Richard Harris Obituary

Richard St John Francis Harris was an Irish actor and singer. He appeared on stage and in many films, notably as Corrado Zeller in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Frank Machin in This Sporting Life, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and as King Arthur in the 1967 film Camelot, as well as the 1981 revival of the stage musical.

Harris was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in August 2002, reportedly after being hospitalised with pneumonia.

He died at University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, London, on 25 October 2002, aged 72. Harris had quipped that “It was the food!” as he was wheeled out of the Savoy Hotel for the last time.

He was survived by his three sons, Damian, Jared and Jamie, having spent his final three days in a coma. Harris’s body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Bahamas, where he owned a home.