“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.” – Richard Harris

Born in Limerickinto a family of nine siblings Richard John Harris’ promising rugby career was cut short by tuberculosis. Wanting to become a director he studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and, still a student, rented a theatre to stage a production of Clifford Odets’ play Winter Journey which was critically acclaimed but flopped, taking Harris’ savings. Richard Harris was homeless. He joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and made his stage debut in Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow. The character he played, Mickser, is a 50-year-old man, but 25-year-old Harris blagged an audition. Borrowing money to call the producers, he told them: “I look fucking 50. I haven’t had a good meal for four months and I haven’t slept for days. Just take a look at me!”

His first film was the comedy Alive and Kicking (1959), Shake Hands with the Devil (1959) saw him playing an IRA member who, against orders, brings a pistol on a raid causing his commander to be taken by the Black and Tans. Harris had problems over the years with threats from both Loyalist and Republican factions. In the biography Behaving Badly, Cliff Goodwin says that in 1970, Harris was a target for Loyalist paramilitaries who believed he was sympathetic to the IRA. Harris himself later claimed he was a target for the IRA itself over his bid to curb fundraising for the organisation in the US, telling a libel hearing in 1988: “Someone has to make a stand against the IRA. The killing must stop. I’ve had six threats on my life so far this year and now they will start again because of what I am saying.” Harris would play a fundraiser for the IRA in 1992 film Patriot Games (1992) and also played an IRA member in Shake Hands With the Devil (1959) and A Terrible Beauty (1960).

Squadron Leader Barnsby RAAF Richard Harris played a supporting role as Squadron Leader Barnsby RAAF in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and appeared as Seaman John Mills in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). He became an international star with his Oscar-nominated portrayal of a brutal, self-centred rugby player in This Sporting Life (1963), a performance still regarded by many as Harris’s finest. The film was directed by Lindsay Anderson who was attracted to Harris. Anderson wrote in his diary, “the most striking feature of it all, I suppose, has been the splendour and misery of my work and relationship with Richard”. He felt that Harris was acting better than ever before in his career, but feared his feelings for Harris, whose combination of physicality, affection and cruelty fascinated him, meant that he lacked the detachment he needed as a director. “I ought to be calm and detached with him. Instead I am impulsive, affectionate, infinitely susceptible.”

Malcolm McDowell, who came to stardom in Lindsay Anderson’s If… (1968) and O, Lucky Man! (1973 explained to The Independent: “I know that he was in love with Richard Harris the star of Anderson’s first feature, This Sporting Life. I am sure that it was the same with me and Albert Finney and the rest. It wasn’t a physical thing. But I suppose he always fell in love with his leading men. He would always pick someone who was unattainable because he was heterosexual.”

The film was praised by the critics but failed with the audience and made a loss. The Chairman of the Rank Organisation, John Davis, announced that the company would not venture further with “kitchen sink” film projects. Nor would his company make such a “squalid” film again.[10] More generally, it ended producers’ willingness to back such British New Wave films, 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 won Best Actor at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and he and co-star Rachel Roberts won acting awards at the BAFTAs and each was nominated for an Oscar.

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 the one won him international recognition and one that he often recreated. He had bought the rights to the musical a few years after the film for $1 million, reworked it and toured with it, making him a very rich man. Reviews tended towards the negative although it performed adequately at the box office. Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post wrote, “Long, leaden and lugubrious, the Warner’s ‘Camelot’ is 15 million dollars worth of wooden nickles. Besides being hopelessly, needlessly lavish, this misses the point squarely on the nail: what was so hot about King Arthur? We never really are told.” He added that Richard Harris as Arthur gave “the worst major performance in years.”

That performance won Richard Harris a Golden Globe. 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)

Richard Harris played the patriarch of the McCabe family who had rented and farmed a field for generations and, when it came up for auction, would stop at nothing to prevent a rich American (Tom Berenger) from buying it. The film was directed by Jim Sheridan who described Richard Harris “as mad as a brush” and very difficult to control. Sheridan, who also wrote the film, was initially reluctant to cast Harris because of his difficult reputation but changed his mind after Harris arranged a meeting and turned up in full costume and in character. The role won Harris Best Actor nominations for both the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards.

An image from this movie featured on an Irish thirty-two pence stamp in 1996, for the celebration of the commemoration of the Centenary of Irish Cinema. The stamp featured Sean Bean, Sir John Hurt, and Richard Harris in the Irish setting of Killary Harbour in Ireland.

Richard Harris did not want to accept the role of Dumbledore in the first Harry Potter film as he was aware that he was in poor health. His eleven-year-old granddaughter was unsympathetic, telling him that she would never speak to him again if he did not take the part. The immense popularity of the franchise worried Haris. 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.

“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.” – Richard Harris

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