Ed Harris

Ed Harris

Harris at the premiere of A History of Violence at the Toronto International Film Festival, 2005
Born Edward Allen Harris
November 28, 1950 (1950-11-28) (age 60)
Englewood, New Jersey,
United States.
Occupation Actor, director, screenwriter
Years active 1976–present
Spouse Amy Madigan (1983-present)

Edward Allen "Ed" Harris (born November 28, 1950) is an American actor, writer and director, known for his performances in Appaloosa, Creepshow, The Rock, The Right Stuff, Enemy at the Gates, The Abyss, Glengarry Glen Ross, Apollo 13, Pollock, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, The Hours, Milk Money, and The Truman Show. Harris has also narrated commercials for The Home Depot and other companies.

Contents

Early and personal life

Harris was born in Englewood, New Jersey and raised in Tenafly,[1] the son of Margaret, a travel agent, and Robert L. Harris, who sang with the Fred Waring chorus and worked at the bookstore of the Art Institute of Chicago.[2] He has an older brother, Robert, and a younger brother, Spencer. Harris was raised in a middle-class Presbyterian family.[3][4][5] He graduated from Tenafly High School in 1969, where he played on the football team, serving as the team's captain in his senior year.[6][7] He was a star athlete in high school and competed in athletics at Columbia University in 1969. Two years later his family moved to New Mexico and he followed after having discovered his interest in acting in various theater plays. He enrolled at the University of Oklahoma to study drama. After several successful roles in the local theater, he moved to Los Angeles, California, and enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts.

Harris's wife is actress Amy Madigan. The couple married on November 21, 1983 while they were filming Places in the Heart in which they played an adulterous couple. They have a daughter named Lily Dolores Harris, born on May 3, 1993.

Career

Harris's first important film role was in Borderline with Charles Bronson. In Knightriders he played the king of a motorcycle-riding renaissance-fair troupe in a role modeled after King Arthur.

In 1983, the actor became a star, playing astronaut John Glenn in The Right Stuff. Twelve years later, a film with a similar theme led to Harris being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of NASA mission director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13.

Further Oscar nominations arrived in 1999, 2001 and 2003, for The Truman Show, Pollock and The Hours, respectively. He also portrayed a German sniper, Major Erwin König, in Enemy at the Gates. More recently, he appeared as a vengeful mobster in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence and as a police officer alongside Casey Affleck and Morgan Freeman in Gone, Baby, Gone, directed by Ben Affleck. In 2007, he appeared in National Treasure: Book of Secrets as Mitch Wilkinson.

Along with theatrical films, he has starred in television adaptations of Riders of the Purple Sage (1996) and Empire Falls (2005).

Harris made his cinema directing debut in 2000 with Pollock, in which he starred as the acclaimed American artist Jackson Pollock. He also has portrayed such diverse real-life characters as William Walker, a 19th Century American who appointed himself president of Nicaragua, in the film Walker; Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt in the Oliver Stone biopic Nixon and composer Ludwig van Beethoven in the film Copying Beethoven.

Harris has directed a number of theater productions as well as having an active stage acting career. Most notably, he starred in the production of Neil LaBute's one-man play Wrecks at the Public Theater in New York City. Wrecks premiered at the Everyman Theater in Cork, Ireland and then in the US at the Public Theater in New York.

Currently, Harris and wife Amy Madigan are starring together in Ash Adams' upcoming indie crime drama Once Fallen, alongside Brian Presley, Sharon Gless, Adams himself, and a large all-star cast. It is set for release in 2010.

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

Emmy Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Film awards

Television awards

London Film Critics Circle

National Board of Review

National Society of Film Critics

Online Film Critics Society

Phoenix Film Critics Society

San Francisco International Film Festival

Satellite Awards

Film awards

Television awards

Screen Actors Guild

Film awards

Television awards

Filmography

References

  1. ↑ "Ed Harris". Inside the Actors Studio. Bravo. ; can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWQVpomxuW8&feature=related
  2. ↑ Ed Harris Biography - Yahoo! Movies
  3. ↑ Stein, Ruthe (2000-01-09). "Ed Harris Has the Righteous Stuff, Too: Actor plays a particularly convincing priest in `The Third Miracle'". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/09/PK101712.DTL. Retrieved 2007-12-10. 
  4. ↑ Pearlman, Cindy (2000-02-06). "Love the sinner: Harris repents for `money' roles". Chicago Sun-Times. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=CSTB&p_theme=cstb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB424609562EF70&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM. Retrieved 2007-12-10. 
  5. ↑ Ed Harris Biography
  6. ↑ Rohan, Virginia. "North Jersey-bred and talented too", The Record (Bergen County), June 18, 2007. Accessed June 25, 2007. "Ed Harris: Class of 1969, Tenafly High School"
  7. ↑ Stein, Ruthe. They're Ready For Their Close-Ups: Camped out at Oscars, the starstruck wait to sneak a peek, San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 2001. Accessed May 31, 2007. "She's hoping to score a seat near the front and catch the eye of Oscar nominee Ed Harris, who went to Tenafly High School in New Jersey with her mother."
  8. ↑ AWARDS | OWENS AWARD | San Francisco Film Festival
  9. ↑ A Flash of Green | San Francisco Film Festival

External links

Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play

Anthony Hopkins (1975) · John Wood (1976) · Al Pacino (1977) · Barnard Hughes (1978) · Philip Anglim (1979) · John Rubinstein (1980) · Ian McKellen (1981) · Christopher Plummer (1982) · Harvey Fierstein (1983) · Dustin Hoffman (1984) · John Lithgow (1985) · Ed Harris (1986) · James Earl Jones (1987) · Ron Silver (1988) · Philip Bosco (1989) · Nathan Lane (1990) · Ron Rifkin (1991) · Brian Bedford (1992) · Ron Leibman (1993) · Brian Bedford (1994) · Ralph Fiennes (1995) · Frank Langella (1996) · David Morse / Christopher Plummer (1997) · Anthony LaPaglia (1998) · Brian Dennehy (1999) · Stephen Dillane (2000)

 · (1975-2000) · (2001-present)
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture

John Gielgud (1981) · Louis Gossett, Jr. (1982) · Jack Nicholson (1983) · Haing S. Ngor (1984) · Klaus Maria Brandauer (1985) · Tom Berenger (1986) · Sean Connery (1987) · Martin Landau (1988) · Denzel Washington (1989) · Bruce Davison (1990) · Jack Palance (1991) · Gene Hackman (1992) · Tommy Lee Jones (1993) · Martin Landau (1994) · Brad Pitt (1995) · Edward Norton (1996) · Burt Reynolds (1997) · Ed Harris (1998) · Tom Cruise (1999) · Benicio del Toro (2000)

 · (1943–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001–present)
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

Martin Landau (1994) · Ed Harris (1995) · Cuba Gooding, Jr. (1996) · Robin Williams (1997) · Robert Duvall (1998) · Michael Caine (1999) · Albert Finney (2000)

 · (1994-2000) · (2001-present)