Julie Harris
Encyclopedia
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris (born December 2, 1925) is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Award
s, three Emmy Award
s and a Grammy Award
, and was nominated for an Academy Award
. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts
. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame
. She also received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.
' The Member of the Wedding
, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress
. That film also preserves the original Broadway cast performances of Ethel Waters
and Brandon DeWilde. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles
in I Am a Camera
, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood
's Goodbye to Berlin
(later musicalized as Cabaret
on Broadway in 1966 and, in the 1972 film, with Liza Minnelli
as Sally Bowles.) Harris repeated her stage role in the 1955 film version of I Am a Camera. She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (1955), with James Dean
(with whom she became close friends), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), with Paul Newman
in the private-detective film Harper
in 1966, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).
Harris played the ethereal Eleanor Lance in The Haunting
, director Robert Wise
's 1963 screen adaptation of a novel by Shirley Jackson
, a classic film 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 ten Tony Award
nominations, more than any other performer. She also held the record for most Tony wins (five) until Angela Lansbury
tied her in 2009. In 1966, Harris 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
, A Doll's House
, and The Gin Game
.
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 received a Grammy Award
for Best Spoken Word Recording for the audio recording of the play. 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, the mother of Valene Ewing
(played by Joan Van Ark
) on the CBS nighttime soap opera
Knots Landing
. The role was as a recurring character from 1980 to 1981 and as a series regular from 1981-1987. For her television work, Harris has won three Emmy Award
s and has been nominated eleven times. One of her most famous television roles was as Queen Victoria, in the 1961 Hallmark Hall of Fame
production of Laurence Housman
's Victoria Regina (play), for which she won an Emmy. Earlier, also for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, she starred as Nora Helmer opposite Christopher Plummer
in a 90-minute 1959 television adaptation of Henrik Ibsen
's A Doll's House
. She made more appearances in leading roles on the Hallmark program than any other actress, also appearing in two different adaptations of the play Little Moon of Alban.
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."
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
, in doing the voices of Emily Warren Roebling
in Brooklyn Bridge, Ann Lee
in The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God
, Susan B. Anthony
in Not For Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
and most notably as Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut
for Burns' 1990 series The Civil War.
In the summer of 2008, Ms. Harris appeared on-stage again in her hometown of Chatham as Nanny in Monomoy Theater's production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
.
, 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 the University Liggett School
. In New York City she attended The Hewitt School.
Julie currently lives in Chatham
, Cape Cod
, Massachusetts
and also maintains a residence in the Detroit area near to where she grew up. Thrice divorced, she has one son, Peter Gurian. Harris has survived breast cancer
, a bad fall requiring surgery, and a stroke.
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
s, three Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s and a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
, and was nominated for an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts
National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...
. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame
American Theatre Hall of Fame
The American Theatre Hall of Fame in New York City was founded in 1972. Earl Blackwell was the first head of the Executive Committee. In an announcement at a luncheon meeting on March 1972, he said that the new Theater Hall of Fame would be located in the Uris Theatre . James M...
. She also received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.
Career
Harris's screen debut was in 1952, repeating her Broadway success as the monumentally lonely teenage girl Frankie in Carson McCullersCarson McCullers
Carson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...
' The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel by Southern writer Carson McCullers. It took McCullers five years to complete—though she interrupted the work for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe....
, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
. That film also preserves the original Broadway cast performances of Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...
and Brandon DeWilde. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles
Sally Bowles
Sally Bowles is a fictional character created by Christopher Isherwood. She originally appeared in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press. The story was later republished in the novel Goodbye to Berlin...
in I Am a Camera
I Am a Camera
I Am a Camera is a 1951 Broadway play inspired by Christopher Isherwood's novel Goodbye to Berlin which is part of The Berlin Stories...
, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
's Goodbye to Berlin
Goodbye to Berlin
Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 short novel by Christopher Isherwood set in pre-Nazi Germany. It is often published together with Mr Norris Changes Trains in a collection called The Berlin Stories.-Details:...
(later musicalized as Cabaret
Cabaret (musical)
Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions....
on Broadway in 1966 and, in the 1972 film, with Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli
Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
as Sally Bowles.) Harris repeated her stage role in the 1955 film version of I Am a Camera. She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (1955), with James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
(with whom she became close friends), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), with Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
in the private-detective film Harper
Harper (film)
Harper is a 1966 film written by William Goldman from a novel by Ross Macdonald. The movie starred Paul Newman as the eponymous Lew Harper . The original music score was composed by Johnny Mandel. Goldman received a 1967 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay...
in 1966, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).
Harris played the ethereal Eleanor Lance in The Haunting
The Haunting (1963 film)
The Haunting is a 1963 British psychological horror film by American director Robert Wise and adapted by Nelson Gidding from the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. It stars Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn. The film centers around the conflict between...
, director Robert Wise
Robert Wise
Robert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...
's 1963 screen adaptation of a novel by Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson was an American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years...
, a classic film 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
Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary Ann Lincoln was the wife of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and was First Lady of the United States from 1861 to 1865.-Life before the White House:...
in 1973's play The Last of Mrs. Lincoln
The Last of Mrs. Lincoln
The Last of Mrs. Lincoln is a play by James Prideaux. It depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination....
in the film version, which appeared in 1976. Another noteworthy film appearance was in the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
drama The Hiding Place
The Hiding Place (film)
The Hiding Place is a 1975 film based on the autobiographical book of the same name by Corrie ten Boom recounting her and her family's experiences before and during their imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust in World War II.-Plot:...
(1975).
Harris has received ten Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
nominations, more than any other performer. She also held the record for most Tony wins (five) until Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
tied her in 2009. In 1966, Harris won the Sarah Siddons Award
Sarah Siddons Award
The Sarah Siddons Society is an American non-profit organization founded in 1952 by prominent Chicago theatre patrons with the goal of promoting excellence in the theatre. The Society presents the Sarah Siddons Award annually to an actor for an outstanding performance in a Chicago theatre production...
for her work in Chicago theatre
Chicago theatre
Chicago theatre refers not only to theatre performed in Chicago, Illinois but also to the movement in that town that saw a number of small, meagerly-funded companies grow to institutions of national and international significance. Chicago had long been a popular destination for tours sent out from...
. Her Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
credits include The Playboy of the Western World
The Playboy of the Western World
The Playboy of the Western World is a three-act play written by Irish playwright John Millington Synge and first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on January 26, 1907. It is set in Michael James Flaherty's public house in County Mayo during the early 1900s...
, Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
, The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel by Southern writer Carson McCullers. It took McCullers five years to complete—though she interrupted the work for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe....
, A Shot in the Dark
L'Idiote
L'Idiote is a comic mystery play by Marcel Achard. It is best known in the United States as A Shot in the Dark and was adapted into a film under that title. The English adaptation by Harry Kurnitz had a 1961-1962 Broadway run, directed by Harold Clurman. Its cast included Julie Harris, Walter...
, Skyscraper
Skyscraper (musical)
Skyscraper is a musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Sammy Cahn, and music by Jimmy Van Heusen.Based on the 1945 Elmer Rice play Dream Girl, it focuses on an antiques dealer who is determined to save her midtown Manhattan brownstone from the bulldozer. The girders of a new skyscraper are...
, And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little
And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little
And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little is an American play written by Paul Zindel and published by Dramatists Play Service.The story surrounds three sisters: Catherine, an alcoholic; Anna, a hypochondriac and Ceil, an attention-starved socialite.-History:...
, Forty Carats
Forty Carats
Forty Carats is a play by Jay Allen.Adapted from the French original by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, the comedy revolves around a 40-year-old American divorcee who is assisted by a 22-year-old when her car breaks down during a vacation in Greece...
, The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
, A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....
, and The Gin Game
The Gin Game
The Gin Game is a two-person, two-act play by D.L. Coburn that premiered at American Theater Arts in Hollywood in September 1976, directed by Kip Niven. It was Coburn's first play, and the theater's first production.-Plot:...
.
The Belle of Amherst
The Belle of Amherst is a one-woman play by William Luce.Based on the life of poet Emily Dickinson from 1830-1886, and set in her Amherst, Massachusetts home, the play makes use of her work, diaries, and letters to recollect her encounters with the significant people in her life - family, close...
, a one-woman play (written by William Luce
William Luce
William Luce is a writer, primarily for the stage and television. He has written several plays which starred Julie Harris, and specializes in writing one-person plays.-Stage:...
and directed by Charles Nelson Reilly
Charles Nelson Reilly
Charles Nelson Reilly was an American actor, comedian, director and drama teacher known for his comedic roles in theater, movies, children's television, animated cartoons, and as a panelist on the game show Match Game....
) based on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
. She received a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
for Best Spoken Word Recording for the audio recording of the play. 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, the mother of Valene Ewing
Valene Ewing
Valene "Val" Ewing is a fictional character in the American television series Dallas and, more prominently, its spin-off series Knots Landing. She was played by Joan Van Ark....
(played by Joan Van Ark
Joan Van Ark
Joan Van Ark is an American actress, most notable for her role as Valene Ewing, which she originated on the CBS series Dallas and continued for thirteen seasons on its spin-off, Knots Landing...
) on the CBS nighttime soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
Knots Landing
Knots Landing
Knots Landing is an American primetime television soap opera that aired from December 27, 1979 to May 13, 1993 on CBS. Set in a fictitious coastal suburb of Los Angeles in California, the show centered on the lives of four married couples living in a cul-de-sac, Seaview Circle...
. The role was as a recurring character from 1980 to 1981 and as a series regular from 1981-1987. For her television work, Harris has won three Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s and has been nominated eleven times. One of her most famous television roles was as Queen Victoria, in the 1961 Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011...
production of Laurence Housman
Laurence Housman
Laurence Housman was an English playwright, writer and illustrator.-Early life:Laurence Housman was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, one of seven children who included the poet A. E. Housman and writer Clemence Housman. In 1871 his mother died, and his father remarried, to a cousin...
's Victoria Regina (play), for which she won an Emmy. Earlier, also for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, she starred as Nora Helmer opposite Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer
Arthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...
in a 90-minute 1959 television adaptation of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
's A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....
. She made more appearances in leading roles on the Hallmark program than any other actress, also appearing in two different adaptations of the play Little Moon of Alban.
On December 5, 2005, she was named a Kennedy Center Honoree
Kennedy Center Honors
The Kennedy Center Honors is an annual honor given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture. The Honors have been presented annually since 1978 in Washington, D.C., during gala weekend-long events which culminate in a performance for—and...
. At a White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
ceremony, President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
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."
Present
Harris continues to work, recently narrating five historical documentaries by Christopher SeufertChristopher Seufert
Christopher Seufert is a documentary film producer and director, and photographer based in Boston, Massachusetts. His production company is Mooncusser Films....
and Mooncusser Films
Mooncusser Films
Mooncusser Films, LLC is the film and video production company founded by documentary producer/director Christopher Seufert. Notable projects include cinema verité films with alterna-folk musician Suzanne Vega, the late illustrator Edward Gorey, and one upcoming portrait of legendary filmmaker...
, as well as being active as a director on the board of the independent Wellfleet
Wellfleet, Massachusetts
Wellfleet is a New England town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. Located halfway between the "tip" and "elbow" of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the town had a population of 2,749 at the 2000 census, which swells nearly sixfold during the summer...
Harbor Actors Theater. She has also done extensive voice work for documentary maker Ken Burns
Ken Burns
Kenneth Lauren "Ken" Burns is an American director and producer of documentary films, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs...
, in doing the voices of Emily Warren Roebling
Emily Warren Roebling
Emily Warren Roebling was married to Washington Roebling, a civil engineer who was Chief Engineer during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge...
in Brooklyn Bridge, Ann Lee
Ann Lee
Mother Ann Lee was the leader of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, or Shakers....
in The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God
The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God
The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God is Ken Burns's second film, released in 1984.Narrated by David McCullough, this hour-long documentary features interviews with several living Shakers and with historians and philosophers....
, Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
in Not For Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
Not For Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony is a 1999 documentary by Ken Burns produced for NPR and .WETA.Events covered in the documentary* The revolution* "I wish you were a boy" The status of women in the mid 1850's...
and most notably as Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut
Mary Boykin Chesnut
Mary Boykin Chesnut, born Mary Boykin Miller , was a South Carolina author noted for a book published as her Civil War diary, a "vivid picture of a society in the throes of its life-and-death struggle." She described the war from within her upper-class circles of Southern planter society, but...
for Burns' 1990 series The Civil War.
In the summer of 2008, Ms. Harris appeared on-stage again in her hometown of Chatham as Nanny in Monomoy Theater's production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a 1964 play written by Paul Zindel, a playwright and science teacher. Zindel received the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for the work. The play's world premiere was staged in 1964 at the Alley Theatre...
.
Personal life
Harris was born Julia Ann Harris in Grosse Pointe, MichiganGrosse Pointe, Michigan
Grosse Pointe is a suburban city bordering Detroit in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city covers just over one square mile, and had a population of 5,421 at the 2010 census. It is bordered on the west by Grosse Pointe Park, on the north by Detroit, on the east by Grosse Pointe...
, the daughter of Elsie L. (née
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
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 the University Liggett School
University Liggett School
University Liggett School, also known as ULS and Liggett, is a private, secular school inGrosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1878, it is Michigan's oldest independent coeducational day school....
. In New York City she attended The Hewitt School.
Julie currently lives in Chatham
Chatham, Massachusetts
Chatham is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, Barnstable County being coextensive with Cape Cod. The population was 6,625 at the 2000 census...
, Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
and also maintains a residence in the Detroit area near to where she grew up. Thrice divorced, she has one son, Peter Gurian. Harris has survived breast cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
, a bad fall requiring surgery, and a stroke.
Sources
- Young, Jordan R. (1989). Acting Solo: The Art of One-Person Shows. Beverly Hills: Past Times Publishing Co. Intro by Julie Harris.