Ed Harris

Intro

Ed Harris is an American actor and director whose credits extend from stage drama to large-scale film productions and long-form television. Apollo 13, The Truman Show, Pollock and The Hours each brought him an Academy Award nomination. His work also includes The Right Stuff, The Abyss and Westworld. Across that record, he has alternated leading parts with important roles inside ensembles, while Pollock and Appaloosa added directing to his screen career. The result is a filmography that can be approached through performance, production or the recurring challenge of portraying a real person.

Career snapshot

Harris grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey. The New Jersey Hall of Fame records an early interest in football, including his time at Columbia University, before a move toward acting studies at the University of Oklahoma. He later earned a BFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1975. His first professional years included Los Angeles theatre and small television roles, followed by a feature-film debut in Coma. This route through education, stage work and screen parts preceded the familiar run of major film credits rather than beginning with them.

The entry point

Theatre remained part of Harris's work as his film career developed. In 1986 he played Fred in George Furth's Precious Sons on Broadway, directed by Norman René at the Longacre Theatre. The cast also included Judith Ivey and Anthony Rapp. The Internet Broadway Database records a Tony nomination and a Drama Desk acting award for Harris's performance. Those distinctions document a specific stage production and role, offering a useful point of comparison with the film awards that later became a prominent part of his public career record.

Screen identity and style

Pollock was a particularly personal project. Harris directed, produced and played painter Jackson Pollock in his feature directing debut. Sony Pictures Classics' production notes describe years spent reading about the artist and practising painting as part of the preparation. Rather than presenting that work as an attempt to become another person, Harris spoke of using his own experience and abilities to make an honest interpretation. The screenplay by Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller drew on the biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith.

Collaborations and patterns

The combination of directing and acting gave Pollock a different place in Harris's career from a role undertaken within another filmmaker's production. The preparation, casting and visual decisions belonged to a project he helped bring into being, as well as a character he performed. His later directing credit Appaloosa took him into the western. These two films are useful companion entries for anyone exploring his work behind the camera: they place the actor's attention to character within the wider responsibilities of shaping a complete film and working with its other performers.

Era reflection

Television offered another set of contrasting assignments. Harris played Miles Roby in Empire Falls and John McCain in Game Change, receiving Emmy nominations in 2005 and 2012 respectively. Westworld brought a further nomination in 2018 for the Man in Black. The photographs here show the actor at two separate moments during this later screen period: an informal 2016 portrait and a 2017 San Diego Comic-Con appearance for Westworld. The panel image records his participation in the programme's public presentation; it is an event photograph rather than a scene from the series.

Legacy and rediscovery

Harris's career is therefore broader than any single commanding screen presence or familiar genre. The Broadway record, the extended preparation for Pollock and the succession of television roles show different working contexts behind the finished performances. A viewer can return to the four Oscar-nominated films to compare leading and supporting work, then turn to Precious Sons as evidence of his stage practice or to his directing credits for another perspective. His induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame also places that national and international career alongside the community in which he grew up.

Selected roles

• Precious Sons: Fred — 1986 Broadway
• Pollock: Jackson Pollock / director — Feature film
• Empire Falls: Miles Roby — Television
• Westworld: The Man in Black — Television

A career in pictures

Two distinct public photographs from 2016 and the 2017 Westworld Comic-Con panel.

Westworld Comic-Con appearance (2017)

Ed Harris

Gage Skidmore photograph, San Diego, July 22, 2017.

Public portrait (2016)

Ed Harris

Greg2600 photograph dated March 8, 2016.

Rewatch notes

• Directed and starred in Pollock.
• Received a 1986 Tony nomination for Precious Sons.