Richard Harris

Richard Harris was an Irish actor and singer born on 1 October 1930 at Overdale, 8 Landsdown Villas, Ennis Road, Limerick, the fifth of eight children born to Ivan Harris, a flour merchant, and his wife Mildred, née Harty. He was educated by the Jesuits at Crescent College, where he played rugby union for several Munster Junior and Senior Cup teams and for Garryowen. Tuberculosis cut short his athletic career in his teens, though he remained a devoted supporter of the Munster Rugby and Young Munster teams for the rest of his life. After recovering, he moved to England with the intention of becoming a director. Having been rejected by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, he enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where he also directed a production of Clifford Odets's Winter Journey at the Irving Theatre. He subsequently joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and made his West End stage debut in The Quare Fellow in 1956.

Harris made his film debut in Alive and Kicking in 1959 and played the lead in The Ginger Man in the West End that same year. Early screen appearances included supporting roles in Shake Hands with the Devil and The Wreck of the Mary Deare, both 1959, followed by A Terrible Beauty in 1960 alongside Robert Mitchum, and a bit part in The Guns of Navarone in 1961. His first starring film role came in This Sporting Life in 1963, in which he played Frank Machin, a coal miner who becomes a rugby league footballer. The performance earned him the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He received a second Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for The Field in 1990. Other significant film credits include Red Desert, A Man Called Horse, Cromwell, Unforgiven, Gladiator, and The Count of Monte Cristo. He portrayed Oliver Cromwell opposite Alec Guinness in Cromwell in 1970, and in 1971 starred in the BBC television film The Snow Goose, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor nomination for his stage performance in Pirandello's Henry IV in 1991. In 2020, The Irish Times ranked him third on its list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

Harris first played King Arthur in the 1967 film adaptation of Camelot, the Lerner and Loewe musical, for which he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He reprised the role on Broadway in the 1981 revival of Camelot, performing at the Winter Garden Theatre from 15 November 1981 to 2 January 1982, with Meg Bussert as Guenevere, Richard Muenz as Lancelot, and Thor Fields as Tom of Warwick. The production was subsequently broadcast on HBO, and Harris and Muenz also took the show on a nationwide tour. His Broadway appearances spanned the years 1980 to 1985.

Beyond acting, Harris achieved considerable success as a recording artist. His 1968 recording of Jimmy Webb's "MacArthur Park" reached number one in Australia, Jamaica, and Canada, and placed in the top ten in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States. The recording earned him a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance nomination.

Harris gained cross-generational recognition late in his career through his portrayal of Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2001 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002, the latter being his final film role. He died on 25 October 2002.