Trivia: Though he once declared, "I hate movies. They're a waste of time," Irish actor Richard Harris built a film career that lasted six decades and withstood a long fallow period in the 1970s and '80s. Often as famous for his offscreen exploits as his acting, Harris nevertheless was lauded for charismatic performances ranging from the tough, inarticulate rugby player in This Sporting Life (1963) to the wry bounty hunter in Unforgiven (1992) and the contemplative emperor in Gladiator (2000). After winning over a new generation of fans with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harris passed away in 2002.Born in Limerick, Ireland, Harris was the fifth of nine children. More interested in sports than art, Harris became a top rugby player in his teens. His sports career, however, ended after he came down with tuberculosis at age 19. Bed-ridden for two years, Harris read voraciously to pass the time. Calling his illness the "luckiest thing that ever happened to me," Harris was inspired by his volumes of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, and Dylan Thomas to pursue a creative profession. Harris left Ireland to study in London, signing up for acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in 1956 after he failed to find good classes in directing; he also joined the more experimental Theatre Workshop. Harris made his professional stage debut in The Quare Fellow in 1956, earning praise from Method guru Lee Strasberg. Spending the next few years on the stage, Harris appeared in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge and became a theater star with his turn as a drunken Dublin student in The Ginger Man (1959). Branching out to the screen, Harris appeared in the British TV movie The Iron Harp (1958), winning a contract with Associated British Pictures Corp. that lead to his feature debut in Alive and Kicking (1959). Playing Irishmen, Harris appeared alongside Hollywood heavyweights James Cagney in the IRA drama Shake Hands With the Devil (1959), Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston in The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), and Robert Mitchum in A Terrible Beauty (1960). After switching accents to play an Australian pilot in the World War II epic The Guns of Navarone (1961), Harris held his own as one of Marlon Brando's mutineers in The Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).Confirming his status as one of the best of the new generation of British rebel actors that included Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, Harris became an international movie star with This Sporting Life. One of the gritty cycle of "kitchen sink" films, This Sporting Life starred Harris as a miner's son-turned-professional rugby player who achieves success on the field at the expense of his personal life. Along with showcasing Harris' physical prowess, his tough, sensitive performance evoked the tragic anguish of Brando at his 1950s peak. After winning the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Harris received his first Oscar nomination. Rather than be pigeonholed, though, Harris collaborated with This Sporting Life director Lindsay Anderson on the stage production The Diary of a Madman and co-starred as Monica Vitti's lover in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1964 study of upper-middle-class malaise, Red Desert. Harris then (appropriately) co-starred as Charlton Heston's nemesis in Sam Peckinpah's butchered-cavalry epic, Major Dundee (1965). Devoting himself full-time to movies by the mid-'60s, Harris appeared with Kirk Douglas in Anthony Mann's World War II yarn The Heroes of Telemark (1965), joined the cast of island epic Hawaii (1966), raised Cain in The Bible (1966), and co-starred with Doris Day as spies caught up in a mod web of intrigue and romance in Caprice (1967). In still another change of pace, Harris tried his hand at musicals and became a dashing King Arthur in the film version of Camelot (1967). He subsequently scored a hit single in 1968 with his version of "MacArthur Park." Always a fancier of the pubs, Harris descended into alcoholism after his first marriage ended in divorce in 1969. Rebounding professionally from the disappointing biopic Cromwell (1970) and the intermittently engaging The Molly Maguires (1970), Harris scored a box-office hit with the sleeper Western A Man Called Horse (1970). Starring Harris as a British aristocrat captured and then embraced by the Sioux after a then-notably gory initiation, A Man Called Horse found a large audience for its pro-Indian sympathies and macho rituals, spawning two less-popular sequels The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976) and Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983). Returning to his original career goals, Harris stepped behind the camera to direct and write, as well as star as an aging soccer player in, The Hero (1971). As the 1970s went on, however, Harris' well-publicized hell-raising with famous drinking buddies Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton became more entertaining than his movies. Summing up the period as "drifting from one piece of crap to another," Harris funded his offscreen antics with such works as The Deadly Trackers (1973), Ransom (1974), Orca: The Killer Whale (1977), The Ravagers (1979), and The Bloody Avengers (1980). The Wild Geese (1978), at least, featured Burton as Harris' onscreen co-star, while Juggernaut (1974) and The Cassandra Crossing (1976) were mildly engaging disaster thrillers. Plunging to his career low in the early '80s with his appearance as Bo Derek's father in the risible Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981), and experiencing personal lows with his divorce from second wife Ann Turkel and dire warnings about his health, Harris quit drinking and took a sabbatical from movies. He published the novel Honor Bound in 1982.Still, Harris continued to perform during the 1980s, reprising his role as King Arthur in the touring company of Camelot. After he showed that he still had his serious acting chops in a 1989 production of Pirandello's play Henry IV, Harris recovered his film actor credentials with The Field (1990). Though the film received a limited release, Harris' commanding performance as tenant farmer Bull McCabe earned the actor his second Oscar nomination. Harris was back for good with his lively turn as an IRA gunman in the summer blockbuster Patriot Games (1992) and his self-mythologizing bounty hunter English Bob in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Western Unforgiven. Harris garnered still more positive reviews for his performances opposite Robert Duvall in the amiable character study Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993), and as a South African landowner in the remake of Cry, the Beloved Country (1995). Though his stint with Camelot had made him a fortune and he preferred hanging out at the local pub (imbibing his Guinness in moderation) to going Hollywood, Harris refused to retire as the 1990s went on, appearing in the adaptation of Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997) and To Walk With Lions (1999). Bringing a majestic gravitas to a cameo role, Harris earned Oscar buzz (though unfulfilled) for his Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator. Acquiescing to his granddaughter's wishes, Harris subsequently accepted another blockbuster project and agreed to play Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. After shooting the Potter movies, Harris delivered a final superb performance as a gangster King Lear in My Kingdom (2001). Though he predicted that he'd recover in time to begin the third Potter movie, Harris passed away from Hodgkin's disease in October 2002. He was survived by his three sons, actors Jared Harris and Jamie Harris, and director Damian Harris.

Trivia: Dignified, passionate Vanessa Redgrave is widely regarded as one of Great Britain's finest modern dramatic actresses. She is perhaps the most internationally famous of the Redgrave dynasty of actors that includes her father Sir Michael Redgrave, mother Rachel Kempson and siblings Corin and Lynn Redgrave. Born January 30, 1937 in London, Redgrave studied drama at London's Central School of Music and Dance. She made her theatrical debut in 1957 and her film debut the following year in the dreadful Behind the Mask, which starred her father. Redgrave would not venture into films again for another eight years, and during the early '60s established herself as a key member of the distinguished Stratford-Upon-Avon Theater Company. During her time with the repertory, she gave life to Shakespeare's works with some of her country's finest performers and met her future husband, the director Tony Richardson.Redgrave returned to films in 1966, making an unbilled appearance as Anne Boleyn in Fred Zinneman's all-star adaptation of A Man for All Seasons, and co-starring in Karel Reisz's comedy Morgan. In the same year, she played a small but key role as the girl in the photograph in Michelangelo Antonioni's first English language film, Blow-Up. In 1967, Redgrave appeared in the first of several films directed by her husband, Red and Blue and The Sailor from Gibralter. Also in 1967, she made a radiant Guenevere opposite Richard Harris' King Arthur in Joshua Logan's adaptation of the stage musical Camelot. That same year, Redgrave divorced Richardson on grounds of adultery. She had two children, Joely and Natasha Richardson, by him, and in 1969 had a child by her Camelot co-star Franco Nero. During these early years of her career, Redgrave hovered on the brink of stardom, due in large part to the uneven quality of the films in which she appeared. In 1968, she played the title role in Isadora, the biography of avant garde dancer Isadora Duncan, earning her first Oscar nomination and her second best actress award at Cannes (her first was for Morgan). The film represented one of Redgrave's first attempts at creating an independent, strong-willed, feminist character with strong socialist leanings. Throughout the 1970s, Redgrave continued to appear in films of varying quality, although her characters were almost always complex and controversial; the highlights from this period include The Trojan Women (1971), her Oscar-nominated turn in Mary Queen of Scotts (1971) and most notably the tragic Julia (1977), which won Redgrave an Oscar for best supporting actress. At the Oscar ceremony, the actress generated considerable controversy during her acceptance speech by using the ceremony as a forum for her tireless campaign for Palestinian rights in Israel. That, coupled with her outspoken support for the communist-oriented Workers' Revolutionary Party, made life difficult for Redgrave, who at one time was considered the British equivalent to actress/social activist Jane Fonda. Though she continued appearing in mainstream as well as politically oriented films and documentaries such as Roy Battersby's The Palestinians (1977), her views cost Redgrave roles on stage and screen and damaged her popularity, particularly in the U.S. Redgrave's television debut in Playing for Time (1980) generated further controversy when Redgrave won an Emmy for her portrayal of a Jewish violinist interned in a Nazi death camp who is ordered to help serenade women on their way to the gas chambers. Due to her anti-Zionist stand, many, including Fana Fenelon, the real-life violinist whom Redgrave was portraying, objected to her playing a Jewish woman. During the '80s, Redgrave came into her own as a leading character actress. She has subsequently appeared in a number of distinguished television movies, including Second Serve (1986) and a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1991), which co-starred her sister Lynn Redgrave. Her film work also remains distinguished and she has received Oscar nominations for James Ivory's The Bostonians (1984) and Howards End (1992). Her taste for playing a variety of characters has not changed, as evidenced by portrayals ranging from Oscar Wilde's mother in Wilde (1997) to her role as a doomed earthling in the 1998 summer blockbuster Deep Impact. Redgrave's television work was singled-out for recognition as she took home the 2000 Golden Globe for Best TV Series Supporting Actress in for her role in If These Walls Could Talk 2.She continued working steadily into the next decade appearing in Sean Penn's drama The Pledge, and the historical drama The Gathering Storm. She joined the cast of Nip/Tuck in 2004, and appeared opposite Peter O'Toole in Venus two years later. She played the grown-up version of the main character in the Oscar-nominated WWII drama Atonement. In 2011 she lent her voice to Cars 2, earned rave reviews for her work as the mother of Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus, and portrayed Queen Elizabeth in Anonymous.

Trivia: When the film version of the Broadway musical Camelot was released in 1967, critics had a jolly old time lambasting director Joshua Logan for casting non-singers in the leading roles. While it's certainly true that Lynn Redgrave, Richard Harris and Franco Nero seemed to suffer from Tin-Ear Syndrome, the critics were most unfair in picking on the fellow who played Mordred: David Hemmings. The son of a cookie merchant, Hemmings was a successful touring boy soprano at age nine, performing with the English Opera Group. He briefly left the musical world when his voice changed, studying painting at the Epsom School of Art and staging his first exhibition at 15. He returned to singing in his early 20s, first in nightclubs, then on the musical stage. Easing into acting, Hemmings appeared as misunderstood youths and belligerent "Teddy Boys" in a number of British programmers before attaining international stardom as the existential fashion photographer "hero"of Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966). With 1971's Running Scared, the indefatigable Hemmings began yet another new career as director; he has since helmed theatrical and made-for-TV films in England, Australia and Canada. With business partner John Daly, Hemmings formed the Hemdale Corporation for the express purpose of allowing the actor to do pretty much what he pleased both before and behind the cameras. In later years, he added novel writing to his considerable list of accomplishments. David Hemmings was the former husband of American actress Gayle Hunnicutt.

Trivia: Lantern-jawed, mustachioed, phlegmatic British actor Lionel Jeffries was trained at RADA following military service. In films from 1949, Jeffries hit his stride in the 1960s, playing a variety of ineffectual cops, bumbling bureaucrats, petty criminals and absent-minded professors. He was shown to best advantage in such films as Wrong Arm of the Law (1962) First Men in the Moon (1963) and Spy with a Cold Nose (1966). He was also adept at more sober-sided characterizations, such as the Marquis of Queensbury in The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960). In 1971, Lionel Jeffries turned to directing with The Railway Children, the first of several efforts aimed at the family trade: his other directorial assignments in this vein included Baxter (1972) The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972), The Water Babies (1978) and Wombling Free (1978). Jeffries died at age 83 in February 2010.

Trivia: Even in her nineties, British actress Estelle Winwood retained the wide-eyed naïveté of her ingénue days. An actress from the age of five, Winwood was trained at the Liverpool Repertory company. As an adult, she specialized in the plays of such leading theatrical lights of the early 20th century as Shaw and Galworthy. In 1918, she starred in Broadway's very first Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Why Marry?, and a few years later scored a personal triumph in The Circle. In films from 1933, Winwood was often cast as eccentric, birdlike old ladies, some few of which were capable of homicide. She is fondly remembered for such characterizations as Leslie Caron's fairy godmother in The Glass Slipper (1953) and the pass-the-hat lady in The Misfits (1961). Closing out her film career with the 1976 detective spoof Murder By Death, Estelle Winwood continued appearing on television until she passed the century mark; she died in her sleep at the age of 101.

Trivia: British character actor Peter Bromilow was already a near 20-year theater veteran before he made his feature film debut playing Sir Sagramore in Camelot (1967). After making a few more films in Great Britain, he moved to Hollywood in the mid-'70s, appearing in films ranging from Cheech and Chong's Next Movie (1980) to My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988) to Wild at Heart (1990). In addition to his film work, Bromilow often guest starred on television series such as The Avengers and Tales From the Darkside.

Trivia: Ex-Merchant Marine seaman Laurence Naismith made his London stage bow in the chorus of the 1927 musical production Oh, Boy. Naismith joined the Bristol Repertory at age 22, remaining with the troupe until joining the royal artillery at the outbreak of World War II; he spent nine years in military service, emerging with the rank of Acting Battery Commander. His officer's bearing served Naismith well in such authoritative film assignments as the ill-fated Captain Smith in A Night to Remember (1958). Other highlights in Naismith's lengthy movie career include the roles of the Prince of Wales in The Trial of Oscar Wilde (1960), Argus in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Merlin in Camelot (1967). A frequent visitor to Broadway, Naismith played Kris Kringle in Here's Love, Meredith Willson's 1963 musical adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street. Among Laurence Naismith's hundreds of television credits was the recurring role of Judge Fulton on the 1971 Tony Curtis-Roger Moore adventure series The Persuaders.

Trivia: British actor Garry Marsh began his stage career at the age of 15. In films from 1930, Marsh started out as an action hero, but later settled into self-important character roles. His more notable roles of the 1930s include Esterhazy in The Dreyfus Case (1931) and Belle's husband in Scrooge (1935). By the 1940s, he was often as not cast as detectives and smarmy theatrical agents. He continued working in films until the late 1960s (though the "Gary Marsh" credited for Camelot was actually a juvenile performer). Garry Marsh was married to actresses Adele Lawson and Muriel Martin-Havey respectively.