Julie Harris (born December 2, 1925) is a American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards and three Emmy Awards, and was nominated for an Academy Award. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Harris's screen debut was in 1952 in The Member of the Wedding, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (later musicalized as Cabaret). She repeated that role in the 1955 film version of I Am a Camera. She also appeared in such seminal films as East of Eden, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and Requiem for a Heavyweight.
Horror film fans remember Harris as the ethereal Eleanor Lance in The Haunting, director Robert Wise's 1963 screen adaptation of a novel by Shirley Jackson, now considered a classic of the horror genre. Another cast member recalled Harris maintaining a social distance from the other actors while not on set, later explaining that she had done so as a method of emphasizing the alienation from the other characters experienced by her character in the film.
She reprised her Tony-winning role as Mary Todd Lincoln in 1973's play The Last of Mrs. Lincoln in the film version, which appeared in 1976. Another noteworthy film appearance was in the World War II drama The Hiding Place (1975).
Harris has received more Tony Award nominations (ten) and wins (five) than any other performer and in 1966 won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. Her Broadway credits include The Playboy of the Western World, Macbeth, The Member of the Wedding, A Shot in the Dark, Skyscraper, And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, Forty Carats, The Glass Menagerie, and The Gin Game.
President George W. Bush and Laura Bush pose with the Kennedy Center honorees, from left to right, actress Julie Harris, actor Robert Redford, singer Tina Turner, ballet dancer Suzanne Farrell and singer Tony Bennett on December 4, 2005, during the reception in the Blue Room at the White House.
Of particular note is her Tony-winning performance in The Belle of Amherst, a one-woman play (written by William Luce and directed by Charles Nelson Reilly) based on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. She first performed the play in 1976 and subsequently appeared in other solo shows, including Luce's Bronte.
On television, she is known for her role as Lilimae Clements on the soap opera Knots Landing, a role she played as a recurring character from 1980 to 1981 and as a series regular from 1981 to 1987. For her television work, Harris has won three Emmy Awards and has been nominated eleven times.
On December 5, 2005, she was named a Kennedy Center Honoree. At a White House ceremony, President George W. Bush remarked, "It's hard to imagine the American stage without the face, the voice, and the limitless talent of Julie Harris. She has found happiness in her life's work, and we thank her for sharing that happiness with the whole world."
She continues to work - recently narrating five historical documentaries by Christopher Seufert and Mooncusser Films, as well as being active as a director on the board of the independent Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. She has also done extensive voice work for documentary maker Ken Burns.
Harris was born Julia Ann Harris in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the daughter of Elsie L. (née Smith), a nurse, and William Pickett Harris, an investment banker. She graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, a school that later merged with two others to form University Liggett School. She lives in Chatham, Cape Cod. She is thrice divorced and has one son, Peter Gurian. She was a friend to the illustrator Edward Gorey and neighbor to the actress Shirley Booth, whom she visited frequently.
Harris has survived breast cancer, a bad fall requiring surgery, and a stroke.
