Harris was born on 1 October 1930, at Overdale, 8 Landsdown Villas, Ennis Road, Limerick,[3][4][5] and was the fifth in a family of eight children, (six boys & two girls), to flour merchant Ivan Harris and Mildred (née Harty).[1] Overdale was "a tall, elegant, early 19th-century redbrick" house with nine bedrooms, in a wealthy part of Limerick, the houses "built at the turn of the 20th century for Limerick's burgeoning middle class... people who could afford properly grand drawing rooms, a bedroom each for the children and one for the pot, plus space for a few servants".[6][7] He was educated 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.[8] Harris's 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 until his death, attending many of their matches, and there are numerous stories of japes at rugby matches with actors and fellow rugby fans Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.
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 to learn acting. He had failed an audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and had been rejected by the Central School of Speech and Drama, because they felt he was too old at 24.[9] While still a student, he rented the tiny "off-West End" Irving Theatre, and there directed his own production of Clifford Odets's play Winter Journey (The Country Girl).
After completing his studies at the academy, he 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. He spent nearly a decade in obscurity, learning his profession on stages throughout the UK.[10]
As a change of pace, he was the romantic lead in a Doris Day spy spoof comedy, Caprice (1967), directed by Frank Tashlin. Harris next performed the role of King Arthur in the film adaptation of the musical play Camelot (1967). Critic Roger Ebert described the casting of Harris and Vanessa Redgrave as "about the best King Arthur and Queen Guenevere I can imagine".[11] Harris revived the role on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre from 15 November 1981, to 2 January 1982, and broadcast on HBO a year later. Starring Meg Bussert as Guenevere, Richard Muenz as Lancelot and Thor Fields as Tom of Warwick. Harris, who had starred in the film, and Muenz also took the show on tour nationwide.[12]
In The Molly Maguires (1970), he played James McParland, the detective who infiltrates the title organisation, headed by Sean Connery. It was a box office flop. However A Man Called Horse (1970), with Harris in the title role, an 1825 English aristocrat who is captured by Native Americans, was a major success. He played the title role in the film Cromwell in 1970 opposite Alec Guinness as King Charles I of England. That year British exhibitors voted him the 9th-most popular star at the UK box office.[13]
Harris starred in a Western for Samuel Fuller, Riata, which stopped production several weeks into filming. The project was re-assembled with a new director and cast, except for Harris, who returned: The Deadly Trackers (1973). In 1973, Harris published a book of poetry, I, In the Membership of My Days, which was later reissued in part in an audio LP format, augmented by self-penned songs such as "I Don't Know".
He appeared in another action film, Golden Rendezvous (1977), based on a novel by Alistair Maclean, shot in South Africa. Harris was sued by the film's producer for his drinking; Harris counter-sued for defamation and the matter was settled out of court.[15]Golden Rendezvous was a flop but The Wild Geese (1978), where Harris played one of several mercenaries, was a big success outside America.[16]Ravagers (1979) was more action, set in a post-apocalyptic world. Game for Vultures (1979) was set in Rhodesia and shot in South Africa.
For a while in the 1980s, Harris went into semi-retirement on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas, where he kicked his drinking habit and embraced a healthier lifestyle. It had a beneficial effect. Harris's career was revived by his success on stage in Camelot, and powerful performance in the West End run of Pirandello'sHenry IV.[17]
A lifelong supporter of Jesuit education principles,[18] Harris established a friendship with University of Scranton President Rev. J. A. Panuska[19][20] and raised funds for a scholarship for Irish students established in honour of his brother and manager, Dermot, who had died the previous year of a heart attack.[19][20] He chaired acting workshops and cast the university's production of Julius Caesar in November 1987.
Harris hesitated to take the role of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) owing to the multi-film commitment and his declining health, but he ultimately accepted because, according to his account of the story, his 11-year-old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again if he did not take it.[23] In an interview with the Toronto Star in 2001, Harris expressed his concern that his association with the Harry Potter films would outshine the rest of his career. He explained, "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."[24]
Harris also made part of the Bible TV movie project filmed as a cinema production for the TV, a project produced by Lux Vide Italy with the collaboration of RAI and Channel 5 of France,[25] and premiered in the United States in the channel TNT in the 1990s. He portrayed the main and title character in the production Abraham (1993) as well as Saint John of Patmos in the 2000 TV film production Apocalypse.
Singing career
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").[26] This song was written by Jimmy Webb, and it reached number 2 on the American BillboardHot 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.[27] A second album, also consisting entirely of music composed by Webb, The Yard Went on Forever, was released in 1969.[28] In the 1973 TV special "Burt Bacharach in Shangri-La", after singing Webb's "Didn't We", Harris tells Bacharach that since he was not a trained singer he approached songs as an actor concerned with words and emotions, acting the song with the sort of honesty the song is trying to convey. Then he proceeds to sing "If I Could Go Back", from the Lost Horizon soundtrack.
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 had not yet put down a deposit.[31][32] Harris employed the original decorators, Campbell Smith & Company Ltd., to carry out extensive restoration work on the interior.[32]
Harris was a vocal supporter of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) from 1973 until 1984.[33] In January 1984, remarks he made on the previous month's Harrods bombing caused great controversy, after which he discontinued his support for the PIRA.[34][35][33]
At the height of his stardom in the 1960s and early 1970s, Harris was almost as well known for his hellraiser lifestyle and heavy drinking as he was for his acting career. He was a longtime alcoholic until he became a teetotaller in 1981. Nevertheless, he did resume drinking Guinness a decade later.[36] He gave up drugs after almost dying from a cocaine overdose in 1978.
Illness and death
Harris was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in August 2002, reportedly after being hospitalised with pneumonia.[37] He died at University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, London, on 25 October 2002, aged 72.[38] Harris had quipped that "It was the food!" as he was wheeled out of the Savoy Hotel for the last time.[39] Harris spent his final three days in a coma.[40] Harris's body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in The Bahamas, where he owned a home.[41]
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 (2004). There were, however, concerns about insuring O'Toole for the six remaining films in the series.[42] Harris was ultimately succeeded as Dumbledore by Michael Gambon.[43]Chris Columbus, director of the first two Harry Potter films, had visited Harris during his last days and had promised not to recast Dumbledore, confident of his eventual recovery. In a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Columbus revealed that Harris was writing an autobiography during his stay at the hospital, but it has not been published since.[44]
Memorials and legacy
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 Racquetball. (He had won the local competition three or four times in a row during the late 1940s.) The sculptor was Seamus Connolly and the work was unveiled by Russell Crowe.[45] Harris was an accomplished squash racquets player, winning the Tivoli Cup in Kilkee four years in a row from 1948 to 1951, a record unsurpassed to this day.[46]
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. 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".
In 2013, Rob Gill and Zeb Moore founded the annual Richard Harris International Film Festival.[47]
The Richard Harris Film Festival is one of Ireland's fastest-growing film festivals, growing from just ten films in 2013 to over 115 films in 2017. Each year, one of Harris's sons attends the festival in Limerick.
In 2015, the Limerick Writers' Centre unveiled a commemorative plaque outside Charlie St George's pub on Parnell Street. The pub was a favourite drinking place of Harris on his visits to Limerick. The plaque, celebrating Harris's literary output as part of a Literary Walking Tour of Limerick, was unveiled by his son Jared Harris.[48]
In 1996, Harris was honoured with a commemorative Irish postage stamp for the "Centenary of Irish Cinema", a four-stamp set featuring twelve Irish actors in four Irish films.[49][50] He was again honoured in ‘Irish Abroad’ stamps in 2020.[51]