Detailed Biography

Edward Allen "Ed" Harris 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, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, The Hours, Milk Money, and The Truman Show, among many others.

Early and personal life

Harris was born in Englewood, New Jersey and raised in Tenafly, 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. He has an older brother, Robert, and a younger brother, Spencer. Harris was raised in a middle-class Presbyterian family. 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. 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 has been married to actress Amy Madigan since 1983. 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. 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 and Empire Falls .

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 Richard 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 2009.

Protests

Harris, along with good friend Nick Nolte and many others at the 71st Academy Awards, refused to stand up or applaud when Elia Kazan, who had informed on fellow filmmakers during the McCarthy Era, received his Lifetime Achievement award.

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