michener's best-selle...)
1966Harris said about his religious view: "I'm a very spiritual guy who lost his faith. My mother was a daily communicant. My father was a daily communicant. I was brought up on this religious faith. Then I went to England and began to disintegrate."
Harris was a vocal supporter of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) from 1973 until 1984. In January 1984 remarks he made on the previous month's Harrods bombing caused great controversy after which he disavowed his support for the PIRA.
Quotations:
"There's more fiction in my life than in books, so I don't bother with them."
"Jesus is just a word I use to swear with."
"I often sit back and think, I wish I'd done that, and find out later that I already have."
"Many kids turn to selling drugs. It's not a good career choice, but they see it as a way to get money."
"Marriage is a custom brought about by women who then proceed to live off men and destroy them, completely enveloping the man in a destructive cocoon or eating him away like a poisonous fungus on a tree."
"Winning the Pulitzer is not that big a deal. I have seen hundreds of plays that have won the prize and you couldn't sit half-way through it. The Pulitzer is a common prize that means very little."
Harris was a member of the Roman Catholic Knights of Malta.
Harris, who lived by his own dictum that "life should be lived to the last drop and then some," was also a celebrated raconteur, appearing often on late-night talk shows with hilarious tales of his hedonistic past.
At the height of his stardom in the 1960s and early 1970s, Harris was almost as well-known for his hell-raiser lifestyle and heavy drinking as he was for his acting career. He 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 of a cocaine overdose in 1978. He did not start smoking until he was in his thirties. Thereafter he smoked up to three packs of cigarettes a day for many years.
Harris 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".
Harris paid £75,000 for William Burges' Tower House in Holland Park in 1968, after discovering that the American entertainer Liberace had arranged to buy the house but not yet put down a deposit. Harris employed the original decorators, Campbell Smith & Company Ltd. to carry out extensive restoration work on the interior.
Physical Characteristics:
Harris had pale blue eyes and rich smooth voice with an Irish accent.
In 1979, Harris was diagnosed with hyperglycemia, a condition in which an excessive amount of glucose circulates in the blood plasma.
In 1957, Harris married Elizabeth Rees-Williams, daughter of David Rees-Williams, 1st Baron Ogmore. They had three children: actor Jared Harris, who was once married to Emilia Fox; actor Jamie Harris; and director Damian Harris, who was once married to Annabel Brooks and was once the partner of Peta Wilson. Harris and Rees-Williams divorced in 1969. Harris' second marriage was to the American actress Ann Turkel. In 1982, they divorced.
(1937, Limerick, Ireland - November 12, 1986, Chicago, Illinois, United States)
(born 1 May 1936)
Elizabeth Rees-Williams is a Welsh socialite. She appeared on the British television series 'Question Time' in 1979, and in the documentaries 'Biography' (1987) and '50 Films to See Before You Die' (2006).
(born July 16, 1946)
Ann Turkel is an American actress and former model.
(born 24 August 1961)
Jared Harris is a British actor, best known for his roles as Lane Pryce in the television drama series Mad Men, David Robert Jones in the science fiction series Fringe, King George VI in the historical series The Crown, Anderson Dawes on the science fiction series The Expanse and captain Francis Crozier in the AMC series The Terror. He has also had significant supporting roles in films such as Mr. Deeds (2002), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), Lincoln (2012), and Allied (2016).
(born 15 May 1963)
Jamie Harris is a British actor. He is best known for his role as The Hook-Handed Man in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Rodney in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Gordon in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
(born 2 August 1958)
Damian Harris is an English film director and screenwriter. He is the son of the actor Richard Harris and socialite Elizabeth Rees-Williams.
(2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013)
Peter O'Toole was a British stage and film actor of Irish descent.
(10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984)
Richard Burton was a Welsh actor.
(born May 31, 1930)
Clint Eastwood is an American actor, filmmaker, musician, and politician.
(April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004)
Marlon Brando was an American actor and film director.
(born 28 December 1934)
Maggie Smith is an English actress.
