Ed Harris with Miles J. Harvey in “Riff Raff.”
And now, a few words in praise of “dependable.”
It’s often dismissed in favor of raves like “new,” “edgy” or “unpredictable.” But there is something to be said for pleasures that you can simply, unquestioningly rely on. That first slice of a just-made pizza. A summer sunset down the shore. Hugging your pet.
Actually, in a world of constant change, there is a lot to be said for experiences that never disappoint.
Like watching a performance by Ed Harris.
The New Jersey native has two films coming to theaters on Feb. 28. (watch trailers below) In the crime comedy “Riff Raff” — shot all around New Jersey, including Mahwah, Clark and Bayonne — Harris plays a retired mobster. In the other, the excellent comedy-drama “My Dead Friend Zoe,” he plays the ailing but still ornery grandfather of a vet dealing with PTSD.
Although both films got some attention on the festival circuit, they’re not the sort of big-budget productions that receive huge publicity pushes. And Harris, a reserved 74-year-old, isn’t the type to show up on a lot of chat shows or magazine covers, anyway. He likes to just come in, do the work, and go home to his longtime wife, Amy Madigan.
But it’s that no-nonsense approach to everything that has made him such a reliable onscreen pleasure.
He grew up in Tenafly, the son of a sometime singer for the Fred Waring orchestra and a local travel agent, and went to Columbia University, where he played football. But Harris, who had been the captain of his high-school team, didn’t shine so brightly on the college gridiron. By the end of freshman year, he told me in a rare 2009 interview, “I realized my athletic career wasn’t going to go anywhere.”
Ed Harris with Natalie Morales in “My Dead Friend Zoe.”
He had already done some acting in school. He decided he’d try to do a little more. He found out he liked it, a lot.
“It was for a lot of the reasons I’d enjoyed sports — the physicality of it, the focus of it, the need to really just be in the zone,” he said. “And, also I’ve got to say, that approval, that attention, whatever. You know, you score a touchdown and people clap and you’re a big guy at school, captain of the team, blah blah blah. And you do a good job on stage and people clap — it’s pretty similar, at first. But then it morphs into a whole other way of looking at the world.”
One of the biggest changes in perspective: Although acting is also a team sport, there is no opposing team. It’s about everybody being their best, not beating anybody else.
“Acting is not a competition to me,” he said once. “One of the first things I learned about acting was, the only person you compete against is yourself.”
Harris left Columbia without finishing and moved around a bit — New Mexico, Oklahoma. He finally graduated from The California Institute for the Arts in 1975. His first big part came in 1981 in the wild knights-as-bikers movie “Knightriders,” from George Romero; years of TV-series guest shots on “The Rockford Files,” “Lou Grant” and “Barnaby Jones” followed.
Then came the plum part of John Glenn in 1984’s “The Right Stuff.”
Ed Harris in “The Right Stuff.”
“That film put me on the map a little bit, I guess,” he told me. “But, you know, after that I went off and did ‘Flash of Green’ with (director) Victor Nuñez, which cost something like $700,000. I was always more interested in exploring things as an actor than in becoming some sort of star.”
Still, “The Right Stuff” introduced Harris as a hero who was so old-fashioned he seemed brand-new — a stoic, capable, no-nonsense grown-up. There was something authentically military in his look and bearing, onscreen and off, from the close-cropped hair and steely gaze to the ramrod-straight posture and confident strut (perhaps the discipline came from being an ex-jock; Harris never served in real life).
There was definitely nothing soft about him, or fake, and that was a big part of his appeal: In an ‘80s world of blow-dried pretty boys and muscle-bound gym rats, this was a genuine man, unadorned and unapologetic.
But Harris wanted to do different things, and rather than capitalizing on “The Right Stuff” by doing a TV series built around a similar, clenched-teeth hero — some crime-solving New York D.A., or a cop who plays by his own rules — he looked for other, deeper challenges.
So he played Jessica Lange’s abusive husband in the Patsy Cline biopic, “Sweet Dreams.” He played a mad American imperialist in the avant-garde “Walker.” He signed on for the first of James Cameron’s watery spectaculars, the troubled epic “The Abyss.” He dove headfirst into the toxic masculinity of David Mamet in the brilliant “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
Ed Harris with Marcia Gay Harden in “Pollock.”
And while some of his parts drew on his signature air of control — like Gene Kranz, the earthbound flight director in “Apollo 13” — others explored the unpredictable passions at the root of art. Like Christof, the manipulative creator of “The Truman Show.” Like the subject of “Pollock,” the abstract expressionist whose private life was as explosive as his canvases.
“Pollock” helped Harris explore his own artistic urges, too. He directed that film, his first. When we spoke in 2009, he had just directed and written his second, “Appaloosa,” an old-fashioned Western — made at a time when no one, not even Taylor Sheridan, thought that genre had any life left in it.
“I just wanted to tell this story — about people trying to live their lives and deal with their own feelings,” Harris said. “I had just fallen in love with these characters.”
His peers have occasionally recognized his skill with characters; Harris has been nominated four times for Oscars, for “Apollo 13,” “The Truman Show,” “Pollock” and “The Hours.” He also continues to deliver dependably for audiences, doing straightforward, unfussy work in pictures as different as “A History of Violence” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” (Premiering this month, at The Dublin International Film Festival: a new adaptation of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” with Harris as the embittered patriarch, and Lange as his fragile wife.)
Different roles, different challenges. But all of them draw on the same quiet, coiled intensity that has served Ed Harris for a half-century, and that continues to fuel a busy career.
“I guess I made some choices that were consciously away from Hollywood, but back when I was 28, I told myself, I don’t want to be a big star,” he told me. “I just want to do good work. Of course, it’s not like I was saying no to a lot of big studio movies then, anyway.
“I guess it’s one of those games that you play with yourself, too. If you say you don’t want it, then you’re not setting yourself up to be disappointed if it never happens, because that was never the goal. And if does happen, well — you’re pleasantly surprised.”
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