Jared Harris on why dad Richard ‘never apologized’ for hellraising
nypost.comThis Sporting Life” (1963) and “The Field” (1991) — and famously crooned Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park,” for which he garnered a 1969 Grammy nomination.
He originated the role of Dumbledore in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”Harris died in 2002 at the age of 72 from Hodgkin’s disease.“The Ghost of Richard Harris,” premiering May 9 on BritBox, features interviews with Jared Harris, 61 (“Mad Men,” “Chernobyl”), his brothers Damian, 64 and Jamie, 59, and Russell Crowe, Vanessa Redgrave, Stephen Rea, Malachy McCourt, Dick Cavett and acclaimed songwriter Phil Coulter, among others.The documentary, replete with archival footage and photographs of Harris dating back to his childhood in Ireland, uses his unapologetic approach to life — “I drank because I loved it,” “I’m a jockey on this wild horse,” “I’m not running away from anything” — as a jumping-off point to delve into what drove him to excess.“I do think it’s true that he was running away from everything,” Jared said. “If you read my mother’s [Elizabeth Rees-Williams] autobiography … Dad was weirdly obsessed with death.
First of all, his two elder sisters both died young, then there was a war on and people were dying.“Her opinion was that, in some way, it made him feel he had to live every moment in life — that nothing is guaranteed for anybody.”“Ghost” also takes an unflinching look at the actor’s very public indulgences that kept him in the headlines for all the wrong reasons throughout his life.“Whatever he was into he was into without reservation or hesitation,” Jared said. “He would describe it as being ‘obsessive’ about it.
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