Rosemary Harris

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 De La Zouch, Leicestershire, the daughter of Enid Maude Frances (née Campion) and Stafford Berkeley Harris. One of her grandmothers was from Kronstadt in the Habsburg Empire (today Romania). Her father was in the Royal Air Force, and as a result, Harris' family lived in India during her early childhood. She attended convent schools, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1951 to 1952.

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. She first appeared in New York City in 1951 in Moss Hart's Climate of Eden, and then returned to Britain for her West End debut in The Seven Year Itch which ran for a year at the Aldwych.

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. 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.

Her first film followed, Beau Brummell (1954) with Stewart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor, 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.