(Credits: Far Out / Jack de Nijs / City of Boston Archives / Columbia Pictures)

Actors and booze. For many years, they were a match made in heaven. Or hell, if you happened to be a publicist. With fame and fortune often comes excess and vice, and for a certain generation of performers, getting drunk and going wild was as important (if not more) than what they did on the stage or screen.

The peak of this practice was arguably in the 1950s and 1960s. The studio system that had closely monitored actors’ behaviour was now a thing of the past, so the stars were basically free to drink as much and raise as much hell as they wanted. Some stories of drunken mayhem were big tabloid stories at the time, while others lay hidden for decades, only to emerge once the perpetrators were no longer with us.

‘New Hollywood’ may have turned Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper into the poster boys for the American industry’s excess, but they couldn’t hold a candle to their peers from across the Atlantic. It was almost a requirement that the best British and Irish actors of the period caused chaos everywhere they went, so much so that Michael Caine wanted absolutely no part of it.

Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed embodied the spirit better than the rest. They’re all among the finest and most gifted performers of their era, but another thing they had in common was that all bets were off once they’d gotten a pint or ten down them.

Revel if you wish, scowl if you must, and for God’s sake, don’t try any of this at home as you enjoy the ten wildest tales of four men who counted alcohol among their closest friends.

The wildest stories from cinema’s ultimate hellraisers:

Richard Burton

Welsh actor and two-time husband of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, established himself in movies like Cleopatra, My Cousin Rachel, and Equus. He also made a name as a delinquent, regularly consuming quantities of alcohol so large that should have killed him several times over.

When filming the John le Carré adaptation The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Burton refused to use a substitute for whiskey, insisting that he would get the scene done in a handful of takes. In the end, it took 47 goes to nail the shot, and Burton drank a real whiskey in every single one of them.

Burton and Taylor’s marriage(s) meant that they could enable one another, especially when they were on set together. When Taylor visited her husband on the set of The Night of the Iguana, in Mexico, they routinely got through at least one bottle of tequila per day.

This culminated in a day where Burton downed 21 shots of the spirit in one go. Then, either emboldened by the drink or having killed off his last remaining sensible brain cell, Burton went for a swim. Why? To catch a shark, of course. Needless to say, he failed, which probably was the best outcome.

Liz and Dick made several movies together, including 1963’s The VIPs, where they prophetically played a married couple on the rocks. Aside from introducing a wider audience to Maggie Smith, the film has no lasting legacy apart from one tale of Burton’s incredible alcohol tolerance.

Allegedly, during a single day of filming, the actor put away half a gallon of cognac. Assuming a 25ml shot is one unit, that means Burton drank almost 76 units of alcohol of just cognac that day. Given that the NHS recommends an adult only consume 14 units a week, you can see why this might have been an issue.

Brought up by an alcoholic father, it was tragically apparent that Burton was going to follow in his footsteps. He died in 1984 at the age of just 58, after years of booze-related health issues, but not before doctors made one startling discovery about his body.

Three years before his death, Burton went under the knife for an operation. When examining his spine, the surgeon discovered that a lifetime of drinking had caused a layer of crystallised alcohol to form around the actor’s spine. A startling reminder of just how much damage liquid courage can do.

Richard Harris

Known for a variety of roles in movies and plays, including as Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films, Irish star Richard Harris was a fiend with a bottle in his hand. He was quoted as saying he enjoyed the days when he would go for one beer in London and wake up in another country. Usually behind bars. When drunk, he was known to wander into the road and attack passing cars with his fists. Doing this once is bad enough, but multiple times? It’s a miracle he wasn’t flattened.

Over his lengthy acting (and drinking) career, Harris would call several establishments his local. He once lived at the Savoy Hotel in London and would spend many evenings in the Twickenham area, close to the rugby stadium he adored.

In New York, he made regular appearances at Malachy’s, an Irish pub, where he would drink, fight, and then drink some more. At PJ Clarke’s, a gastropub more famous for its hamburgers, Harris established himself as a regular. Rumour has it that, upon his arrival, the bartender would automatically pour out Harris’ usual order – six double vodkas.

After his doctors gave him 18 months to live on his current course, Harris kicked his habit in the early 1980s. Well, sort of. The story goes that, to say goodbye to his beloved pastime, he went to a pub and ordered two bottles of Château Margaux 1947 wine. In 2024, one bottle would set you back an average of £1,544.

Harris made it to the age of 72, thanks in no small part to his decision to curtail his boozing. He would slowly ease drink back into his life, limiting himself to a pint of Guinness each evening before bed.

Peter O’Toole

With eight Oscar nods to his name for the likes of The Lion in Winter, Goodbye, Mr Chips, and Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O’Toole is tied for the most nominations in Academy history without a win. In the drinking Oscars, however, he’d win every time.

Stephen Fry, who worked with the actor a few times, once told a story about him. O’Toole apparently took a friend he’d drunkenly made in the pub to see a play. During the performance, he lent over and said, “you’ll like this, it’s the bit where I come in.” Upon realising his mistake, he leapt out of his seat and ran backstage.

Like all good drinkers, O’Toole was well-versed in staying up late into the night. Or at least, as late as pubs would let him. One night in Dublin, the Englishman encountered this issue when out on the town with fellow actor Peter Finch. Not to be deterred, he devised a solution.

When the bar tried to throw him and Finch out, O’Toole offered to buy the place so he could keep it open for as long as he wanted. He got as far as writing a cheque before returning sober the next day to rip it up.

Despite living the longest of the four hellraisers – he died in 2013 aged 81 – O’Toole’s health suffered massively as a result of his drinking. He nearly died several times in the 1970s, including from stomach cancer and a haematological disease.

The biggest impact that booze had on his life came in 1976. O’Toole underwent surgery to have most of his stomach and all of his pancreas removed. He depended on insulin injections for the rest of his life and undoubtedly suffered numerous other health problems as a result.

Oliver Reed

Famed as much for his drinking as any of his stage or screen appearances, Englishman Oliver Reed first made his name as a star of Hammer Horrors. His most notorious role was easily as Bill Sikes in Oliver!, but in real life, it was his boozing exploits that caught the most attention.

Rumour has it that, at the peak of his guzzling abilities, Reed once consumed over 100 pints of beer in a 24-hour period. This would have floored most people, but not Reed, who proceeded to do a handstand on the bar once he was done.

“You meet a better class of person in pubs,” Reed once said, attempting to justify his chosen lifestyle. It’s unclear whether or not those people would have said the same about him, though, as Reed had a habit of being a naughty boy while drunk.

He loved to shock people, which he would often do by whipping his penis out with no prior warning. The member came complete with a tattoo of a pair of bird’s talons, which was apparently the result of a lost bet. Reed’s nickname for his appendage? The ‘mighty mallet’. Oh dear.

Despite their hellish lifestyles, Reed was the only member of the gang to die directly as a result of alcohol. His death came in 1999, during a break from the filming of Gladiator. He was drinking in a pub in Malta when a group of soldiers entered, which was like a red rag to a bull.

Reed challenged his new friends to a drinking contest but became unwell part way through. After collapsing in the bar, he died en route to the hospital. Reed had apparently promised director Ridley Scott that he wouldn’t drink during the making of the movie, but unfortunately, the demon booze got his claws into him one final time.