Ed Harris Biography

Edward Allen "Ed" Harris (born November 28, 1950) is an American actor, writer, and director. He is best known for his performances in Pollock, Appaloosa, The Rock, The Abyss, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, Enemy at the Gates, The Right Stuff, Gone Baby Gone, Paris Trout, Jackknife, Empire Falls, and Game Change. Harris has also narrated commercials for Home Depot and other companies. He is a three-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in Apollo 13, The Truman Show, and The Hours, along with an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for his role in Pollock.

Early life

Harris was born in Englewood Hospital in Englewood, New Jersey, and was 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. His parents were originally from Oklahoma. 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, and enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts. He spent two years there, and graduated with a BFA.

Career

Harris's first important 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. 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.

Further Oscar nominations arrived in 1999, 2001, and 2003, for The Truman Show, Pollock, and The Hours, respectively. Harris also portrayed a German Army sniper, Major Erwin König, in Enemy at the Gates (2001). He appeared as a vengeful mobster in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005) and as a police officer alongside Casey Affleck and Morgan Freeman, in 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. He 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 LA production, he won the LA Drama Critics Circle Award. Wrecks premiered at the Everyman Theater in Cork, Ireland, and then in the US at the Public Theater in New York. Harris and wife Amy Madigan starred together in Ash Adams' indie crime drama Once Fallen, released in 2010.

Personal life

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

On 30 March 2012, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) completed a merger of equals to form a new union SAG-AFTRA. Harris, along with Edward Asner, Martin Sheen, Valerie Harper, Michael Bell, and Wendy Schall (to name a few) are adamantly opposed to such a merger and filed a lawsuit against SAG President Ken Howard and several SAG Vice Presidents seeking to have the merger overturned and the two unions separated to their pre-merger organizations. The lawsuit was dismissed on May 22, 2012.

Filmography

Film and television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1978	The Rockford Files	Officer Rudy Kempner
1978	Coma	Pathology resident
1979	Lou Grant	Warren / Mechanic
1980	Borderline	Hotchkiss
1980	The Aliens Are Coming	Chuck Polcheck
1981	Knightriders	Billy
1981	Dream On!
1982	Creepshow	Hank Blaine
1983	The Right Stuff	John Glenn
1983	Under Fire	Oates
1984	Swing Shift	Jack Walsh
1984	Places in the Heart	Wayne Lomax
1984	A Flash of Green	Jimmy Wing
1985	Code Name: Emerald	Gus Lang
1985	Alamo Bay	Shang
1985	Sweet Dreams	Charlie Dick
1987	Walker	William Walker
1987	The Last Innocent Man	Harry Nash
1988	To Kill a Priest	Stefan
1989	Jacknife	David "High School" Flannigan	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor " Motion Picture
1989	The Abyss	Virgil "Bud" Brigman	Nominated " Saturn Award for Best Actor
1990	State of Grace	Frankie Flannery
1991	Paris Trout	Harry Seagraves
1992	Glengarry Glen Ross	Dave Moss	Valladolid International Film Festival Award for Best Actor
1992	Running Mates	Hugh Hathaway
1993	The Firm	Wayne Tarrance
1993	Needful Things	Sheriff Alan Pangborn
1994	Milk Money	Tom Wheeler
1994	China Moon	Kyle Bodine
1994	The Stand	General Starkey
1995	Nixon	E. Howard Hunt
1995	Apollo 13	Gene Kranz	Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor " Motion Picture
1995	Just Cause	Blair Sullivan
1996	The Rock	Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel
1996	Eye for an Eye	Mack McCann
1996	Riders of the Purple Sage	Jim Lassiter
1997	Absolute Power	Seth Frank
1998	Physical Graffiti
1998	Stepmom	Luke Harrison
1998	The Truman Show	Christof	Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Supporting Actor "? Drama Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role Nominated " Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor
1999	The Third Miracle	Frank Shore
2000	Pollock	Jackson Pollock	Director Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor Nominated " Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated " Satellite Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Drama
2000	The Prime Gig	Kelly Grant
2000	Waking the Dead	Jerry Charmichael
2001	A Beautiful Mind	Parcher	Nominated " Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor " Motion Picture Nominated " Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
2001	Buffalo Soldiers	Colonel Berman
2001	Enemy at the Gates	Major König
2002	The Hours	Richard Brown	Nominated " Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role Nominated " Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Acting Ensemble Nominared " Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor " Motion Picture Nominated " London Film Critics Circle Award for Actor of the Year Nominated " Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Cast Nominated " Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Nominated " Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
2003	Radio	Coach Jones
2003	The Human Stain	Lester Farley
2003	Masked and Anonymous	Oscar Vogel
2005	Empire Falls	Miles Roby	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Miniseries or Television Film Nominated " Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie Nominated " Satellite Award for Best Actor " Miniseries or Television Film Nominated " Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie
2005	Winter Passing	Don Holden
2005	A History of Violence	Carl Fogarty	National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor
2006	Two Tickets to Paradise	Melville
2006	Copying Beethoven	Ludwig van Beethoven
2006	The Armenian Genocide	US Consul Leslie Davis	Documentary
2007	Gone Baby Gone	Remy Bressant
2007	Cleaner	Eddie Lorenzo
2007	National Treasure: Book of Secrets	Mitch Wilkinson
2008	Touching Home	Charlie Winston
2008	Appaloosa	Virgil Cole	Writer, director Boston Film Festival Prize for Best Screenplay Adaptation (with Robert Knott)
2009	Once Fallen	Liam
2010	The Way Back	Mr. Smith
2010	Virginia	Sheriff Tipton
2011	That's What I Am	Mr. Simon
2011	Salvation Boulevard	Dr. Paul Blaylock
2012	Man on a Ledge	David Englander
2012	Game Change	John McCain	Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor " Series, Miniseries or Television Film Nominated " Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie Nominated " Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie
2013	Phantom	Demi
2013	Pain & Gain	Ed Du Bois
2013	Snowpiercer	Wilford
2013	Sweet Vengeance	Sheriff Jackson	Also known as Sweetwater
2013	Gravity	Mission Control	Completed
2013	Cymbeline	Cymbeline	Post-production
2014	Frontera		Post-production

Video games

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2010	Call of Duty: Black Ops	Jason Hudson	Voice