The co-star Kirk Douglas hated at first sight: “Are you as big a bastard as they say you are?”
Actors have always been very protective of their spot, and when an established name is paired up with a rising star, there’s always the chance that things will go off the rails. Kirk Douglas wasn’t usually known for his pettiness, but he went blow-for-blow with a cocksure co-star he hated at first sight.
By the mid-1960s, Douglas’ credentials were more than solidified. He was one of the most important leading men of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ for reasons that went far beyond the four corners of the silver screen, with his offscreen endeavours leaving behind a monumental impact on the industry.
Not only was he a three-time ‘Best Actor’ nominee at the Academy Awards, but he was one of the first big-name actors to found their own production company and seize control of his own destiny, operating under the ‘one for them, one for me’ mindset that’s since become commonplace among Tinseltown’s heaviest hitters.
He’d also starred in several classic pictures and was instrumental in ending the communist blacklist, so what, or who, did he have to be worried about? From the second that they locked eyes after being cast in Anthony Mann’s 1965 war film, The Heroes of Telemark, it became clear that the answer was Richard Harris.
The Irishman was almost 25 years Douglas’ junior, and he represented a new breed of actor. Harris was part of the notorious hell-raising set who all cut their teeth in British theatre before trying their luck in America, and it didn’t take him long to make a splash when he notched his first Oscar nod for 1963’s This Sporting Life. He didn’t give a fuck who he pissed off, and he didn’t waste any time doing it, either.
The pair’s co-star, David Weston, recalled that things were sour between the two leads from the beginning. “Douglas went straight up to Harris and looked him in the eyes. The first thing he said was, ‘Are you going to be as difficult as they say you are?'” he told The Telegraph. “Harris didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Are you going to be as big a bastard as they say you are?’ he responded. That was how it all began.”
From there, the dick-measuring only intensified. When Douglas quizzically asked what kind of boat was looming over the horizon before their first scene of the day together, Harris offered a helpful answer: “A fucking aircraft carrier. In America, they’re twice that size. They’re twice that size because they have to carry twice the amount of shite,” which didn’t go down well with his opposite number, who spent four years serving in the navy during World War II.
When they were resetting a shot on the open water, which saw Douglas dangling over the choppy seas of the English Channel, Harris whispered to Weston that maybe they should let go of the safety rope and “let the fucker drown,” and the latter had no idea if he was joking or not. Needless to say, they didn’t part as friends, and it’s a minor miracle the shoot went off without a hitch, based on the sheer animosity between them.
