Richard Harris, who died Oct. 25, had a dizzying career that began on a note of high promise in the ’60s, went into tailspin in the ’70s and was renewed in the last decade.

It was often observed that the Irish actor excelled at playing hell-raising rebels on screen and that he damaged himself and squandered his gifts by carrying that image into real life. But that quality of belligerent defiance informed some of his best work.

Any appreciation of Harris should start with the 1963 movie that made his name Lindsay Anderson’s “This Sporting Life.” David Storey’s autobiographical novel about the travails of a malcontent Yorkshire rugby player was tailor-made for Harris. The actor’s portrait of man undone by his inability to understand himself or what he does to others is superb.

In the era of disaster movies, Harris teamed with Richard Lester to film one that wasn’t itself a catastrophe. “Juggernaut” is a nifty 1974 thriller about a bomb stashed aboard a luxury liner. Harris is the foul-mouthed Navy expert charged with defusing it.

But it was when he reached his 60s that Harris came into his own and enjoyed his Indian summer. “The Field,” directed by Jim Sheridan, brought Harris back to the screen in 1991 after an eight-year absence.

Harris brought a world weariness to the emperor Marcus Aurelius in 2000’s “Gladiator” and did a wonderful turn as English Bob, the flashy gunslinger in Clint Eastwood’s great “Unforgiven” eight years before. He was also in fine form as James Jarvis, the conservative South African farmer whose son is murdered in “Cry the Beloved Country.”

And it would surely have amused Harris that the part in which zillions of people will remember him is Albus Dumbledore, the bearded headmaster of Hogwarts. Harris will reprise his droll contribution to “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” on Friday in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”