Richard Harris’ final star turn

It seems apropos that Richard Harris’ last starring role was as a contemporized King Lear in the film “My Kingdom,” which opens Friday for a one-week Oscar-qualifying engagement.

In the drama co-written and directed by Don Boyd, Harris plays Sandeman, a Liverpool mob boss whose life is shattered when his wife, Mandy (Lynn Redgrave), is killed in a mugging. He winds up losing his home, power, fortune and dignity when he gives his “kingdom” to his two eldest money-grubbing daughters.

With his mane of white hair, thick glasses and weathered visage, Harris gives a towering performance as a man who is betrayed and nearly destroyed by his family.

Making the film with Harris, who died Oct. 25 of Hodgkin’s disease at the age of 72, was a gratifying and sometimes exasperating experience for the cast and crew. “In terms of the choice of an actor for the lead, I don’t think you can ever think about doing a film of that nature without having Richard on the list,” producer Neil Weisman says. “But there was obviously a certain amount of trepidation of the reputation that precedes the person.”

“Richard was legendary for someone who caused huge problems on film sets,” Boyd says. The director first learned of Harris’ reputation from Lindsay Anderson, who had directed the actor in his first film success, 1963’s “This Sporting Life,” as well as in the theater. “Lindsay always said, ‘You know, Don, he is a truly great film actor, and though we had huge differences and he made my life a nightmare, if you ever have the chance to work with him whatever age he would be, jump at it.’

“When I came to meet Richard for the first time, I told him all about my knowledge of him through Lindsay, and it was interesting. Richard immediately responded with a bunch of stories of what it had been like to work with him, which was his side of the story.”

Although Harris had said he loved the script, Weisman says they went through a bit of a “scrap” a few weeks before production began. “As Don tells the story, it happens with a lot of actors that the reality of going up to the location and actually making the thing hits them.... He said he had given notes to Don and they weren’t fully incorporated into the script.”

So Boyd and Weisman ended up leaving pre-production in Liverpool to meet with Harris at his apartment at the Savoy Hotel in London. Boyd believed Harris was worried about playing a man who causes such havoc. “He was afraid of portraying the descent of a man at the end off his life,” Boyd says. “He said to me, ‘I almost feel this might be my last role.’ ”

Boyd says the aspect of Harris that “proved to be both brilliantly inspiring and at the same time aggravating in the extreme was his obsession about this role.” Harris, he adds, had long wanted to do a production of “King Lear” on stage but it had never come to fruition.

“He immersed himself in the psychology of the character, but he had to operate that in parallel with his huge knowledge of the Shakespearean ‘King Lear.’ I had absolutely no preparation for somebody who was going to match my obsession about the film. The first thing I had to address was his shift from his great admiration for me and what I represented to the operational function of being an actor within a film where every line and every scene was something he had to believe in.”

Boyd and Harris had three or four “enormous rows.” Still, Boyd adds, “from the very beginning he understood the position of the director. He said, ‘If I respect the director, then I am going to want them to understand me.’ ”

Every morning before filming began, Boyd would report to Harris’ trailer, where they would go over every line and every scene. “In terms of the argumentative nature of Richard,” Boyd says, those exchanges “were technical and had to do with the job. They were not personal. As soon as that was understood, it was a complete delight.”

Harris, Boyd reports, wanted every element of his look to be perfect. Once on the set, Harris was obsessed with silence.

“He couldn’t stand noise,” Boyd says. “I respected that. That didn’t mean you couldn’t go and talk to him. He liked everything detailed and specific.”

Harris was a great draw for the other actors in the film. “He did kind of assume a father-figure stature to the rest of the actors,” Weisman says. But that also meant if his character didn’t get along with certain others in the film, Harris didn’t relate very well to the actors who played those parts. But he became a true mentor to Emma Catherwood, who plays Sandeman’s beloved third daughter.

Catherwood first met Harris just before production began. “We went for a drink, and he just kind of asked me something about the character and how the father and daughter developed,” says the actress. “I answered him and I think I passed the test. Everything was OK after that.”

Harris reminded her of her grandfather. “When men reach the age of 70 they are grouchy old codgers,” Catherwood says, laughing. “They like to drink and wind people up. Richard would wind people up and then snigger behind their backs. In actual fact, he was pulling their legs.”

Harris was generous with her. “He taught me camera angles and where not to put my face,” Catherwood says. “He did me a really big favor. He found out I was up for a movie and he phoned the producers. He got me the part, but then the movie fell through. I thought that was gorgeous for him to do.”

Although her sister Vanessa had worked with Harris 35 years ago in “Camelot,” Lynn Redgrave wasn’t well acquainted with Harris before playing his wife, Mandy. “I had wanted to work with Richard,” she says. “As it turned out, I just made it.”

For Redgrave, the happiest day during shooting was a scene in which Mandy and Sandeman chat in the car on the way to a church concert. “It was just the two of us in the car, and it felt like we were alone,” Redgrave says. “We kind of improvised endlessly. He was the sort of actor where you can’t see where it’s coming from. You don’t see the wheels going around. He has always been a bold and extraordinary actor, and he is very economical in this.”

Boyd and Weisman last saw Harris in July at the film’s British premiere at the Cambridge Film Festival.

“He was in good spirits,” Weisman says. “He did a terrific Q&A.; Initially he was a bit prickly with the guy who did the Q&A;, but he ended up being very generous.”

“I went to see the film in London after he had died,” Boyd said. “I had tears streaming down my face through the entire viewing because I didn’t really feel he had gone. I felt he was there. I felt he was in the cinema with me. That’s the great thing about movies, if you capture that spirit, it’s there for a very long time.”