Julie Harris, Demurely Taking a Well-Earned Bow

She's just finished the new Joan Didion memoir ("Wonderful!"), and the new biography of Chairman Mao is placed prominently on her coffee table. She's very eager to get to that one, but first she must finish "Wild Swans," a 1991 family memoir by Jung Chang, co-author of the Mao book. And she's intrigued by a review of the posthumous publication of a work by her old friend Spalding Gray.

Like a fervent undergraduate, she underlines passages of particular interest, and although it's difficult for her, she reads some of them aloud to convey her enjoyment. In the end, it seems, it's all about sharing.

But then, it always was. Six years ago, she spoke of her passion for her work.

"What is thrilling about the theater is that it's a form where people come and, for those two or three hours, belong to something -- to ideas, to a feeling of being a member of the human race," she said. "Sharing something. It's very important in life to share our stories, our backgrounds, our hopes, the things that make us afraid."

Her sentences are simpler now. In February, though, she boiled that down at "An Evening With Julie Harris," a Smithsonian event set up in conjunction with her Ford's appearance. "I found God in the theater," she told the audience. "It's God."

Long-ago photos of her capture a lovely young woman. But beyond her physical attractiveness, what jumps out is her intensity, a visible sense of yearning. It's hard to believe anything ever mattered as much as being on that stage, belonging to those ideas.

That suggests a degree of sacrifice, or at least difficult choices. Harris's three marriages ended in divorce. She has a son, Peter Gurian, who lives in a house on her property. Not having had more children was her biggest regret, she said in 1999.

"I was fearful," she said. "When you're fearful, you stop yourself. I thought, 'If I have a lot of children, I won't work, I won't do this, I won't' -- just have them and enjoy them and go on from there. Being a parent is the most important thing I think a human being can do."

But especially during those early years, Harris was following her own gravitational pull. And when her big opportunity finally arose, she was ready.

"The Member of the Wedding" was her ninth Broadway credit. (It's hard to imagine even an extraordinary newcomer of today getting the chance to play so many roles there in only five years.) She had attracted some attention before, and respect within theatrical circles, but nothing like this.

Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, "In the long, immensely complicated part of the adolescent girl, Julie Harris, a very gifted young actress, gives an extraordinary performance -- vibrant, full of anguish and elation by turns, rumpled, unstable, egotistic and unconsciously cruel." It might have taken half a decade, but she was an overnight star.

This was a time when an actress could make a career and prove her range on Broadway. By her 30th birthday, Harris had added two classic -- and widely divergent -- roles to her gallery. In "I Am a Camera" (1951), the precursor to "Cabaret," she played the amoral floozy Sally Bowles. And in "The Lark" (1955), she was Joan of Arc, a role that landed her on the cover of Time.