Richard Harris was always on ‘good behaviour’ with his children

Richard Harris was always on his best behaviour during school holidays because he wanted to be “present” with his kids.

The late acting legend was a notorious hellraiser and his drinking prowess was the talk of Hollywood, but his son Jared Harris has insisted the screen star always toned it down in front of his three sons following his divorce from their mother Elizabeth Rees-Williams.

Jared told the Big Issue magazine: “Growing up, my two brothers and I were the one constant, because my parents were divorced. So we would move from one to the other over the holidays.

“My father loved kids. He loved the anarchy of children. He was incredibly indulgent as a parent. My mother was much stricter with us. He was very accepting and very open minded and incredibly generous.”

Jared went on to explain 'Camelot' star Richard was never “getting hammered” when he was supposed to be spending time with his kids.

He added: “We weren’t with him that often. He had two weeks during the Easter and Christmas holidays and over weeks over the summer.

“He would try hard to make sure that his filming schedule didn’t happen at the same time as the holidays. But you can’t always control that.

“But he was on good behaviour during those holidays, because he wasn’t running off with his mates and getting hammered, he wanted to be present with us.”

Jared’s brother Jamie is also an actor while Damian went into directing.

Jared previously admitted he believed his father played up his hellraiser reputation as a ruse to generate publicity for his films.

He told The Guardian: “[I’m always asked] the ‘hell-raiser’ question – whenever I do interviews and they ask about my dad, they never get past that.

“He did it to himself because he promoted that image in newspapers to get column inches for the projects he was on.

“But I wanted to explode that particular myth and get to who he really was. To be honest, he didn’t want you to figure him out.

“I remember one time we were having an argument and he said, ‘Don’t psychoanalyse me! You're not smart enough!’ He didn’t want the mystery discovered.”