Ed Harris

Name: Ed Harris
Born: 28 November 1950 (Age: 60)
Where: Tenafly, New Jersey, USA
Height: 5' 9"Awards: Won 1 Golden Globe, nominated for 3 Oscars, 1 BAFTA.

Complete this list: Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Miranda Richardson, Toni Collette, Eileen Atkins and . . . No, complete it with a male actor, a male actor who's bright, sensitive, courageous and strong enough to survive and shine amidst the greatest female cast in decades (if not ever). That's what was needed for The Hours, about the effect of Virginia Woolf on successive generations of women. They had to find that man, a real man who would have presence but wouldn't dominate. Russell Crowe? Too rough, too moody. Tom Cruise? Too megalomaniacal, too much of a film star. No, they needed a guy of actorly presence and great human dignity, who could convince but not feel the need to steal every scene. It simply had to be Ed Harris.

Harris spent the first period of his career as a guy everyone liked but no one could remember. Perhaps this was due to his rare talent and intelligence. Always imbuing his characters with conflicting personalities and desires, Harris never appeals directly to our baser instincts. When he's a hero, he has dreadful failings too.

 Thus people don't want to be him like they want to be

Edward Allen Harris was born on November 28th, 1950, into a family of devout Presbyterians in Tenafly, near the Hudson River in Englewood, New Jersey. He describes the place as very middle-class, "a sort of idyllic Fifties thing, four miles from the George Washington Bridge". His father, Robert, was a singer in Fred Waring's chorus. Waring had been a popular dance-band leader in the Twenties and later recorded with the likes of Bing Crosby but, by the time of Ed's birth, he'd moved on from radio to TV, to even greater success. Robert would appear many times, notably on the Perry Como and Carol Burnett Shows.

 Mel Gibson - because he's acting the part of a real person and isn't simply a celebrity actor playing himself. And when he's a villain, he has a clearly recognisable good side, or at least understandable. Everyone chuckles about the comedic nastiness of Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter, they quote his lines, they even gave him an Oscar and let him turn up on countless chat-shows doing that funny thing with his mouth. Yet, as Blair Sullivan in Just Cause, Ed Harris was the most convincing psycho-killer in recent memory and no one mentions it. This isn't simply because Just Cause is not a great movie, but because Harris was too disturbed, too turbulent, too real. Yet his incredible ability paid off in the end. Since Just Cause he's been Oscar-nominated four times.