Harry Potter’s Dumbledore Basically Got Hit with the Memory Charm Once

The late Richard Harris first came to prominence in the 1960s, but he gained a whole new generation of fans in the early 2000s, just a few years before his death, when he landed the role of Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies.

Once upon a time, something rather magical happened to Harris in real life. According to the book Hellraisers by Robert Sellers, in 1999, the Irish actor came across an old photo of himself standing next to a Rolls-Royce, but he didn’t remember owning this car or taking a photo with anyone else’s. The incident confused the star so much that he went on a mission to find out whose car it was.

Harris even called his two ex-wives, Elizabeth Rees-Williams and Ann Turkel, to inquire about the photo, but they were unable to provide him with any information. Finally, he asked his accountant about it, and to his surprise, he knew all about the luxury car.

The accountant confirmed that Harris had owned a Rolls-Royce and that it had been parked in a garage in New York for the past 25 years (since about 1974). As it turned out, the actor had received the car as a part of his payment for acting in 1965’s The Heroes of Telemark.

The parking fee was about $400 a month, and over the years, Richard’s total bill amounted to over $92,000. Imagine paying that all at once…

Harris was quite the drinker, so one night he just got so hammered that he parked the Rolls-Royce in a garage and forgot about it for a couple of decades. Honestly, we should all strive to be so rich that losing one luxury car wouldn’t be an issue worth remembering!

Once Richard finally got to the bottom of what happened, he sold the car reportedly because he didn’t want to drive such a posh vehicle “like Michael Caine.”

And that’s the story of how Richard Harris basically got hit with Obliviate. Now who’s to say that he wasn’t the one and only true Dumbledore?