Julie Harris

Julie Harris 1925-, American actress, b. Grosse Point, Mich. Harris made her New York debut in It's a Gift (1945). Her versatility and power have won her enormous critical acclaim. Outstanding among her many stage performances were leading roles in Macbeth (1948), Member of the Wedding (1950; film, 1952), I Am a Camera (1951; film, 1956), The Lark (1955), Forty Carats (1968), The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1972), and The Gin Game (1997), as well as her one-woman performance as Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst (1976). Harris's films include East of Eden (1955), The Haunting (1963), The Bell Jar (1979), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), and The Dark Half (1993). She is also a television performer; in addition to her long-running (1979-87) role on the series Knots Landing, she has had parts in many other productions, among them the Emmy-winning Little Moon of Alban (1958) and Victoria Regina (1962). Her five Tony awards for best actress are a record.

Harris, Julie Ann [ Julia Ann Harris] (1925– ), American actress, who made her first appearance in New York in 1945, and a year later, as a member of the Old Vic company in New York, was seen in Henry IV, Part Two and Sophocles' Oedipus. Expert at portraying vulnerability, she was outstandingly successful as the adolescent Frankie Addams in Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding (1950) and the bohemian Sally Bowles in Van Druten's I am a Camera (1951). She was later in two plays by Anouilh, Mademoiselle Colombe (1954) and (as Joan of Arc) The Lark (1955). She was also seen in classical roles, playing Margery Pinchwife in Wycherley's The Country Wife (1957), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival (1960), and Ophelia in Hamlet for Joseph Papp (1964). Later roles were in Jay Allen's Forty Carats (1968), James Prideaux's The Last of Mrs Lincoln (1972), and Rattigan's In Praise of Love (1974), and she gave a highly praised solo performance as Emily Dickinson in William Luce's The Belle of Amherst (1976; London, 1977). She is also well known in films and television.

Harris, [Julia Ann] Julie (b. 1925), actress. Born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and educated at the Yale School of Drama, the somewhat elfin actress made her Broadway debut in It's a Gift (1945). After a series of failures she won high praise for her performance as the lonely tomboy Frankie Addams in The Member of the Wedding (1950). Further laurels came when she starred as the drifting, amoral Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera (1951). Brooks Atkinson wrote of her performance, “She plays with a virtuosity and an honesty that are altogether stunning, and. . .has the quick‐silver and the genius we all long to discover on the stage.” Among her other memorable performances were the ambitious actress Mademoiselle Colombe (1954), a gamin Joan of Arc in The Lark (1955), daydreaming Georgina in the musical Skyscraper (1965), middle‐aged divorcée Ann Stanley in Forty Carats (1968), the emotionally disturbed teacher Anna in And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little (1971), Mary Todd Lincoln in The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1972), the dying wife Lydia Crutwell in In Praise of Love (1974), and poet Emily Dickinson in the one‐person program The Belle of Amherst (1976). Only a few of these scripts were of much value, and Harris would struggle throughout her long career to find vehicles that were worthwhile. In her later years she replaced others and led touring productions of On Golden Pond, Driving Miss Daisy, and The Gin Game (1997).