The Reluctant Dumbledore

Richard Harris needed some serious persuasion to play Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movie. His young granddaughter Ella provided it, and the 71-year-old actor succumbed without even having read J.K. Rowling’s novels.

"It wasn’t because I didn’t like the material or the people involved," says Harris. "I just didn’t like the idea that if you said ‘yes’ and you did it, then you were committed–if they did seven and I would have to do seven. I hate that kind of commitment. I hate the idea that my life in any way is sort of restricted."

Twice divorced, Harris adds: "That’s why my marriages broke up. I hate commitment, and I’m totally unreliable anyway."

In the end, though, Ella held sway.

"She called me and said, ‘If you don’t do it, papa, I’ll never speak to you again,’ and I thought, I can’t afford that. I have to do it."

And so Harris found himself keeping company with Potter co-stars Zoe Wanamaker, John Hurt and Maggie Smith–as well as broadening his fan base some 38 years after his ornery rugby player in Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life brought him the first of his two Academy Award nominations for best actor. (He was nominated in 1990 for director Jim Sheridan’s little-seen film The Field.)

During the 1960s, Harris appeared with Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty and trilled semi-tunefully as King Arthur opposite Vanessa Redgrave in Camelot, later reprising the Lerner and Loewe musical on stage. (And remember? He also had a hit record with MacArthur Park.) Within the last decade, he has appeared in two winners of the best picture Oscar–Unforgiven in 1992 and last year’s Gladiator, playing the war-weary Emperor Marcus Aurelius, father to Joaquin Phoenix’s venal Commodus.

With Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as with Gladiator, says Harris, "People say, ‘A great comeback,’ and I say, ‘What comeback? I haven’t been anywhere. What does it mean, a comeback?’ So I’m in a successful movie; so what? That’s not our job."

Whatever the critical reaction, the Harry Potter film franchise may keep Harris busy as he approaches 80.

"This is, like, forever," says Harris, who recalls approaching his agent to find out how he could possibly minimize an assignment that risks consuming the rest of his career. "He called me back and said, ‘You can get out of it.’ I said, ‘Tell me, how?’ And he said"–Harris smiles–"die."