Richard Harris

Harris spent nearly a decade in obscurity learning his profession on stages throughout the UK. This show was a critical success but it was a financial failure and Harris lost all his savings in this venture. Harris was a longtime alcoholic until he became a teetotaler in 1981 although he did resume drinking Guinness a decade later.

He played an aristocrat and prisoner in A Man Called Horse (1970) Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator (2000) Saint John in Apocalypse Revelation (2002) gunfighter and Dom Frollo in the 1997 TV movie version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. At the height of his stardom in the 1960s and 1970s he was almost as well known for his hellraiser lifestyle and heavy drinking as he was for his considerable abilities as an actor. He is also known for playing Albus Dumbledore in the first two films in the Harry Potter series his final works.