Richard Harris, one of the great screen and stage stars of his generation, died last night in a London hospital.

The 72-year-old actor had been receiving treatment for Hodgkin's Disease after falling ill earlier this year.

Screen veteran Harris, who underwent chemotherapy, appears in the new Harry Potter film out next month.

The Irish-born actor, who starred in Gladiator, Unforgiven, and This Sporting Life, had become known to a new generation of film fans through his role as Professor Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. He had just completed work on the new film, Chamber of Secrets, before falling ill this summer.

Harris, trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, built a reputation for his commanding presence on stage and screen.

But he also became notorious with his off-screen antics with a legendary drinking.

Harris, who seemed to revel in his reputation as a hell-raiser, starred in some of the classic films of his generation, including A Man Called Horse, The Guns of Navarone and Mutiny on the Bounty, but was prone to fill newspaper columns with his wild ways and hard-drinking exploits.

He was twice bankrupted, divorced, and underwent an acting resurrection in the early 1980s, when told he had only 18 months to live if he did not stop drinking.

Harris responded by buying the rights to the stage production of Camelot and toured the world with it for five years, becoming a multi-millionaire in the process.