26 OCTOBER 2002
Veteran Irish actor Richard Harris has died at a London hospital at the age of 72.

“With great sadness, Damian, Jarid and Jamie Harris announced the death of their beloved father, Richard Harris,” a family spokesperson said.

The hell-raising star of screen classics such as A Man Called Horse and This Sporting Life passed away peacefully on Friday evening at University College Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment for Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer affecting the lymph glands. The actor had fallen ill in August and was undergoing chemotherapy.

Richard revelled in his notorious wild man reputation off-screen, and the critics revelled in his towering on-screen presence. Claiming that being bedridden with TB for 18 months as a child sowed the seeds of his acting ambitions, he came to fame as one of a trio of talented angry young actors on the British stage along with Peter O’ Toole and Albert Finney, and hit the big time playing a young miner who becomes a rugby player in 1963’s This Sporting Life. Other major roles followed for the Limerick-born star and he was crowned King Arthur in the screen adaptation of Camelot in 1967.

But for a whole younger generation of movie-goers he’ll be remembered for his role as Professor Albus Dumbledore in the big-screen epic Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone.

Richard married and divorced twice but remained great friends with both his ex-wives; their raucous extended family get-togethers at an Irish castle are legendary. After such a colourful life and successful career, Richard, who had just finished shooting the second Harry Potter movie, bows out with few regrets.

“Regrets?” he thundered in a HELLO! interview in 1999. “Are you joking? Didn’t I enjoy every mad wonderful moment? I had such fun and truly great times. Look at all I’ve achieved. And what’s more, I didn’t drink to escape anything, but because I loved it and all the fun that went with it or – as we say in Ireland, for the craic.”