Celebrity Biographies
Jared Harris
Classifying Jared Harris within an interpretive style is too daring. This Briton has become famous for playing varied and unique characters, ranging from so-called independent films to more commercial circuit tapes. In the television series “Mad Men” he has known how to shape his character with such mastery that the critical admiration for his work has been unanimously positive. And achieving that is a difficult task to say the least.
Jared Harris Francis was born on August 24, 1961 in London (England). His family was always intoxicated by the perfume of acting, since he is the son of the famous Irish actor Richard Harris and actress Elizabeth Rees. His older brother is the director Damian Harris , and the youngest of the house, Jamie Harris , has also been an actor. For stretching this family relationship to infinity and beyond, even his stepmother Ann Turkel was an actress.
A childhood marked by long years in a boarding school would later lead to his stay at Duke University, where he studied drama and literature. After achieving his degree, he went to the theater thanks to the Royal Shakespeare theater company, where he managed to start to learn thanks to the eternal works “Hamlet” or “The silent woman”.
A secondary role in Seducir a Raquel (1989), where he was directed by his older brother, was the flame that would ignite the rocket that Harris’s professional life would end up becoming. It would take three years to achieve a definitive takeoff in the “scene”, when between 1992 and 1995 he linked up to nine films to his credit. In that batch, and despite the fact that his participation was even smaller, the Oscar-winning The Last of the Mohicans (1992), the bloody Natural Born Killers (1994), the cross-story film Smoke (1995) and the western Dead Man (1995 ) stood out. ).
In the nostalgic and biographical drama I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) he gained a little more popularity among the public by playing Warhol himself. And he didn’t do anything wrong. As much as to repeat on other occasions different appearances in independent films. In fact , I Shot Andy Warhol could very well be classified under that term. And so would the black comedy Sunday (1997), the comic tragedy and nominated for best screenplay at the Golden Globes Happiness (1998), Shadow Magic (2000) or How to kill your neighbor’s dog (2002).
Two big stops along the way must be the performances in The Mummy (Trance) (1998), which led him to win the Best Actor award at the Sitges Fantastic Film Festival; and then in the pretentious thriller B. Monkey (1998), which was a confirmation that critics had been looking at him for a long time. “Jared Harris is becoming one of the most fascinating actors of the moment,” Anita Gates of The New York Times noted fervently of his role in B. Monkey .
Over the years, he also ended up getting into the game of easy comedies, even though it is a genre with which he does not particularly identify. Examples of this are the inconsequential A Father Mess (1997) or Dummy (2003).
The doctor who unleashes the zombie virus in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), the scorned rocker in Girl in the Water (2006) and one of the father figures of the regressive Benjamin in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) were further proof that Harris’s status only grew with the irrepressible passing of the years. And that when he was a kid, being an actor was not one of his preferences at all.
His last and most recent film appearances have been as Professor Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) and Ulysses S. Grant in the historical drama Lincoln (2012), directed by Steven Spielberg . He can be seen in 2013 in the futuristic and fantastic film Shadowhunters: City of Bones (2013), based on the work of the writer Cassandra Clare .
A separate mention must be made for his participation on the small screen. She had already tasted the taste of television by exceptionally embodying John Lennon in the TV movie Two of Us (2000) and King Henry VIII in The Other Boleyn Girl (2003). More or less sporadic appearances in series such as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), The Riches (2008) or Fringe (2008) would only be the foretaste of what could be considered one of the great roles of his entire career, after putting himself in the shoes of Lane Pryce in the almighty Mad Men (2007).
“It is the best series on television. You never have any idea what’s going to happen to your character or the plot. And my character is no exception. Absolutely great, ”said the actor, despite having ended his participation in said fiction. His path, given the versatility he has shown to date, is not subject to any dominant trait. Not even the theater has escaped the interests of Harris, who maintains a sentimental relationship with the television presenter Allegra Riggio. Before he was married, and later divorced, with the also actress Emilia Fox .