Harris was born in Englewood, New Jersey, and raised in the New York City suburb of Tenafly, New Jersey, the son of Margaret, a travel agent, and Robert L. “Bob” Harris (1922-2014), who sang with the Fred Waring chorus and worked at the Art Institute of Chicago’s bookstore.
He has a younger brother, Paul, and an older brother, Robert. Harris grew up in a Presbyterian family from the middle class. His parents were originally from Oklahoma. He graduated from Tenafly High School in 1969, where he was a member of the football team and captain his senior year.
Harris was a varsity football player at Columbia University and a teammate of future United States Attorney General Eric Holder. He lived in Carman Hall at Columbia, where he said he succumbed to the “Morningside Heights blues” after two years. Harris followed his family to New Mexico two years later, having discovered his interest in acting through various theater plays. He enrolled in drama classes at the University of Oklahoma. He moved to Los Angeles after several successful roles in local theaters (including the Jewel Box Theater in Oklahoma City) and enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts, where he spent two years and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1975.
Who is Ed Harris’s wife Amy Madigan?
On November 21, 1983, Harris married actress Amy Madigan while they were filming Places in the Heart together. Lily Dolores Harris is their only child (born May 3, 1993).
