Rosemary Harris

Rosemary Ann Harris was born on September 19, 1927 in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, in the UK. She spent her childhood living in India, as her father worked for the Royal Air Force, but trained as an actor in London, attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1951 and 1952.

She began her career on stage working at regional theatres in England in the 1940s and would make her Broadway debut as Mabel in Moss Hart's The Climate of Eden in November 1952, picking up a Theatre World Award in 1953. She then returned to the UK and made her West End debut in The Seven Year Itch, launching a highly successful stage career on both sides of the Atlantic. Her subsequent Broadway credits include Cressida in the 1956 revival of Troilus and Cressida, Interlock (1958), The Disenchanted (1958), The Tumbler (1960), Alice Sycamore in the 1965 revival of You Can't Take It With You, and a Tony Award-winning performance as Eleanor in the 1966 premiere of The Lion in Winter. She would go on to receive a further astonishing total of eight Tony Award nominations throughout the years, for her performances in Harold Pinter's Old Times (1972), as Julie Cavendish in The Royal Family (1976), Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House (1984), Pack of Lies (1985), Noël Coward's Hay Fever (1986), Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance (1996), Noël Coward's Waiting in the Wings (2000), and again for The Royal Family, this time as Fanny Cavendish, in 2010. Her Broadway résumé also includes Drama Desk Award-winning performances as Blanche Du Bois in the 1973 revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and as Portia in the 1973 revival of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Indeed over the years, she has accumulated a total of five Drama Desk Award wins and two further nominations. Other memorable Broadway outings include the 1967 revival of Ibsen's The Wild Duck, the role of Natasha in the 1967 premiere of War and Peace, Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers (1991), the 1994 revival of J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls, and she was last seen on the Great White Way in the 2012 premiere of Athol Fugard's The Road to Mecca.

She has also appeared regularly off-Broadway, earning Obie Awards for her work in the 1960s (The Tavern, The School for Scandal & The Seagull at the Folksbiene Playhouse, and Judith, Man and Superman & War and Peace at the Phoenix Theatre) and, more recently, for All Over in 2003. She has also worked with Roundabout Theatre Company (Indian Ink in 2014), with Manhattan Theatre Club (The Other Side in 2005), and the Public Theater (the 1980 revival of Chekhov's The Seagull). Her most notable stage credits in the UK include the Royal National Theatre's inaugural production of Hamlet in 1963 and an Olivier Award-nominated performance in Lost in Yonkers in 1993.

On screen, she is internationally known for her performances as Aunt May in the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man trilogy and has garnered a long list of accolades over the years, most notably, an Academy Award nomination in 1995 for her performance as Rose Haigh-Wood in Tom & Viv, a BAFTA nomination for The Ploughman's Lunch in 1984, a Golden Globe-winning performance as Berta Palitz Weiss in Holocaust in 1979, and an Emmy Award-winning performance in Notorious Woman in 1976. She has also starred in film and television adaptations of popular theatre classics such as Othello (1955), Twelfth Night (1957), Uncle Vanya (1963 and 1967), Blithe Spirit (1966), A Flea in Her Ear (1968), The Royal Family (1977), Hamlet (1996), and Death of a Salesman (1996).

Ms. Harris returned to Broadway, assuming the role of Mrs. Higgins in Lincoln Center Theater's acclaimed revival of My Fair Lady from September 11, 2018, and remaining with the production through the end of its Broadway run on July 7, 2019.

Ms. Harris was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1986 and in 2019, she received the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.