“I often sit back and think, I wish I’d done that, and find out later that I already have.”
Born and raised in Ireland, the young Richard Harris was a talented rugby player, but his career was cut short by tuberculosis. After a decade of obscurity in London theater, he landed his first movie, Alive and Kicking, in 1959. His supporting roles in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) led to his first lead performance in This Sporting Life (1963), for which he received the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and a Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards. It was a performance that would propel him into the ranks of British Cinema’s “angry young men.” In 1967, Harris played King Arthur in the film adaptation of the musical Camelot and embarked on a music career, releasing the smash hit single “MacArthur Park” and the first of several full-length albums, A Tramp Shining (1968). He also published an acclaimed book of poetry, I, in the Membership of My Days (1973). Though Harris continued to act over the next two decades, it wasn’t until The Field (1990) that he played another part of consequence; for his performance, he received his second Oscar nomination as Best Actor. Harris went on to have something of a renaissance, appearing in Patriot Games (1992), Unforgiven (1992), Gladiator (2000), and the early Harry Potter films.
THEY WERE CUTTING IT TOO CLOSE. The stagehand was in a panic. It was the middle of a performance of the play The Pier at the Bristol Old Vic, and as usual, Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole had ducked out for an unscheduled intermission. Enthusiastic and dedicated drinking buddies, they were blessed each night with one glorious twenty-minute stretch during which neither was required onstage. It was long enough to dash across the street (in full costume) to the local watering hole. Ordinarily they would toss a few back, while keeping a close eye on the clock, and return to the theater just before they were due back on. But not this night.
“Harris!” the stagehand screamed, throwing open the door of the bar. “For god’s sake, you’re on!”
In his professional life, Harris wasn’t known to allow drink to interfere with his work. In his personal life, however, he was known for his disappearances. Once, while living in London, he told his wife, Elizabeth, that he was going out for a newspaper. What he didn’t tell her was he was going to get it in Dublin. Five weeks of a massive bender passed before word got to him that Elizabeth was planning to divorce him. When he finally returned home, and an expressionless but clearly angry Elizabeth met him at the door, he asked—as sincerely as he could—“Why didn’t you pay the ransom?”
Of course, that was Dublin—a city that holds you hostage. It held the same allure for O’Toole as it did for Harris, “With Dublin the only thing you can do is turn up the collar of your coat, pull your hat down over your eyes and walk straight through it: otherwise you’re there forever.”
It was the middle of a performance of the play The Pier at the Bristol Old Vic, and as usual, Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole had ducked out for an unscheduled intermission.
Biographer Robert Sellers tells another story involving a Harris disappearance. Extremely loaded one night, Harris first closed down a pub in London, then—ever thirsty for more—hopped a train with the hope that the train’s bar car would still be open. It was, and so Harris never bothered to ask where they were heading. He arrived in Leeds at well after midnight, pissed out of his mind. Spying a light on in a nearby house, he tossed a stone at a windowpane and drew out the owner. Naturally, the owner was quite angry at first, but then recognized the movie star and invited him in. Harris would stay there for the next four days, bombed the entire time.
But when it came to acting, both Harris and O’Toole knew their priorities. And so the two Irishmen slammed back their beers and took off for the theater. Just as Harris hit the stage door, he heard his cue and frantically scrambled toward the stage. His entrance, however, did not go as planned. Right as he was about to appear on the set, he tripped over a wire, sliding all the way down to the footlights, where his head landed practically in the lap of a woman in the front row. Catching the scent of alcohol on his breath, the woman shouted, “Good god! Harris is drunk!”
“Madam,” Harris replied without missing a beat, “if you think I’m drunk, wait until you see O’Toole.”
RICHARD HARRIS COULD DRINK two bottles of vodka a day (to Burton’s three, though that is hardly indicative of greater restraint) and usually finish by 7 p.m. At which time, he would “break open a bottle of brandy and a bottle of port and mix the two.” Given the degree of inebriation, there was likely little nuance involved, but for those who would like to try it …
