Richard St. John Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002)was an Irish actor, singer-songwriter, theatrical producer, film director and writer. He appeared on stage and in many films, and is perhaps best known for his roles as King Arthur in Camelot (1967), as Oliver Cromwell in Cromwell (1970) and as Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosophers's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), his final film. He also played a British aristocrat and prisoner in A Man Called Horse (1970) and a gunfighter in Clint Eastwood's Western film Unforgiven (1992). Despite his limited singing ability, Harris had a top ten hit in Britain and the US with his 1968 recording of Jimmy Webb's song "MacArthur Park".
In Loving Memory
Richard St. John Harris
10/1/1930 - 10/25/2002
Harris died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma on 25 October 2002, aged 72, two and a half weeks before the American premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He was replaced as Dumbledore by the Irish-born actor Sir Michael Gambon. Harris was a longtime alcoholic, but then he became a teetotaler in 1981. He gave up drugs after almost dying from a cocaine overdose in 1978.
For years, whenever he was in London, Harris resided at the Savoy Hotel. According to the hotel archivist Susan Scott, as Harris was being taken from the hotel on a stretcher, shortly before his death, he warned the diners, "It was the food!"
Harris's remains were cremated, and his ashes were scattered in The Bahamas Islands, where he had owned a home.
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