Ed Harris

Ed Harris
Harris at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Edward Allen Harris (1950-11-28) November 28, 1950 Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Actor producer director screenwriter
Years active	1967–present
Spouse(s)	Amy Madigan (m. 1983)
Children	1

Edward Allen "Ed" Harris (born November 28, 1950) is an American actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. He is best known for his performances in films such as The Right Stuff (1983), The Abyss (1989), The Rock (1996), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Enemy at the Gates (2001), Radio (2003), A History of Violence (2005), and Gone Baby Gone (2007).

He is a three-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in Apollo 13 (1995), The Truman Show (1998), and The Hours (2002), along with an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for playing artist Jackson Pollock in his directorial debut Pollock (2000). He also won a Golden Globe Award for playing Senator John McCain in Game Change (2012).

Early life

Harris was born at the Englewood Hospital in Englewood, New Jersey, and was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey,^[1] the son of Margaret (née Sholl), a travel agent, and Robert Lee "Bob" Harris, who sang with the Fred Waring chorus and worked at the bookstore of the Art Institute of Chicago.^[2][3] He has an older brother, Robert, and a younger brother, Spencer. His parents were originally from Oklahoma.^[4] Harris was raised in a middle class Presbyterian family.^[5][6][7] 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.^[8][9]

A star athlete in high school,^[1] Harris competed in athletics at Columbia University in 1969.^[10] When his family moved to New Mexico two years later, Harris followed, having discovered his interest in acting in various theater plays. He enrolled at the University of Oklahoma to study drama.^[1] After several successful roles in local theaters, he moved to Los Angeles and enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts, where he spent two years and graduated with a BFA.^[1]

Career

Harris' first film role was in Borderline with Charles Bronson. In Knightriders (1981), he played the king of a motorcycle-riding renaissance-fair troupe in a role modeled after King Arthur. In 1983, Harris became well known after playing astronaut John Glenn in The Right Stuff.^[1] 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 flight director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13.^[1]

Harris at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival

Further Oscar nominations arrived in 1999, 2001, and 2003, for Gone Baby Gone (2007), directed by Ben Affleck. Also in 2007, he appeared in National Treasure: Book of Secrets as antagonist 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.^[1] To prepare for the role, he built a small studio in which to copy the painter's techniques. He also threw a chair at Marcia Gay Harden, who played Lee Krasner to get a stronger reaction from her; she later thanked him.^[10]

Harris has also 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, composer Ludwig van Beethoven in the film Copying Beethoven, and Senator John McCain in HBO's made-for-television drama Game Change.

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, and later at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles. For the L.A. production, he won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. He and wife, Amy Madigan, starred together in Ash Adams' independent crime drama Once Fallen, released in 2010.

Personal life

Harris married actress Amy Madigan on November 21, 1983, while they were filming Places in the Heart together. They have a daughter named Lily Dolores Harris (born May 3, 1993).^[11]

On March 20, 2012, the

• Ed Harris at the Internet Movie Database
• Ed Harris at the TCM Movie Database
• Ed Harris at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ed Harris at the Internet Off-Broadway Database

External links

References

Video games

Television

Film

Filmography

Harris has a reputation for being serious on the film set. He told a journalist in 2006: "I don't like bullshittin'... so, I guess that comes across as serious."^[10] He received an honorary degree from Muhlenberg College on May 17, 2015.

^[14] The lawsuit was dismissed on May 22, 2012.^[13][12]