Trivia

Elia Kazan, in his autobiography "A Life", said that he was grateful to have Harris on the set of East of Eden (1955) because she had a calming influence on James Dean. Kazan praised Harris as both an actress and as a human being.

Her future Knots Landing (1979), co-star, Joan Van Ark, had interviewed as a student reporter, when she was fifteen years old. Harris later recommended Van Ark to attend the Yale School of Drama. Harris is the youngest student ever to attend the college on a scholarship.

Julie Harris is the most honored performer in Tony Award history with ten nominations and five victories. She won the award as Best Actress (Dramatic) for "I Am a Camera" (1952), "The Lark" (1956), "Forty Carats" (1969), and "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln" (1973); and as Best Actress (Play) for "The Belle of Amherst" (1977). Her five additional nominations were: for Best Actress (dramatic), "Marathon '33" (1964) and "The Au Pair Man" (1974); for Best Actress (musical), "Skyscraper" (1966); and for Best Actress (play), "Lucifer's Child" (1991) and "The Gin Game" (1997).

She fell backstage in Stamford, Connecticut, requiring surgery to drain fluid from her head. (April 1999)

Studied for a year at the New York Drama School before becoming one of the first members of Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.

In 1950, she made her mark on the stage at age 24 playing 12-year-old Frankie Addams in Carson McCullers's adaptation of her own novel "The Member of the Wedding". She then reprised the role in the 1952 screen version with the same title.

Her parents sent her to a finishing school in Providence, Rhode Island, before she persuaded them to let her transfer to a girl's prep school in Manhattan then known as Miss Hewitt's Classes, which offered drama. Harris also attended a summer acting camp in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where she was mentored by Charlotte Perry, who encouraged her to attend the Yale School of Drama, which she did for a year.

'Acting is my life', she announced early on to her high school drama teacher, and later in her career, director and critic Harold Clurman seemed to confirm this when he described Harris as 'totally designed to be a good instrument on the stage'.

She suffered a stroke in 2001 and a second stroke in 2010.

As a young girl, Harris says she saw Gone with the Wind (1939) 13 times and also read biographies of great actresses.

Had one son with her second husband Manning Gurian, Peter Alston Gurian (born July 19, 1955).

She and producer Robert Whitehead were both named recipients of Special Tony Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater. It was Harris' sixth Tony Award. (May 2002)

She was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1994 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, D.C.

First directed by Tony Abatemarco in Lucifer's Child (1995) on Broadway, for which she received a Tony Award nomination.

Recipient of the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors. Other recipients were Robert Redford, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett and Suzanne Farrell.

She was awarded the 1980 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Performance in a Play for "On Golden Pond" at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

Oscar nominated for her first film role in The Member of the Wedding (1952).

Before her death, she had never retired from acting.

Friends with: Angela Lansbury, Norman Lloyd, Shirley MacLaine, Jo Anne Worley, Barbara Bel Geddes, Larry Hagman, Michele Lee, Charles Nelson Reilly, Charles Durning, June Havoc, Patricia Neal, Christopher Plummer, Derek Jacobi, Arthur Miller, Adam Arkin, Lee Grant, Joyce Van Patten, Joel Grey, Liza Minnelli, Steven Hill, Shelley Winters, Philip Bosco, Jason Robards, Anne Jeffreys, Piper Laurie, Ruby Dee, Nanette Fabray, Barbara Barrie, Marlon Brando, Gena Rowlands , James Dean, Jack Lemmon, Ken Burns, Stephen Root, Irene Worth, Cherry Jones, Calista Flockhart, Eli Wallach, Tony Randall, Kevin Spacey, Robert Brustein, Robert Redford, Tyne Daly, Mary-Louise Parker, Alec Baldwin, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Mickey Rooney, Lauren Bacall, Rex Harrison, James Mason, Carson McCullers, Ethel Waters, Clint Eastwood, William Shatner, Sally Field, Celeste Holm, Dana Ivey, Hal Holbrook, Barbara Barrie, Cicely Tyson, Nora Ephron, Joan Van Ark, Zoe Caldwell, Roberta Maxwell, David Merrick, Rosemary Harris, Roddy McDowall and Leonard Nimoy.

Daughter of investment banker William Pickett Harris, Jr. and nurse Elsie L. (Smith).

Julie, Angela Lansbury and Audra McDonald are the only performers to receive 6 Tony Awards. However, Audra is the only performer to win all 6 in competition, while Julie and Angela won 5 awards in competition and 1 Special Award for Lifetime Achievement for each.

Julie was almost an EGOT. She won 3 Emmys: 1959, Single Performance by an Actress for "Little Moon of Alban", 1962, Single Performance by an Actress in a Lead Role for "Victoria Regina", and 2000 for Outstanding Voice-over Performance for "Not for Ourselves: The Story of Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony". Julie won a Grammy in 1978 for Best Spoken Word Performance for "The Belle of Amherst". And she had her Tony Awards, so she received 3 out of the 4 statues for her work.

Julie was nominated for 10 Tony Awards, winning five: 1952, for "I Am A Camera", 1956, for "The Lark", 1969, for "Forty Carats", 1973, for "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln", and 1977, for "The Belle of Amherst". All wins were in the category of Lead Actress in a Play. Julie's sixth Tony, for Lifetime Achievement, came in 2002.

Acting mentor and lifelong friend of: Joan Van Ark.

When the company built a new, additional theater, also in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, she declined to have the building named for her. However, she consented to their naming "a piece of it after me"; WHAT named their stage the "Julie Harris Stage". (2007).

Graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, a private school, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in 1944.

Best remembered by the public for her role as Lilimae Clements on Knots Landing (1979).

Her birthplace, Grosse Pointe, Michigan, is 8 miles east of Detroit, Michigan.