Rosemary Harris

Rosemary Harris
Harris in 1958
Born	Rosemary Ann Harris (1927-09-19) 19 September 1927 (age 97) Ashby, Suffolk, England
Years active	1948–present
Spouses	Ellis Rabb ​ ​ (m. 1959; div. 1967)​ John Ehle ​ ​ (m. 1967; died 2018)​
Children	Jennifer Ehle

Rosemary Ann Harris (born 19 September 1927) is an English actress. She is the recipient of an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and three Laurence Olivier Awards. Harris was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1986, and she won the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre in 2017.

Harris began her stage career in 1948, before making her Broadway debut in 1952. For her New York stage work, she is a four-time Drama Desk Award winner and nine-time Tony Award nominee, winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in for portraying Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (1966). Her other Tony-nominated roles were in Old Times (1972), The Royal Family (1976), Heartbreak House (1984), Pack of Lies (1985), Hay Fever (1986), A Delicate Balance (1996), Waiting in the Wings (2000), and The Royal Family (2010).

She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her portrayal of George Sand in the BBC serial Notorious Woman (1976), and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for playing Berta Palitz Weiss in the miniseries Holocaust (1978). For her performance in the historical drama film Tom & Viv (1994) she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Harris is also known for her portrayal of May Parker, the paternal aunt of Peter Parker, in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007).

Harris was born on 19 September 1927 in Ashby, Suffolk,^[1] the daughter of Enid Maude Frances (née Campion) and Stafford Berkeley Harris.^[2][3] One of her grandmothers was from Kronstadt in the Habsburg Empire (today Romania).^[4][5] Her father was in the Royal Air Force, and as a result, Harris' family lived in India during her early childhood.^[6][7][8] She attended convent schools, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1951 to 1952.^[9][10]

Early in her acting career, she gained experience in English repertory theatre. In 1948, she acted in Kiss and Tell at Eastbourne and Margate with Tilsa Page and John Clark and later with Anthony Cundell's company at Penzance, where she played the mother in Black Chiffon. She went from Penzance to train at RADA.^[11] She first appeared in New York City in 1951 in Moss Hart's Climate of Eden,^[12] and then returned to Britain for her West End debut in The Seven Year Itch which ran for a year at the Aldwych.^[13]

Harris then entered a classical acting period in productions with the Bristol Old Vic and then the Old Vic, appearing at the latter as Ophelia in the National Theatre Company's opening production of Hamlet in October 1963, alongside Peter O'Toole in the title role.^[14] Writing in UK newspaper The Guardian in 2003 as part of a series on landmark theatre productions, playwright Samantha Ellis noted of the National Theatre's opening night:

Olivier gloomily anticipated bad reviews. But RB Marriott, in The Stage, found O'Toole to be "a magnificent Prince" and Rosemary Harris "the most real and touching Ophelia". (In contrast, Felix Barker, in the Evening News, called her "an embarrassing deb who has had too much gin".) And Harold Hobson, in The Sunday Times, was overcome.^[15]

Her first film followed, Beau Brummell (1954) with Stewart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor,^[11] and then a touring season with the Old Vic brought her back to Broadway in Tyrone Guthrie's production of Troilus and Cressida. She met Ellis Rabb who had plans to start his own producing company on Broadway. The following year she portrayed Desdemona in a television production of William Shakespeare's Othello directed by Tony Richardson Harris acted opposite Paul Rogers, Robert Hardy, and Nigel Davenport. In 1957 she appeared in two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1958 she acted alongside John Williams, and Maurice Evans in the NBC production of Dial M for Murder. That same year she portrayed Catherine Linton acting alongside Richard Burton who portrayed Heathcliff in the CBS television production of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. By 1959, the Association of Producing Artist (APA) was established, and she and Rabb were married on 4 December of that year.^[16][17]

In 1962, she returned to Britain and Chichester Festival Theatre during its opening season when the director was Laurence Olivier; she appeared as Elena in Olivier's celebrated 1962–63 Chichester production of Uncle Vanya.^[18] She reprised her role in the 1963 British film adaptation acting opposite Olivier, Michael Redgrave, and Joan Plowright. In 1964, she was Ophelia to Peter O'Toole's Hamlet in the inaugural production of the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain.^[19] She returned to Broadway portraying Megara in Herakles at the Lyceum Theatre. That same year she portrayed Alice Sycamore in You Can't Take It with You. She also appeared in an off-Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman at the Phoenix Theatre.

Harris gained acclaim working further with the APA, and was cast as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter opposite Robert Preston's Henry II at the Ambassador Theatre. She received praise for the role as well as the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.^[20] Rabb directed her one last time as Natasha in War and Peace in 1967, the same year they agreed to divorce.^[16][17] A little while later, Harris married the American writer John Ehle.^[21] The two of them can be heard interviewing prospective candidates, Black public school student candidates for scholarships to all-white private "Segregation academies", on surviving recordings.^[22] Ehle was the manager for this Stouffer Foundation program. In 1968 she portrayed Gabrielle Chandebisse in the film A Flea in Her Ear based on the 1907 French farce of the same name by Georges Feydeau. She acted with Rex Harrison and Louis Jourdan.^[23] She received Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play nominations for her roles as Anna in Harold Pinter's Old Times (1971) and Julie Cavendish in George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's The Royal Family (1975).

During this time she portrayed Blanche DuBois in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire (1973) and Portia in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (1973). In 1974, Harris starred in the BBC TV serial Notorious Woman, which aired on PBS in the US as part of Masterpiece Theatre. For this role, she won the 1976 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – TV Drama for the 1978 NBC miniseries Holocaust, which also starred Meryl Streep and James Woods. Also in 1978 she acted in Franklin J. Schaffner's science-fiction thriller The Boys from Brazil acting with Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, and Denholm Elliott. The film received critical acclaim and earned three Academy Award nominations.

From 1979 to 1980 she starred in the CBS Western miniseries The Chisholms opposite Robert Preston. Reviewing the BBC's 1983 production of To the Lighthouse, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name, John J. O'Connor of The New York Times wrote: "A luminous, flawless performance by Miss Harris makes Mrs. Ramsay as memorable on film as she is on the printed page."^[24] She played Ann Barrington in the Richard Eyre directed The Ploughman's Lunch (1983) written by Ian McEwan. She acted with Jonathan Pryce and Tim Curry. The film looks at the media world in Margaret Thatcher's Britain around the time of the Falklands War. Vincent Canby of The New York Times declared, "[the] film's most arresting character is Ann, a beautiful woman whose intelligence is demonstrated both in the writing and in Miss Harris's superlative performance."^[25] She also took film roles in Crossing Delancey (1988) and The Delinquents (1989), and The Bridge (1992). She returned to Broadway acting in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers (1991).

For her role as Rose Haigh-Wood in the historical drama Tom & Viv she won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Harris acted with Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson. The film was based on the 1984 play of the same name by Michael Hastings. She returned to Broadway in a revival of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance (1996) for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. That same year she had a brief role as Player Queen in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Hamlet (1996). Harris and her daughter Jennifer Ehle, played the young and elderly incarnations, respectively, of the same character in István Szabó's 1999 film Sunshine, about a Hungarian-Jewish family. They previously played the young and old Calypso in the Channel 4 production of The Camomile Lawn (1992).^[26] In 1999 she starred in the Hugh Hudson directed film My Life So Far based on the Denis Forman book of the same name. Harris acted with Colin Firth, Irène Jacob, Malcolm McDowell, and Kelly Macdonald.

Harris had a recurring role as Aunt May Parker in the first film adaptation of Spider-Man, reprising the role in the sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007). These films were critically acclaimed and were commercially successful. Directed by Sam Raimi, the films also starred Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, J. K. Simmons, Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina.^[27][28] Her film roles during this period included the supernatural horror film The Gift (2000) starring Cate Blanchett, the romantic comedy Blow Dry (2001) with Alan Rickman and Natasha Richardson, and the comedy-drama Being Julia starring Annette Bening. Harris appeared in the rotating cast of the Off-Broadway staged reading of Wit & Wisdom.^[29] In 2007, she received the North Carolina Award for fine arts. Her husband, John Ehle, won the same award in 1972 for literature.^[30] Also in 2007 she acted in Sidney Lumet's crime thriller Before the Devil Knows You're Dead for which she received the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Ensemble Cast along with the cast.

Harris took limited film roles in the drama Is Anybody There? with Michael Caine, the romantic comedy This Means War starring Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, and Tom Hardy, and the musical drama The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music (2015) with Matthew Macfadyen. She had a guest starring role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2010). On 11 September 2018, a week before her 91st birthday, Harris took over the role of Mrs Higgins in the Broadway revival of My Fair Lady from Diana Rigg.^[31][32] She recently acted in the HBO limited series The Undoing (2020) as a guest actress and had a recurring role in the HBO Max comedy series Search Party (2022).

Ehle and Harris settled in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,^[7] where their daughter, Jennifer Ehle, was born in 1969. Jennifer followed in her mother's footsteps by becoming a noted film, television and Broadway actress.^[33] Harris' archive is part of the performing arts collections at the Harry Ransom Center, which include her scripts, photographs, posters, correspondence, playbills, and other ephemera.^[34]

Film and television

Theatre accolades

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rosemary Harris.

• Rosemary Harris at IMDb
• Rosemary Harris at the Internet Broadway Database
• Rosemary Harris at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Presenting Rosemary Harris website: articles and images
• Rosemary Harris – Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org