Richard Harris: Sex, Death and the Movies: An Intimate Biography Book

Richard Harris's death in the winter of 2002 marked the passing of one of the great eccentric spirits of modern cinema. Latterly renowned for his grandfatherly role as Dumbledore in Harry Potter, this couldn't have been further from his heyday as an angry young man. Born into the middle-class family of a failing mill-owner, Harris planned an international rugby career - and would have made it had he not been stricken with TB. The compensatory creativity led him to a controversial theatrical career in London, and into the heart of Hollywood. But it also released the demons that constantly threatened to destroy him. Befriending Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, the other legendary hell-raisers of the sixties, Harris's madness overshadowed everyone. For twenty years he was a semi-constant drunk, an obsessive experimenter with drugs and a passionate womaniser of Errol Flynn status, yet amazingly he managed to star in hits like Mutiny on the Bounty, Camelot and A Man Called Horse. Along the way were scattered the inevitable casualties - two marriages, bankrupt businesses, deserted friends nevertheless, he managed to retain the affection of a mass audience. This book started out in the eighties as an authorised biography, but Callen has revisited his notes and added to his merviews for this unexpurgated version.