HARRIS, RICHARD

(1930–2002)

Even though he has been associated primarily with non-western roles, such as King Arthur in the musical Camelot (1967) and Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, Richard Harris, twice nominated for the best actor Academy Award, was prominent in Westerns throughout the last half of the 20th century. In A Man Called Horse (1970), Harris played an English aristocrat forced through captivity to adopt the ways of the Sioux—probably his best performance in a film involving some of the most brutal scenes of torture and initiation rites of any Western ever made. In Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), Harris plays English Bob, a pulp writer trying to glamorize the West. He meets his end in another exceptionally violent episode. Harris’s other Westerns include Major Dundee (1965), Man in the Wilderness (1971), The Deadly Trackers (1973), The Return of a Man Called Horse(1976), Triumphs of a Man called Horse (1982), and Silent Tongue (1994).