Great actor! so sad, RIP...


Actor Richard Harris Dead
50 minutes ago
By Marcus Errico

Richard Harris, the Irishman known as much for his carousing as his masterful acting in films like A Man Called Horse and This Sporting Life, died Friday after a brief bout with Hodgkin's disease. He was 72.

"With great sadness, Damian, Jarid and Jamie Harris announced the death of their beloved father, Richard Harris (news)," the actor's family said in a statement. "He died peacefully at University College Hospital."


Word of Harris' death comes less than two weeks after his publicist stated Harris was responding "extremely well" to chemotherapy at the London hospital.


In fact, the publicist said on October 15 that Harris "should be released from the clinic soon" and be fully recuperated in time to reprise his role as the kindly Professor Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, slated to begin shooting in March.


Harris was reportedly hospitalized in August after complaining of a severe chest infection. It was then that doctors diagnosed the Hodgkin's, a cancer that attacks the body's lymph nodes.


Harris' condition was serious enough to warrant the filmmakers of the upcoming Harry Potter (news - web sites) and the Chamber of Secrets, which is due out November 15, to use a double to complete some of the actor's final scenes and, according to British press reports, begin looking for potential replacements for future Harry Potter installments.


Long before assuming Potter duties, Harris made his acting legend for his intense performance in 1963's This Sporting Life. His turn as violent coal-miner Frank Machin earned him a Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival (news - web sites) and his first of two Best Actor Academy Award nominations.


Other key credits included turns as a squadron leader alongside David Niven and Gregory Peck (news) and Anthony Quinn in 1961's The Guns of Navarone and as a singing King Arthur in the film version of Camelot.


But Harris' most popular role was (apart from Dumbledore) John Morgan, an English aristocrat captured by Sioux in the surprise, franchise-launching 1970 hit A Man Called Horse. The film spawned two sequels and later prompted Harris to accuse Kevin Costner (news) of swiping scenes from the series for Dances with Wolves.


Harris' celluloid résumé also included the 1962 Marlon Brando (news) version of Mutiny on the Bounty and Robin and Marian, in which he costarred with Sean Connery (news) and Audrey Hepburn.


Then there were the mid-'70s flops (Orca or Game for Vultures, anyone?), prompting Harris to abandon movie-making. "I made a decision that half was made for me by the motion picture business," he recalled once. "Around 1980, I decided that was it, that my career was really finished. I was doing a series of movies that I wasn't happy doing. The standard of the movies was very low. Because of what I was offered, I was unhappy."

He quit Hollywood, toured in a revival of Camelot and then stopped working altogether in the late '80s. Then Harris made a remarkable comeback, snaring a Best Actor Oscar nomination for 1990's The Field followed by a supporting role as gunslinger English Bob in Clint Eastwood (news)'s 1992 Oscar-winning western Unforgiven.

More blockbusters followed, including Gladiator, in which he played Marcus Aurelius and the part of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first movie adventure of J.K. Rowling (news - web sites)'s boy wizard.

While Harris signed on to play the Hogwarts headmaster after his young niece threatened never to speak to him again if he refused, he wasn't always so cuddly.

An inveterate hellraiser in the '60s and '70s, the actor was once drinking buddies with Peter O'Toole (news) and the late Richard Burton. Harris nearly died from a cocaine overdose in 1978. (According to one newspaper report, Harris has been in intensive care five times over the years and been given last rites twice.) After his O.D., and under doctors' orders, he gave up his hard-living ways in 1982--after downing two bottles of wine first--and had remained clear and sober since.

Twice wed, he is survived by his three sons from his first marriage to Elizabeth Rees-Williams.

so sad...what a talented man...will be missed by all movie-goers...




'u don't have 2 b beautiful 2 turn me on...'

Richard Harris was good... I am sorry to hear that he died.

oh dear great actor and talk show guest

What!!! Oh my god!! He has just completed the 2nd Harry Potter movie. The next Harry Potter movie (if any) will not be the same... so He was such a great actor - loved his movies.