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Ed Harris 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 was based on the Pulitzer prize-winning biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. It co-starred Marcia Gay Harden, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Pollock's wife Lee Krasner and also featured Harris' wife, actress Amy Madigan, in the role of Peggy Guggenheim. He recently received acclaim for his portrayal of the mysterious government agent in Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Academy Award-winning A Beautiful Mind.

Since then, Harris starred opposite Jude Law in Jean-Jacques Annaud's Enemy at the Gates and opposite Joaquin Phoenix in the independent feature Buffalo Soldiers. Upcoming films for Harris are Masked and Anonymous, Radio and The Human Stain.

Harris starred 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, in tandem with his role in Peter Weir's critically acclaimed The Truman Show, he won the 1998 National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actor. He also won a Golden Globe Award and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Truman Show.

Harris starred opposite Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in the Simpson-Bruckheimer action blockbuster, Michael Bay's The Rock, and appeared in the political thriller, Absolute Power opposite Clint Eastwood (who also directed) and Gene Hackman. He portrayed Gene Kranz in Ron Howard's acclaimed Apollo 13, which garnered him the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor as well as Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations.

Harris' other films include Borderline, George Romero's Knightriders, The Right Stuff, The Firm, Just Cause, Glengarry Glen Ross, State of Grace, The Abyss, Jacknife, To Kill a Priest, Walker, Sweet Dreams, Alamo Bay, A Flash of Green, Swing Shift and Under Fire.

Among his television credits are HBO's The Last Innocent Man and Running Mates and Showtime's Paris Trout. Harris and Madigan co-produced and co-starred in a critically acclaimed film adaptation of Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, which premiered on TNT in 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, 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, he 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. He garnered a Tony nomination and the Drama Desk Award for his Broadway debut in George Furth's Precious Sons.

Harris has won two Los Angeles Theater Critics Association Awards, the first for Prairie Avenue and the second for Murray Mednick's Scar. His other Los Angeles stage credits include A Streetcar Named Desire, The Grapes of Wrath, Hamlet and Sweet Bird of Youth.

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.