Departures of note

Richard Harrison was an American actor who built a prolific career in European B-movies after leaving Hollywood for Italy in the early 1960s. Born in Salt Lake City, he moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and studied acting before signing a three-film deal with American International Pictures that took him to Italy, where he remained for nearly three decades. He became a leading man in sword-and-sandal epics such as The Invincible Gladiator, Eurospy thrillers including Secret Agent Fireball, and spaghetti westerns such as Gunfight at Red Sands. He famously turned down the lead in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and recommended Clint Eastwood for the role, a decision he jokingly called his greatest contribution to cinema. In the 1970s and 1980s his career moved into lower-budget exploitation films shot around the world, including cult Filipino Z-movies and Hong Kong ninja films, and he also directed several pictures, among them the comedy western Two Brothers in Trinity. He later appeared in Lies of the Twins and died of natural causes in Los Angeles in September 2026 at age 90.