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.

Education

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.

Career

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.

Achievements

• 

  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.

Works

More photos

• book

  • I, In the Membership of My Days: Poems

    (It is an autobiographical collection, the first poem bein...)

    1972

• movie

  • The Wild Geese

    (A team of aging mercenaries hired by a wealthy industrial...)

    1978
  • The Field

    ("Bull" McCabe's family has farmed a field for generations...)

    1990
  • Hawaii

    (This restored film version of James Michener's best-selle...)

    1966
  • This Sporting Life

    (One of the finest British films ever made, this benchmark...)

    1963
  • Grizzly Falls

    (When a young boy is captured by a grizzly bear, he begins...)

    1999
  • Julius Caesar

    (Twenty-year-old Julius Caeser flees Rome for his life dur...)

    2003
  • Return Of A Man Called Horse

    (Richard Harris stars in this superior sequel which follow...)

    1976
  • Unforgiven

    (Retired, down-on-their-luck outlaws pick up their guns on...)

    1992
  • Trojan Eddie

    (Set in Ireland, this beautifully rendered drama offers a ...)

    1996
  • Martin's Day

    (In this imaginative and unpredictable adventure, Richard ...)

    1984
  • This is the Sea

    (Set in Northern Ireland shortly after the 1994 ceasefire,...)

    1997
  • Barber Of Siberia

    (Douglas is a foreign entrepreneur, who ventures to Russia...)

    1998
  • The Molly Maguires

    (The Molly Maguires was a secret society of militant coal ...)

    1970
  • Mutiny on the Bounty

    (Based upon a real 1759 mutiny, Marlon Brando leads the cr...)

    1962
  • Red Desert

    (In an industrial area, Giuliana, an unstable woman, attem...)

    1964
  • Ravagers

    (Post-nuclear futuristic thriller set in the aftermath of ...)

    1979
  • The Tarzan Ape Man

    (Based on MGM's original 1932 movie, the new version tells...)

    1981
  • The Apocalypse

    (The film is set in 90 AD and concerns Jesus Christ's last...)

    2000
  • Juggernaut

    (A blackmailer demands a huge ransom in exchange for infor...)

    1974
  • Silent Tongue

    (Set against the rolling hills of the Wild West, a band of...)

    1994
  • Kaena: The Prophecy

    (A high-spirited teenager, Kaena (voice of Kirsten Dunst) ...)

    2003
  • Gulliver's Travels

    (Lemuel Gulliver washes ashore on Lilliput and attempts to...)

    1977
  • The Guns Of Navarone

    (A British team is sent to cross occupied Greek territory ...)

    1961
  • The Long, The Short & The Tall

    (In 1942, a group of British soldiers is sent on a mission...)

    1961
  • Camelot

    (A majestic romance set in the days of yore starring Richa...)

    1967
  • Gladiator

    (When a Roman general is betrayed and his family murdered ...)

    2000
  • Robin And Marian

    (This swashbuckling, high-spirited romantic sequel to the ...)

    1976
  • Camelot

    (Part of the cable series "HBO Theatre", this is a videota...)

    1982
  • The Deadly Trackers

    (Richard Harris is a small-town sheriff on a path of venge...)

    1973
  • Cromwell

    (Richard Harris and Alec Guinness star in a dazzling epic ...)

    1970
  • Man in the Wilderness

    (Academy Award-nominee Richard Harris plays a trapper left...)

    1971
  • The Heroes of Telemark

    (Norwegian resistance tries to stop German efforts to prod...)

    1965
  • Caprice

    (An industrial designer causes chaos when she sells a secr...)

    1967
  • Game for Vultures

    (The South African businessman David Swansey is delivering...)

    1979
  • Wrestling Ernest Hemingway

    (Two retired men living in Florida disagree about everythi...)

    1993
  • The Golden Rendezvous

    (A timeless classic of modern-day piracy from the acclaime...)

    1977
  • Orca

    (A hunter squares off against a killer whale seeking venge...)

    1977
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

    (Harry returns to Hogwarts, still famous and a hero when s...)

    2002
  • The Wreck Of the Mary Deare

    (A man must dive into a wrecked ship in order to prove the...)

    1959
  • The Cassandra Crossing

    (Passengers on a European train have been exposed to a dea...)

    1976
  • Highpoint

    (James Hatcher embezzles ten million dollars from a joint ...)

    1984
  • The Count Of Monte Cristo

    (A man falsely imprisoned by "friends" escapes and is out ...)

    2002
  • 99 and 44/100% Dead

    (Uncle Frank Kelly calls on Harry Crown to help him in a g...)

    1974
  • The Bible

    (Extravagant production of the first part of the book of G...)

    1966
  • A Man Called Horse

    (In 1825, an English aristocrat is captured by Native Amer...)

    1970
  • Major Dundee

    (In 1864, due to frequent Apache raids from Mexico into th...)

    1965
  • Abraham

    (The Old Testament story of Abraham and the trials he endu...)

    1994
  • Patriot Games

    (Jack Ryan is caught in the middle of a terrorist attack. ...)

    1992
  • Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid

    (An influential businessman is stressed out by work. This ...)

    1981
  • To Walk With Lions

    (George Adamson fights to save Kenya's wildlife. Together ...)

    1999
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

    (Based on the wildly popular J.K. Rowling's book about a y...)

    2001
  • Shake Hands with the Devil

    (In 1920s Ireland, I.R.A. members are being led by the war...)

    1959
  • The Hunchback

    (Body of a monster. Heart of a saint. From Victor Hugo's r...)

    1997
  • Watch Cry, The Beloved Country

    (A man of power. And a man of peace. Brought together by a...)

    1995
  • Smilla's Sense Of Snow

    (A 6 y.o. Inuit boy runs off a snowy roof in Copenhagen an...)

    1997

• music

  • Camelot Soundtrack 1967 Film 1967
  • A Tramp Shining 1968
  • The Richard Harris Love Album 1970
  • My Boy 1971
  • Slides 1972
  • His Greatest Performances 1973
  • The Prophet 1974
  • I, In the Membership of My Days 1974

Religion

Harris 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."

Politics

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.

Views

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."

Membership

Harris was a member of the Roman Catholic Knights of Malta.

• Knights of Malta

Personality

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.

Interests

• Writers

  William Shakespeare

• Artists

  Favorite actor - Marlon Brando

• Sport & Clubs

  Rugby

• Athletes

  Pittsburgh Steelers

• Music & Bands

  Jimmy Webb

Connections

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.

Father:

Ivan John Harris

Mother:

Mildred Josephine Harty Harris

Brother:

Dermot Harris

(1937, Limerick, Ireland - November 12, 1986, Chicago, Illinois, United States)

Brother:

Noel William Michael Harris

Brother:

Patrick Ivan Harris

Brother:

William George Harris

ex-spouse:

Elizabeth Rees-Williams

(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).

ex-spouse:

Ann Turkel

(born July 16, 1946)

Ann Turkel is an American actress and former model.

Son:

Jared Harris

(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).

Son:

Jamie Harris

(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.

Son:

Damian Harris

(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.

Friend:

Peter O'Toole

(2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013)

Peter O'Toole was a British stage and film actor of Irish descent.

Friend:

Richard Burton

(10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984)

Richard Burton was a Welsh actor.

colleague:

Clint Eastwood

(born May 31, 1930)

Clint Eastwood is an American actor, filmmaker, musician, and politician.

colleague:

Marlon Brando

(April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004)

Marlon Brando was an American actor and film director.

colleague:

Maggie Smith

(born 28 December 1934)

Maggie Smith is an English actress.

References

• Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed
  2008
• Richard Harris: Sex, Death and the Movies
  2003
• Richard Harris - The Biography