Born in St. Anthony, a small town in eastern Idaho, Bradford Harris attended UCLA in the early 1950s, where he played fullback on the football team while studying economics. His studies may have been intended as the groundwork for a career in his family's banking business, but Harris instead drifted into the fringes of Los Angeles' movie industry, and secured employment as a stunt man. In the late 1950s he traveled to Europe as the stunt co-ordinator for a German-Italian co-production. Soon he found himself working as a second-unit director, and that led to a starring role in Goliath contro i giganti (1961). His good looks and muscular build kept him in demand during the era of "sword and sandal" movies, and when this genre began to fade away, he moved into "spaghetti westerns" and a spate of action movies with an emphasis on spy thrillers. In 1967 he married actress Olga Schoberová .

At the Muscle Beach Bodybuilding Championship on September 3, 2001, Harris received a special achievement award along with other "Legends of Hercules" -- Mark Forest , Ed Fury , Mickey Hargitay , Richard Harrison , Reg Lewis , Peter Lupus and Gordon Mitchell .Father, with Olga Schoberová , of daughter, Sabrina Harris .