Sir Reginald Carey "Rex" Harrison (b. Liverpool March 5 1908 – June 2 1990) was an Oscar- and Tony Award-winning English theatre and film actor.
Harrison was born in Huyton, Knowsley, then part of Lancashire, and educated at Liverpool College. He first appeared on the stage in 1924 in Liverpool. He acted in various stage productions until 11 May 1990. He acted in the West End of London when he was young, appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, which proved to be his breakthrough role.
He continued to appear in London, in George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House, Pirandello's Enrico IV, and in 1984 he appeared at the Haymarket Theatre with Claudette Colbert in Frederick Lonsdale's Aren't We All?, and also on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre presented by Douglas Urbanski. He again appeared at the Haymarket in J. M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton with Edward Fox.
Harrison was best known for his portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, especially after he reprised the role in the 1964 film version, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar. The 1956 cast album set sales records at the time.
He revived the role on stage in the early 1980s. He also starred in 1967's Doctor Dolittle. Harrison could not sing well; thus, the music was generally written to allow for long periods of recitative, generally identified as "speaking to the music". Although Harrison's acting was often described as limited, he attracted favourable notices for his portrayal of Julius Caesar in Cleopatra (1963) and as Pope Julius II in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), opposite Charlton Heston as Michelangelo.
Harrison was married six times. In 1942 he divorced his first wife, Colette Thomas, and married actress Lilli Palmer the next year; the two later appeared in numerous plays and films. After several years in film, he achieved wide acclaim starring in the adaptation of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (1945). He followed that with his first major American film, starring as King Mongkut in Anna and the King of Siam.
Harrison's affair with young actress Carole Landis, which is suspected to have played some part in her suicide, caused a scandal but failed to derail his career. Harrison and Palmer divorced in 1957. He soon remarried, to actress Kay Kendall. According to Palmer, Harrison requested a divorce to marry Kendall because he knew that she was dying from leukaemia. After Kendall's untimely death, it was rumoured that he tried unsuccessfully to reconcile with Lilli.
He was later married to Welsh-born Rachel Roberts, who later, like Landis, committed suicide by taking sleeping pills; to Elizabeth Rees-Williams (the first wife of Irish actor Richard Harris); and to Mercia Tinker, who would become his widow in 1990.