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Rex Harrison won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady 1964, a role that also earned him a Tony Award for the Broadway production. He was knighted in 1989 and died of pancreatic cancer in 1990 at age 82. Harrison is one of only nine actors to win both a Tony and an Oscar for the same role.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Rex Harrison — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Rex Harrison by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Rex Harrison — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
At age 18, Rex Harrison made his stage debut at the Liverpool Repertory Theatre — an entrance so disastrous he nearly ended his career before it began. Born Reginald Carey Harrison on March 5, 1908 in Huyton, Lancashire to cotton broker William Reginald Harrison and Edith Mary Carey, he changed his name to Rex as a boy, knowing it meant king in Latin. He attended Liverpool College, Birkdale School, and Huyton College before pursuing acting.
Rex Harrison’s breakthrough came in Terence Rattigan’s play French Without Tears in the West End, which earned him the label greatest actor of light comedy. He achieved international fame playing the King in Anna and the King of Siam 1946, his first American film. The defining role of his career arrived in 1956 when he originated Professor Henry Higgins in the Broadway musical My Fair Lady, winning a Tony. He reprised the role in the 1964 film version, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. He also received an Oscar nomination for his performance as Julius Caesar in Cleopatra 1963 and starred as Doctor Dolittle in the 1967 film of the same name.
Rex Harrison’s six marriages included a notably turbulent relationship with German actress Lilli Palmer, with whom he had two sons, Carey and Noel. After a scandal involving actress Carole Landis’s suicide in 1948, he divorced Palmer to marry the terminally ill Kay Kendall in 1957. He later married actresses Rachel Roberts and Elizabeth Harris, and finally Mercia Tinker in 1978, who was with him when he received his knighthood in 1989.
Rex Harrison’s portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins is among the most celebrated in musical theater and film history, making him one of only nine actors to win both a Tony and an Oscar for the same role. His distinctive voice and comedic timing influenced later performers; the character Stewie Griffin from Family Guy is based on him. Knighted in 1989 at age 81, he continued acting on Broadway until three weeks before his death. He is remembered as one of the greatest performers of light comedy.
Browse the complete filmography of Rex Harrison — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
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Every award, honor, and recognition received by Rex Harrison — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from Rex Harrison — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
There Is Always a Struggle, a Striving for Something Bigger Than Yourself in All Forms of Art. and Even If You Don’t Achieve Greatness, Even If You Fail, Which We All Must, Everything You Do in Your Work Is Somehow Connected with Your Attitude Toward Life, Your Deepest Secret Feelings.
Exhilaration Is That Feeling You Get Just After a Great Idea Hits You, and Just Before You Realize What’s Wrong with It.
When I Was Ten We Moved and I Decided That None of the Names I Was Then Called Reggie, Bobby, Baa Suited Me. Somehow I Hit on Rex. I Must Have Heard Someone Calling for Their Dog and Thought It Sounded Rather Nice.
Whatever It Is That Makes a Person Charming, It Needs to Remain a Mystery Once the Charmer Is Aware of a Mannerism or Characteristic That Others Find Charming, It Ceases to Be a Mannerism and Becomes an Affectation. and Good Lord, There Is Nothing Less Charming Than Affectations!
It Takes a Long Time to Learn to Treat the Camera as a Friend and Confidant, Which Finally You Have to Do If You’re to Become a Good Film Actor.
Wives Are Like Gilt Edged Stocks. the More You Have, the Greater Your Dividends.
The Important Thing Is to Learn Through Experience. the More You Do the More You Learn. I Don’t Think Anyone Can Teach Acting from a Podium.
My Contract for ‘My Fair Lady’ Was for Nine Months Only but How Could You Leave a Show Like That? It Was All Far Too Exciting, and I Stayed with It for Two Years.
Originally I Had a Block About Appearing in a Musical. I Went to a Voice Teacher for a While, but That Did No Good. My Range Is About One and a Half Notes. I Ended up Talking the Musical Numbers, Which Was Revolutionary at the Time. the Lyrics Are Extremely Intricate. They Move Along Like a Precisely Acted Scene. If You Miss a Word Heaven Help You the Orchestra Rattles Past Like an Express Train, and You’ve Got to Run Like the Devil to Catch Up.
His Reply to How He Felt Being Knighted by the Queen on July 25Th 1989: It Was a Marvelous Moment Kneeling There and Getting Tapped on the Shoulder.
Lana Turner Is to an Evening Gown What Frank Lloyd Wright Is to a Pile of Lumber.
Little-known facts about Rex Harrison — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Frank Sinatra received a punch to the jaw from Harrison, who mistakenly thought the singer was pursuing his wife Lilli Palmer; the two later became good friends.
Harrison gained a reputation for abruptness with fans. After a performance of My Fair Lady, he told an elderly woman asking for an autograph to Sod off, and she struck him with her program. Co-star Stanley Holloway then quipped that the fan had hit the shit.
Carole Landis’s body was discovered by Harrison the day she committed suicide; he had dined with her the previous night.
When accepting his Academy Award for My Fair Lady 1964, Harrison dedicated it to his two fair ladies, Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews.
A childhood bout of measles left Harrison almost completely blind in one eye.
Harrison was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at age 81, and stated that he considered his best film performance to be Julius Caesar in Cleopatra 1963, not Henry Higgins.
Composer Frederick Loewe and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner reworked Professor Higgins’s numbers into patter songs for Harrison, allowing him to speak the lyrics rather than sing.
Harrison was not well-liked by many fellow actors, who found him egocentric, abusive, and disagreeable.
The voice of Stewie Griffin on Family Guy 1999 is based on Harrison.
Producer Jack L. Warner worried that Harrison, in his mid-50s, was too old to play Henry Higgins in the film version of My Fair Lady 1964.
A ring with a dark square-cut stone appeared on Harrison’s left little finger in almost all his films.
Chuck Jones stated that Bugs Bunny’s character was based on an amalgam of Rex Harrison, Dorothy Parker, and D’Artagnan.
Harrison was fanatical about wine and often sent bottles back if they were not to his liking, sometimes even from his own cellar.
Harrison was cremated, and part of his ashes were scattered in Portofino, Italy, and on the grave of his second wife, Lilli Palmer.
Harrison was entirely self-taught and never took acting lessons.
He demanded that no supporting cast member upstage him in Doctor Dolittle 1967 and refused to allow Sammy Davis Jr. to be cast for that reason.
With Lilli Palmer, Harrison fathered Carey Harrison in 1944.
Despite suffering from pancreatic cancer, painful teeth, and glaucoma in his only eye, Harrison continued acting on Broadway until nearly the end of his life.
Harrison is one of only nine actors to win both a Tony and an Oscar for the same role, for My Fair Lady 1964.
He was created a Knight Bachelor in the 1989 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to drama.
Harrison turned down the role of the King in The King and I 1956 which went to Yul Brynner, having previously played the role in the non-musical Anna and the King of Siam 1946.
His brother-in-law was David Maxwell Fyfe, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials and later British Home Secretary.
His divorce from Elizabeth Harris was granted on grounds of his unreasonable behavior.
Harrison died three weeks after his final stage appearance as Lord Porteous in The Circle 1990.
With Collette Thomas, Harrison fathered Noel Harrison.
He made several anti-Semitic remarks to his Doctor Dolittle 1967 co-star Anthony Newley.
Harrison hated the nickname Sexy Rexy given to him by the press.
He won three Tony Awards: in 1949 for Anne of the Thousand Days, in 1957 for My Fair Lady, and a Special Tony Award in 1969.
Harrison served as a jury member at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965.
Accounts claim Harrison treated Audrey Hepburn poorly during filming of My Fair Lady, with one arranger describing him as the most appalling person he had worked with.
Harrison was often described by those who knew him as cold, selfish, arrogant, snobbish, and xenophobic.
The name Rex is Latin for king, which Harrison knew when he chose it.
My Fair Lady 1964 has been selected for the National Film Registry as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Harrison appeared twice with Claudette Colbert on Broadway: in The Kingfisher 1978 and Aren’t We All 1985.
He was the grandfather of Cathryn, Harriet, Simon, Chloe, and Will Harrison.
A memorial service for Harrison was held at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London on September 12, 1990.
Harrison took singing lessons for My Fair Lady on Broadway but after three lessons realized he could not sing; a conductor then taught him to talk on pitch.
His son Noel Harrison was an alpine skier in the 1952 Olympics.
On his deathbed, Harrison told his sons Noel and Carey that he couldn’t stand them.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Rex Harrison.
Celebrities similar to Rex Harrison — same craft, ranked by reach.
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