Mel Harris’ life has been a series of transitions, from model to television actress, a venture into films, and now, with a lead role in an independent film, “Suture.”
For Harris, who is accustomed to being before the camera, the transition into a starring role on screen was relatively seamless.
On an unusually warm afternoon in January at the Sundance Film festival, in Park City, Utah, Harris snaked through a frenetic room populated by agents, hustlers and journalists. At 5 feet 8, the former model was a striking figure.
The Sundance festival was designed as a launching pad for the unknown, where young actresses and directors try to parlay the buzz around their projects into three-picture deals, and Harris was a valuable commodity, thanks to a four-year stint as Hope Steadman on the ABC drama, “thirtysomething.”
But she was in Park City, accompanied by her husband, actor Cotter Smith, to talk about her role in “Suture,” a hypnotic, black-and-white thriller by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, young San Francisco-based filmmakers. The small, independently made film may be important for Harris: It could prove her work isn’t limited to television.
“Suture” is a film about race, class, memory and identity, made in the form of a ’60s thriller. Harris plays a gilded, highly accomplished plastic surgeon named Renee Descartes.
The plot concerns the interlocking fates of half-brothers, one a wealthy, white industrialist played by Michael Harris, the other a working-class-black man played by Dennis Haysbert, who become intertwined in a murder case. When Haysbert is left disfigured and amnesiac following a car explosion, Harris’ character must reconstruct his face from photos and video images.
The film was made on the run as the first-time directors scrambled for money to complete production. Unknown to Harris and the rest of the cast, the directors initiated the shoot without having enough money to complete the work. Harris didn’t care about any of that.
Harris, who turned 37 this month, followed her gut instinct. She was attracted to the part right away and was impressed by the youthfulness and excitement McGehee and Siegel invoked.
“I read the script, and it was the slowest I ever read a script,” she said. “It’s the kind of story where just as you start to get into it, you think, `Wait a minute, it’s time to slow down and increase your comprehension.’
“I met with David and Scott, and I fell madly in love with both of them. They were creative, honest and very funny.
“I was committed to making the film. I had no idea how nice a work experience it would be. I would say it was probably the best work experience I ever had. Not that I haven’t had other good ones-there’s something about everybody being there, and it’s not about the money. We’d walk in and look at sets that were made on a very inexpensive budget, and we all thought they were so incredible and perfect. We all really cared about project.”
Harris’ Descartes character is a driven woman drawn to the rigor, beauty and clinical precision of her work. But Descartes supplies the film’s emotional center, when in the process of transforming Haysbert’s face and helping him restore his memory, she falls in love with him.
“Her coldness is a very calculated thing because I think it enhances the trappings of what she is: the nice clothes, the Jaguar, the opera and the evening dress,” Harris said, “not to say that she’s shallow because I don’t think she is, but she’s a little bit elitist.”
Because “Suture” is designed as a puzzle, a movie of elaborate guises and impersonations, the pressure is on Harris to supply the clues. Asked to talk about her working methods, she turns away from the individual to invoke the collective.
From her perspective, movie acting is a democratic process.
“As actors, we try to make it work as actors, the emotion for the scene, what feels comfortable. I know about the production side. I know about lighting; I know about lenses. To incorporate all of those things into the performance only adds to it. I’m one of those people who believes in the whole of it all. I think everybody on the crew is just as important as I am. I honestly think we’re all there together.”
In a larger sense, the film is part of Harris’ own career trajectory, a somewhat-amazing odyssey that has carried her from North Brunswick, N.J., to points all over the world.
Before her work on “thirtysomething,” she was a virtual unknown. Now she has a recognizable face and frequently appears on 10 most beautiful women lists. Harris has also coveted the family life, including marriage and children.
Her father, Warren, was a football coach, the longtime defensive coordinator at Princeton University. Her mother, Mary, taught science at the North Brunswick high school Harris attended. Her given name, Mary Ellen, proved too difficult for her younger sister to pronounce when they were growing up, so she was known for a while as Melon, which eventually metamorphosized into Mel.
After high school, she was accepted at Barnard College at Columbia University with the intention of studying law.
“A friend of my sister’s said I should go to New York and model,” Harris said. “At the time, I wasn’t really interested, then she told me how much money I could make, and I thought, `I could pay for college that way.’ “
Working with the Wilhelmina agency, Harris did print ads and commercial spots for cosmetics and skin care products. She delayed her entry into Barnard and eventually abandoned the idea of college in favor of a nomadic though cultured existence living in Paris, London and Germany.
She began studying actlng with Method guru Lee Strasberg to refine her technique and develop a more confident presence in front of the camera for her commercial assignments. In the mid-’80s she resettled in Los Angeles with her first husband, photojournalist David Hume Kennerly.
After doing a television movie-of-the-week and some episodic television, Harris’ first break was a small, crucial part in Chicago director Gary Sherman’s 1987 B-movie, “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” Her performance caught the attention of “thirtysomething” creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who cast her in the pivotal role of Hope Steadman.
Running from 1987-91, “thirtysomething” galvanized the public in a way few television programs do, suggesting to a significant portion of the Baby Boomer generation that this socially acute, emotionally powerful series tapped into a very private, personal arena.
Reruns of “thirtysomething” appear twice a day on the Lifetime cable channel, and no matter how removed she is from the program, Harris probably will never extricate herself from what the show represents.
“It’s really interesting to me that (the show) still has this afterlife,” Harris said. “People come up to me every day, even in Los Angeles, which is a very jaded town, and talk about the show, how much they miss it and how they watch it on Lifetime.
“I always felt about the show the reality of it was simply too much for some people. They looked into their own lives and didn’t want to see that on television. You look at television and what’s very popular is escapist. `Roseanne’ isn’t very real, but it’s funny. `60 Minutes’ is probably the only real program on television that’s consistently a top-10 show. `Murder, She Wrote,’ `Dr. Quinn’-it’s all something else; it’s not reflecting straight back on our lives.”
The television show launched Harris’ career but raised a question if her close identification with the show may have an adverse effect. Did her role as Hope in “thirtysomething,” as defender of the nuclear family, deny her a wider range of parts?
“I don’t think it (“thirtysomething”) hampered my career because I haven’t stopped working,” Harris said. “I’ve gone back and forth from film to television. It’s a double-edged sword. I think one of the reasons I was brought onto (“Suture”) was because I have a certain amount of box office power because of the television show.
“I think a bigger part is to have the chance to get into the door and compete (for roles), and I’ve been to the wire with a number of big films that somebody with a bigger box office gets because I don’t know, maybe the studio doesn’t feel the male lead is big enough to carry the film by himself. If you look at the film business, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with your acting ability; it has to do with box office and numbers.”
A larger struggle has been reconciling her career ambition while trying to maintain a bit of normalcy. Harris met Smith when they worked in the 1987 thriller “Cameron’s Closet.” Harris has a 9-year-old son, Byron, from her marriage to Kennerly, and a 3-year-old daughter, Madeline, with Smith.
The sudden fame Harris fell into sometimes brings out a dark side of being a celebrity: receiving strange letters and dealing with over-eager fans and autograph seekers. Harris is contemplative about it all.
“There are people who don’t make it. I have friends who are dead. Many who are dead; their lifestyles and everything just caught up with them. I spent 10 years in the modeling world, and it was a great time to travel the world and make some money.
“I really like what I do and I’m extremely lucky. I love that people support me and care about what I do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a job. If people didn’t come up to me on the street and didn’t talk to me, I could handle that very well. I’m not one of those actors who needs recognition from other people.
“You have to watch your back. I don’t give out my home address. You can’t dial direct into my house. I get weird letters, and I have to pay somebody to check them out. I don’t like being like that, but I am cautionary so I don’t have to be paranoid about it. Fortunately, I don’t have the kind of stardom where I can’t walk down the street.
“I must say that I think I have a pretty boring private life. I’m happily married; I have two kids. I like keeping it that way. Some people build whole careers out of that.”
