Actor Ed Harris
Four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris is often cast in the movies as a thoughtful tough guy with a steely stare.
Harris also earned an Oscar nomination for best actor for his performance as painter Jackson Pollock in the 2000 film Pollock, which also marked Harris’s debut as a director.
His hard features and intense blue eyes make Ed Harris an unlikely prospect for leading man roles, yet this award-winning stage and screen actor brings the requisite strength and conviction to the parts he plays.
Bio: Edward Allen “Ed” Harris is a four-time Academy Award-nominated American actor, director and producer.
A veteran character actor and sometime lead, his best-known early movies include The Right Stuff, Places in the Heart and The Abyss.
Harris is married to actress Amy Madigan, with whom he has worked many times, including in the films Places in the Heart, Alamo Bay, the TV movie Riders of the Purple Sage and Pollock.
The project served as a turning point in Harris’ remarkable career, showing audiences and critics alike that there was more to the man of tranquil intensity than many may have anticipated; Harris was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for his work.
Harris’s first important film role was in Borderline with Charles Bronson.
A dramatic actor known for onscreen intensity, he has received three nominations as a supporting actor, for Apollo 13, The Truman Show and The Hours.
Twelve years later, Harris would again enter the world of NASA, this time playing unsung hero Gene Krantz in Ron Howard ’s Apollo 13.
An veteran stage actor, he made his European debut in Ireland in 2006 with Neil LaBute’s Wrecks.
After several successful roles in the local theater, he moved to Los Angeles, California, and enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts.
He did further notable work in David Mamet ’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and turned in a suitably creepy performance as Christof, the manipulative creator of Truman Burbank’s world in Peter Weir ’s The Truman Show.
Edward Allen “Ed” Harris is a four-time Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning American actor, writer and director, known for his performances in The Rock, The Right Stuff, The Abyss, Glengarry Glen Ross, Apollo 13, Pollock, A Beautiful Mind, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and The Truman Show, among many others.
Further Oscar nominations arrived in 1999, 2001 and 2003, for The Truman Show, Pollock and The Hours, respectively.
Harris was born in Tenafly, New Jersey, 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.
One thing I learned about Mr. Pollock’s art, which any art student knows I’m sure, but was indeed a revelation to me, is that Jackson fully believed and lived by ‘don’t use the accident, because I deny the accident.’
Born Edward Allen Harris in Tenafly, NJ, on November 28, 1950, Harris was an athlete in high school and went on to spend two years playing football at Columbia University.
Harris earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work.
Spending years painting and researching the modernist painter, Harris carefully and lovingly oversaw all aspects of the film, including directing, producing, and starring in the title role.
