Background

Ed Harris was born on November 28, 1950, in Englewood, New Jersey, United States, and was reared in Tenafly, New Jersey, United States. He is a son of Margaret (Sholl) Harris, a travel agent, and Robert L. "Bob" Harris, an actor, a member of the Ray Charles Singers, who also worked at the bookstore of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ed has two brothers - Paul and Robert.

Education

In his early years, Ed attended Tenafly High School, the educational establishment, which he finished in 1969. While at the school, he played on the football team and served as the team's captain in his senior year.

In 1969, Harris enrolled at Columbia University in New York City, where, the same year, he competed in athletics. While at the university, he played football for two years until he became interested in acting. Ed left the educational establishment in 1971, when his family moved to New Mexico. Having discovered his interest in acting in various theater plays, Ed entered the University of Oklahoma to study drama the same year. He remained at the university until 1973.

After several successful performances in local theaters, such as the Jewel Box Theater in Oklahoma City, Ed left for Los Angeles and entered the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1975.

It's worth noting, that, in 2003, Ed received an honorary degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Later, on May 17, 2015, Harris received an honorary degree from Muhlenberg College.

Career

Ed began his career performing on the stage. In 1976, he assumed the role of an FBI agent in the world premiere of Thomas Rickman's play, "Baalam", at the Pasadena Repertory Theatre, situated at the historic Hotel Carver. He then appeared as Lot in the West Coast premiere of Tennessee Williams's play, "Kingdom of Earth", (also known as "The Seven Descents of Myrtle").

From the mid-1970's to the mid 1980's, Ed appeared on television. He had roles in "Gibbsville" (1975), "Delvecchio" (1977), "The Rockford Files" (1978), "David Cassidy: Man Undercover" (1978), "The Seekers" (1979), "Barnaby Jones" (1979), "Paris" (1980), "American Playhouse" (1984) and other television series.

It was in 1978, that Ed made his film debut with a small part in Michael Crichton's Coma, but his first leading role came three years later in George A. Romero's "Knightriders" (1981), about a band of itinerant motorcycle jousters.

Later, Harris left for New York City to join the Circle Repertory Company, making his Off-Broadway debut in 1983 in Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love"; he won the Obie Award for his performance. That same year, he achieved broad recognition and critical praise for his role as astronaut John Glenn in "The Right Stuff" (1983), the story of the Mercury space program, based on Tom Wolfe's book of the same name. In 1986, Harris made his Broadway debut in a production of George Furth's "Precious Sons" and was nominated for the Tony Award.

Throughout the late 1980's and 1990's, Harris worked primarily in film. He starred as a deep-sea drill operator in the science-fiction thriller "The Abyss" (1989), appeared alongside Tom Hanks as flight director Gene Kranz in "Apollo 13" (1995) and played the United States President Richard Nixon's aide E. Howard Hunt in Oliver Stone's "Nixon" (1995). In 1998, Harris starred in "The Truman Show", for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Two years later, he starred in and made his directorial debut with "Pollock". His performance resulted in an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

Ed assumed roles in a number of critically acclaimed films in the 2000's, including "A Beautiful Mind" (2001), about the mathematician John F. Nash; "The Hours" (2002), in which Harris played a writer, dying of AIDS; and "A History of Violence" (2005), the film, that portrayed a small-town family man, attempting to escape his criminal past. He also headlined the cast of "Empire Falls" (2005), a television miniseries, based on a novel by Richard Russo. His subsequent movies included "Gone Baby Gone" (2007), "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" (2007) and "Appaloosa" (2008), which he also directed.

In 2010, Ed collaborated with "The Truman Show" director, Peter Weir, on "The Way Back", about a group of men, who escape from a Siberian Gulag camp during World War II. He then appeared in the drama "Virginia" (2010), in the thriller "Man on a Ledge" (2012) and as Senator John McCain in the HBO movie "Game Change" (2012), which dramatized the final months of the 2008 United States presidential race from the McCain campaign's perspective. In the Cold War thriller "Phantom" (2013) Harris performed as a Soviet submarine captain, suffering from hallucinatory seizures, and in the action caper "Pain & Gain" (2013) he portrayed a private investigator.

Ed's other films from 2013 included the sci-fi drama "Gravity", in which he provided the voice of mission control, and "Snowpiercer", a dystopian thriller, in which he portrayed the inventor of a train, carrying the last surviving humans. Harris then played a former sheriff, whose wife is accidentally killed, in the drama "Frontera" (2014) and a Brooklyn crime boss, intent on eliminating a former henchman (Liam Neeson), in the action-packed "Run All Night" (2015).

Harris's later notable credits included the HBO television series "Westworld" (the first series of which was released in 2016), a sci-fi thriller about a theme park, featuring humanlike robots. He also starred in James Franco's "In Dubious Battle" (2016), an adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel about a farmworkers' strike in the 1930's.

In 2017, Harris appeared in "Mother!", assuming the role of a character, simply called Man, who, with his wife, disrupts the solitude of a married couple, living in a secluded mansion, and as the United States secretary of state in the science-fiction disaster movie "Geostorm". Two years later, in 2019, Harris returned to Broadway, portraying Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird", an adaptation of Harper Lee's acclaimed novel.

Achievements

• Ed Harris is a well-known actor, producer, director and screenwriter. By transforming into his characters and pulling the audience in, he has earned a reputation as one of the most talented actors of his time. The movies, that earned him critical acclaim, include "Apollo 13" (1995), "The Truman Show" (1998), "Pollock" (2000) and "The Hours" (2002). Other movies Ed had a lead or supporting roles in include "The Right Stuff" (1983), "The Abyss" (1989), "State of Grace" (1990), "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992), "Nixon" (1995), "The Rock" (1996), "Stepmom" (1998), "A Beautiful Mind" (2001), "Enemy at the Gates" (2001), "A History of Violence" (2005), "Gone Baby Gone" (2007), "Snowpiercer" (2013) and "Mother!" (2017).
  
  As for television, Harris gained prominence for his roles in the miniseries "Empire Falls" (2005) and the television movie "Game Change" (2012).
  
  Ed received a number of awards, including the Golden Globe Award, the Saturn Award, the Awards Circuit Community Award, the Blockbuster Entertainment Award, the Camie Award, the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film, the Screen Actors Guild Award and others.
  
  In addition, Harris received nominations for many awards, the most notable of which include the Academy Award nomination, the Golden Globe Award nomination, the Primetime Emmy Award nomination, the BAFTA Award nomination and many others.
  
  In 2001, Ed was named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in the World.
  
  On March 13, 2015, Ed was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with one star.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Knightriders

    (A medieval reenactment troupe find it increasingly diffic...)

    1981
  • Virginia

    (A sheriff sees his state senate bid slide out onto the ic...)

    2010
  • The Rock

    (A mild-mannered chemist and an ex-con must lead the count...)

    1996
  • Apollo 13

    (NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth ...)

    1995
  • Just Cause

    (A Harvard professor is lured back into the courtroom afte...)

    1995
  • Man on a Ledge

    (As a police psychologist works to talk down an ex-con, wh...)

    2012
  • Needful Things

    (A mysterious new shop opens in a small town, which always...)

    1993
  • Nixon

    (A biographical story of former United States President Ri...)

    1995
  • Appaloosa

    (Two friends, hired to police a small town, that is suffer...)

    2008
  • Resistance

    (The story of a group of Jewish Boy Scouts, who worked wit...)

    2020
  • Places In The Heart

    (In central Texas in the 1930's, a widow, with two small c...)

    1984
  • Gone Baby Gone

    (Two Boston area detectives investigate a little girl's ki...)

    2007
  • Absolute Power

    (Career thief Luther Whitney (Clint Eastwood) witnesses a ...)

    1997
  • A Beautiful Mind

    (After John Nash, a brilliant, but asocial mathematician, ...)

    2001
  • The Abyss

    (A civilian diving team is enlisted to search for a lost n...)

    1989
  • Coma

    (When a young female doctor notices an unnatural amount of...)

    1978
  • Sweet Dreams

    (The story of Patsy Cline, the velvet-voiced country music...)

    1985
  • Swing Shift

    (A woman finds romance, when she takes a job at an aircraf...)

    1984
  • Mother!

    (A couple's relationship is tested, when uninvited guests ...)

    2017
  • Jacknife

    (Jacknife is a captivating drama about one Vietnam veteran...)

    1989
  • The Right Stuff

    (The story of the original Mercury 7 astronauts and their ...)

    1983
  • State of Grace

    (A New York cop is recruited to return to his hometown and...)

    1990
  • The Firm

    (A young lawyer joins a prestigious law firm only to disco...)

    1993
  • Enemy At The Gates

    (A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mous...)

    2001
  • Gravity

    (Two astronauts work together to survive after an accident...)

    2013
  • The Truman Show

    (An insurance salesman discovers his whole life is actuall...)

    1998
  • Pollock

    (A film about the life and career of the American painter,...)

    2000
  • Copying Beethoven

    (A fictionalized account of the last year of Beethoven's l...)

    2006

Religion

Harris was raised in a middle-class Presbyterian family.

Views

Quotations: "One of the first things I learned about acting was the only person you compete against is yourself."

"I think most people, that are looked upon as doing something daring, don't necessarily think of it that way - they do what they have to do."

"You have to be willing to expose yourself, at least to yourself, to get to some kind of truth about a character."

"Seeing what happens, when you rip yourself open, is what your job is all about."

"You can't betray yourself too often, or you become somebody else."

"If I started worrying about how my constituents are going to react to every move I make, I wouldn't be able to do my job here. I'll do what I think is right and explain it later."

"We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented."

"Hippy, you think everything is a conspiracy. Everything is!"

"I was concerned about filling my life up with something important to me. To me, it was just necessary."

"I like to act with people, that know what they're doing."

"A lot of films come out before they're finished."

"I'm not an activist per se, but I have strong feelings about things. People can jump on celebrities for being ill-informed or naive, but I've got a right to say what I believe."

"I chose films, made by people I wanted to work with, about subject matter I thought was intriguing."

"I made career decisions, that came from the part of me, who wanted to shun the limelight."

"I can make a damn pork chop. My best dish is actually lasagna, which I do a couple times a year. My wife wishes I cooked a little bit more often, but I can put a frozen pizza in the oven and I make a good salad."

"You look at a guy like Lance Armstrong and you have to be inspired. I sat next to Kirk Douglas the other day, and he's inspiring for fighting through his stroke."

"I have a tight family group, that's really important to me. I don't want to work all the time."

Membership

Ed was a member of the Screen Actors Guild until it was dissolved in 2012. On March 20, 2012, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists merged to form a new union, the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). Ed, together with others, including Edward Asner, Martin Sheen, Valerie Harper, Michael Bell and Wendy Schaal, were opposed to the merger and sued Ken Howard, President of the Screen Actors Guild and several Vice Presidents of the union, seeking to have the merger undone. However, they failed to do that. The lawsuit was dismissed on May 22, 2012.

Also, he is a member of Equity, the trade union for theatre directors, fight directors, choreographers, set designers, costume designers, lighting designers, actors, stage managers, singers, models, performers and other creative workers in the United Kingdom.

• trustee

  California Institute of the Arts , United States

  1985

Personality

Ed used to be a shy person in his early years - he credits acting for helping him to get over his shyness. Despite his charisma, Ed considers himself anything, but a movie star.

Owing to his intense sexuality, Harris has been dubbed "the thinking woman's sex symbol".

To learn how to paint in Jackson Pollock's style and portray his art in the film "Pollock" (2000), Ed had a studio, built on his property, and spent some time, painting and working on Pollock's pieces.

Ed is a huge fan of "Father Ted" tv-series (1995-1998).

Physical Characteristics: Ed possesses chiselled features and piercing blue eyes.

Quotes from others about the person

• It's difficult not to have chemistry with Ed Harris. It's his walk, his voice, his mouth, his face, his intensity - he's a man." - Marcia Gay Harden, an actress

Interests

• Writers

  John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"

• Sport & Clubs

  American football and baseball

Connections

Ed married actress Amy Madigan on November 21, 1983, while they were filming "Places in the Heart" together. Their marriage produced one daughter, Lily Dolores Harris.

Father:

Robert L. "Bob" Harris

Robert L. "Bob" Harris was an actor, a member of the Ray Charles Singers, who also worked at the bookstore of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was Robert, who suggested his son, Ed Harris, make "Pollock", the acclaimed biopic about the American painter.

Robert passed away in 2014.

Mother:

Margaret (Sholl) Harris

Margaret (Sholl) Harris is a former travel agent.

Brother:

Paul Harris

Brother:

Robert Harris

Wife:

Amy Madigan

Amy Madigan is an American actress, producer and singer. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1985 film "Twice in a Lifetime".

Daughter:

Lily Dolores Harris

Lily Dolores Harris, born on May 3, 1993, is an actress.

Friend:

Fred Ward

Fred Ward is an American character actor, producer and model.

colleague:

Javier Bardem

Javier Bardem is a Spanish actor and environmental activist.

colleague:

Michelle Pfeiffer

Michelle Pfeiffer is an American actress and producer. She has received many accolades, including the Golden Globe Award and three nominations for Academy Award.

colleague:

Domhnall Gleeson

Domhnall Gleeson is an Irish actor. He has also worked as a voice actor, screenwriter and short film director.

colleague:

Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman is an American actor and film narrator.