Senior Women Interviews: Julie Harris

Senior Women Interviews: Julie Harris - Too Good to be True?

Rose Madeline Mula interviewed the late actress in March, 2001: I had read that Julie Harris was brought up in affluent Grosse Pointe, Michigan, but she was disenchanted with the debutante scene and fled to New York at 19 to become an actress. I assumed her family must have been very upset. She laughed, "No, it wasn't like that at all! I had spent my last year of high school in a New York boarding school, Hewitt's Classes, on 79th Street." She lived with Miss Hewitt, who ran the school. When Harris graduated, she went to the Yale Drama School for a year, with a brief interruption to do her first play in New York, "It's a Gift." She got that part through a Yale classmate whose friends were producing the play and holding auditions. "She thought it would be good experience for me to go and read for it," said Harris. She did, and much to her surprise, was offered a role.

"I never expected that," she said. "I didn't know what to do." So she went back to Yale and asked the advice of Walter Pritchard Eaton who headed the Drama School. He laughed, "Why did you come here?" "To act," she told him. "Well, go act!" he said. So she accepted the part. The play ran about six weeks, and then she went back to Yale and finished the year.

Was it always that easy for her, I asked? Hardly, she said. "Actors have to face rejection all the time. You learn to deal with it." She has "dealt with it" by amassing dozens of nominations and awards, including an Oscar nomination, a Grammy, two Emmys and five Tonys — a record; but she really didn't want to talk about it. And when I asked her if she has videos of all her movies and television performances, she laughed and said, "Good heavens, no!" No resting on her laurels and basking in past glory for this lady. At 75, she's too busy living today's life and planning future projects.

How closely does Harris identify with the roles she plays — is she able to leave them behind at the theater, or do they go home with her? "For the four-week rehearsal period, when I'm trying to build a character, I definitely take a role home with me" she said, "but not after that, as a rule." That's fortunate, I observed, since she has played so many tragic heroines. "When you became immersed in the role of Joan of Arc, for instance," I asked, "you didn't have nightmares about being burned at the stake?" No, that doesn't happen, she laughed. "You can separate the reality from what happens on stage or in front of the cameras."

Though most of us remember Julie Harris for her darker, dramatic roles, she also enjoys and has excelled in comedies. In fact, she won her third Tony in 1969 for the light and frothy "Forty Carats." Also, she pointed out that there's a lot of comedy in tragedy. "'The Belle of Amherst' is a serious play," she said, "but it has many wonderful, funny moments.there are even comic moments in 'Hamlet.'"

I wondered how she copes with doing the same play night after night, month after month. Is it still possible to keep her performance fresh and to enjoy it? "Oh, yes!" she said enthusiastically. "It never gets boring! With each new audience it's a new experience."

What about the physical demands, I persisted. All of us find as we get older that we're not able to do many of things we did easily in the past. But not true for Harris's acting regime — not yet, at any rate. She still thrives on a busy touring schedule, going from city to city, and performing eight times a week. "You get used to that," she said with her characteristic good nature. If anything, she believes the hectic pace keeps her agile physically, and the effort to remember lines keeps her mind young.

Senior Women Interviews: Julie Harris - Too Good to be True?

More Articles