Gaunt but strapping and ruggedly handsome, Harris is an Irish lead who, after stage experience and several good supporting roles in films, came to prominence in the British "angry young man" school of "kitchen sink" realism, portraying a rough rugby player in Lindsay Anderson's "This Sporting Life" (1963). He started out as a stage actor, playing King Arthur in "Camelot" in the 1960s and again in the 80s. His other shows include "A View from the Bridge", "The Ginger Man", "Diary of a Madman", and "Man, Beast and Virtue". His 1990 London run of "Henry V" won several awards. Behind the scenes, like his contemporaries Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, Harris was a student of the bad boy school of talented thespians with a seemingly unquenchable taste for booze who never let a bender get in the way of a performance.
"Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion" has characterized Harris' persona on and off the screen as follows: "Usually cast as a rebel, he tries to match the part in real life". Though in many ways accurate (witness Harris as the murderous Cain in John Huston's "The Bible", 1966, or in Sam Peckinpah's Civil War saga "Major Dundee", 1965), the description does not quite encompass the quiet modernist alienation of Michelangelo Antonioni's brilliant "Red Desert" (1964) or the stalwart brand of suffering heroism he could often convey. With his musical speaking voice--and surprisingly good singing voice--Harris scored as the larger-than-life King Arthur in the adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot" (1967). (His voice would also be put to use on the syrupy but extremely popular 1968 recording, "MacArthur Park".) Sometimes though, Harris' volatile charisma, edgy quirkiness and egocentric flamboyance found itself in an unworthy epic such as "Cromwell" (1970), while "A Man Called Horse" (1970) seemed to exist largely to show just how great his capacity for suffering could be.
The 70s were a comedown for Harris, cast as he was in a number of all-star actioners ranging from the enjoyably old-fashioned "The Cassandra Crossing" (1977) to the irredeemably dreadful "Orca . . . Killer Whale" (1977). Harris himself knew his career was bottoming out as he hammed his way through such bombs as the Canadian-made "Highpoint" (1980) and the flat Bo Derek starrer, "Tarzan the Ape Man" (1981). Having survived a near-fatal overdose of cocaine in 1978, Harris proceeded to kick his longstanding alcohol addiction and found a career jump-start when an ill Richard Burton asked him to finish out the final eight weeks of a "Camelot" tour in 1982. Harris would eventually stick with the show for five years, buying out the show's original producers and netting himself a very tidy bundle. In 1982, the actor finally gave up drinking after being told he's die of hypoglycemia within 18 months if he didn't quit --but typically, not until after drinking two bottles of wine in one sitting.
His confidence bolstered, Harris returned to the London stage in triumph in a production of Pirandello's "Henry IV" in 1989. His screen career was also reactivated when he played a white-haired curmudgeon determined to hold onto his property in "The Field" (1990).
An Oscar nomination resulted, and Hollywood beckoned the fascinatingly weathered but still youthfully vibrant actor with a flashy supporting role as a seemingly classy hired gun in Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" (1992) and a leading part as a robust blowhard of a sea captain who delights in telling of his "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway" (1993). After a supernatural western (Sam Shepherd's "Silent Tongue", 1993), Harris came through again as an African landowner whose son is killed by his neighbor's son in "Cry, the Beloved Country" (1995), co-starring James Earl Jones. He next took off for Dublin to film two dramas, "Trojan Eddie" and "This Is the Sea" (both 1997).
Harris, a delightful storytelling raconteur who appeared with much success on the late-night talk show circuit even during his career's darkest days, enjoyed a renewed career renaissance at the turn of the millennium, having seeming beaten his demons, reigned in any lingering hammy instincts, and turned in affecting, nuanced performances in a variety of films in differing genres, including "The Hunchback" (1997), "To Walk With Lions" (1999), "Grizzly Falls" (1999) and "The Count of Monte Cristo." He was particularly memorable as Marcus Aurelius, the aged, benevolent Roman Emperor who treated the centurion Maximus (Russell Crowe) like a son only to be betrayed and murdered by his own offspring (Joaquin Phoenix) in the Oscar-winning epic "Gladiator" (2000). And the actor was discovered by an entirely new generation of fans when he assumed the key role of the wise and kindly Professor Albus Dumbledore in the film adaptation of author J.K. Rowling's smash children's book "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" (2001). Harris had already lensed his role for the sequel, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002), and signed on for a third installment (reportedly after his young niece refused to speak to him ever again if he refused) when news broke in October of 2002, about a month before the new film's release, that the actor was being treated for Hodgkin's Disease in a London hospital. Approximately two weeks later, on Oct. 25, 2002, Harris succumbed to the disease. After his death, the actor was featured in his final on-camera role, appropriately playing in yet another splashy historical epic, as Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the Turner Network Television 2003 mini-series "Julius Caesar." Ever upfront and self-deprecating about his hard-living past, Harris once suggested his own epitaph: "Get laid, get pissed, move on."