King Richard is tipped for Oscar crown

RICHARD Harris is tipped to be honoured at the Oscars in six month's time for one of his final film roles.

After two nominations at the award ceremony, Harris is now set to win his first Oscar for his acclaimed role in My Kingdom, a gritty and emotional thriller based on King Lear.

The Shakespearean play is thrown into the troublesome ganglands of modern day Liverpool and stars Harris as Sandeman, an aging and embittered gangster whose criminal empire falls into ruin after he passes it on to his feuding daughters.

Before his death, Harris returned to his role as Prof Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but it is My Kingdom that is being described as his last great major role.

The movie's producers have been showing tremendous confidence in the strength of the actor's performance by arranging a week of screenings in Los Angeles early next month ahead of its general release in America next February.

The audience for these screenings will be the members of the Hollywood Press Association, the influential group of critics that decides the nominations for the Golden Globes, which traditionally act as an early indication of the nominations for the Oscars.

Harris's nomination would serve as a fitting epitaph for the charismatic entertainer "who often cited King Lear as the role he most liked to play", according to Don Boyd, the director of My Kingdom.

Boyd said: "Richard told me he had had seven false starts with Lear, on stage and screen.

"In some ways, I think it was a valediction for him.

"It's as great a performance as he's ever given, and the last scene has a poignancy that comes from a character who realises he is reaching the end of his life.

"If he won an Oscar for My Kingdom, I'd be thrilled. He deserves it.

"It would be a fitting tribute to one of the great screen actors of his generation."

The man from Limerick was nominated for his roles in Lindsay Anderson's classic rugby drama This Sporting Life in 1963 and The Field in 1990.

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