Ed Harris was recently nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe for his role opposite Meryl Streep in The Hours, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham. Harris received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for both an Academy Award® and a Golden Globe for his role as Gene Kranz in Apollo 13.

He earned an Academy Award® Best Actor nomination for Pollock, his acclaimed directorial debut, in which he starred as the pioneering abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, followed by a North American debut at the Toronto Film festival and the prestigious Centerpiece slot at the New York Film Festival. Pollock co-starred Marcia Gay Harden, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for her portrayal of Pollock’s wife Lee Krasner. The film also featured Harris’ wife, actress Amy Madigan, in the role of Peggy Guggenheim.

Recently, Harris received much praise for his role as mysterious government agent William Parchet in Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Academy Award®- winning A Beautiful Mind. He has also starred opposite Jude Law in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Enemy at the Gates, opposite Anne Heche in Agnieszka Holland’s The Third Miracle and opposite Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon in Stepmom for director Chris Columbus. For that performance, together with his performance in Peter Weir’s critically acclaimed The Truman Show, he won the 1998 National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actor. Harris also won a Golden Globe Award and received another Oscar® nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Truman Show.

Harris has also starred opposite Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in the Simpson-Bruckheimer action blockbuster The Rock and appeared in the political thriller Absolute Power with Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman.

His television credits include HBO’s "The Last Innocent Man," "Running Mates" and Showtime’s "Paris Trout." Harris and Madigan co-produced and co-starred in a critically acclaimed adaptation of Zane Grey’s "Riders of the Purple Sage," which premiered on TNT in January 1996. Harris was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award as Best Actor for his performance and, for their roles as both actors and producers of "Riders of the Purple Sage," Harris and Madigan were presented with the prestigious Western Heritage Wrangler Award for "Outstanding Television Feature Film."

Born in Tenafly, New Jersey, Harris attended Columbia University for two years and then attended the University of Oklahoma, where he began to study acting. In 1973, Harris moved to California and entered the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Harris made his New York stage debut in Sam Shepard’s "Fool for Love," for which he earned the 1983 Obie Award for Outstanding Actor. Harris earned a Tony nomination and the Drama Desk Award for his Broadway debut in George Furth’s "Precious Sons."

In the fall of 1994, Harris appeared off-Broadway in the New York Shakespeare Theater’s production of Sam Shepard’s "Simpatico" and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Actor. Harris returned to Broadway in the fall of 1996 for a limited- run engagement opposite Daniel Massey in Ronald Harwood’s acclaimed drama "Taking Sides."