London ? Irish actor Richard Harris, the roistering star of screen gems such as “A Man Called Horse” and “This Sporting Life” and, later, the wise old Professor Dumbledore in two Harry Potter movies, died Friday night at a London hospital. He was 72.

“With great sadness, Damian, Jared and Jamie Harris announced the death of their beloved father, Richard Harris,” his family said.

“He died peacefully at University College Hospital,” where he was receiving treatment for Hodgkin’s Disease after falling ill earlier this year.

A tall, sturdy figure with a reputation as a hellraiser and a lived-in face that he once described as looking like “five miles of bad country road,” Harris was never cut out to join contemporaries as a smooth matinee idol.

The critic Clive Barnes called him one of a new breed of British actors, who are “rougher, tougher, fiercer, angrier and more passionately articulate than their well-groomed predecessors … roaring boys, sometimes with highly colored private lives and lurid public images.”

He caught the eye of critic Kenneth Tynan who once bracketed him with Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole as one of the three best young actors on the British stage.

Later in life, Harris found a new generation of fans as Dumbledore. He played the white-bearded wizard in last year’s “Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone,” and returns in the role in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” which opens Nov. 15.

Harris was nominated twice for best-actor Academy Awards, for his role as violent, inarticulate Yorkshire miner Frank Machin in Lindsay Anderson’s 1963 “This Sporting Life,” and then as the thundering Irish peasant Bull McCabe in director Jim Sheridan’s little-seen 1990 film, “The Field.”

Harris

Harris also was nominated for an Emmy for 1971’s “The Snow Goose.”

Within the last decade, Harris also appeared in two winners of the best-picture Oscar “Unforgiven” in 1992 and 2000’s “Gladiator,” in which he played the war-weary Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Inspired by the writings of the Russian director Konstantin Stanislavsky, the young Harris initially had set his heart on directing, but acting soon claimed him, and he enjoyed his first stage success with Joan Littlewood’s pioneering Theatre Workshop.

He also won the Best Actor award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for “This Sporting Life.” Other major roles include “Major Dundee,” “Hawaii,” “Camelot,” “The Molly Maguires,” “A Man Called Horse” and “Cromwell.”

Born Oct. 1, 1930, in Limerick, southern Ireland, Harris suffered a bout of tuberculosis in adolescence, which friends say fostered the brooding, introspective quality of his acting. Possessed of a sharp temper, Harris was no stranger to arguments and was known to cancel interviews and miss appearances if he felt indisposed.

He is survived by his three sons from his first marriage to Elizabeth Rees-Williams.