Jessica Harper

Jessica Randolph Harper, born October 3, 1949, in Chicago, Illinois, is an American actress, singer, and author whose career has spanned stage, film, and television. The daughter of Eleanor Harper, a writer, and Paul Church Harper Jr., a painter and former chairman of the Needham Harper Worldwide advertising agency, she grew up in the Chicago area and attended the North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, Illinois, before going on to Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

Harper made her Broadway debut in 1968 as a member of the cast of Hair. Her stage work preceded a film career that would bring her widespread recognition across multiple decades and genres.

Her feature film debut came with Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise in 1974, and she followed that with appearances in Woody Allen's Love and Death and Inserts, both in 1975. Allen cast her again in Stardust Memories in 1980. Harper became particularly associated with cult and genre cinema through her portrayal of Suzy Bannion, the protagonist of Dario Argento's Suspiria in 1977, a role she revisited decades later with a supporting appearance in Luca Guadagnino's 2018 remake of the film. In 1981 she took on the role of Janet Weiss in Shock Treatment, the follow-up to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, replacing Susan Sarandon in the part. That same year she appeared alongside Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in Pennies from Heaven. Her 1982 film My Favorite Year featured her alongside Peter O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker.

Additional film credits include The Blue Iguana (1988), Safe (1995), the Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise production Minority Report (2002), Bones and All (2022), and Nightbitch (2024). On television, she appeared in the fourth season of It's Garry Shandling's Show and in a 2005 episode of Crossing Jordan.

Beyond acting, Harper has written eleven children's books and recorded seven albums of songs for children, with titles including A Wonderful Life (1994), Nora's Room (1996), 40 Winks (1998), and Hey, Picasso (2004). In 2000 she contributed background vocals to selected tracks on Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks' album Beatin' the Heat. Parenting magazine named her Parent of the Month in 2004. In December 2010 she published a cookbook, The Crabby Cook Cookbook: Recipes and Rants, containing 135 recipes, and toured in support of the book in early 2011.

Harper married Tom Rothman, a film executive, on March 11, 1989, in an ecumenical ceremony. The couple have two daughters, Elizabeth and Nora. In a 2017 post on her official website, Harper disclosed that she had been living with neovascular macular degeneration for fifteen years and receives injections in her eye every six weeks to manage the condition. She divides her time between Los Angeles, California, and New York City. Among her siblings are her twin brother William Harper, a composer; Sam Harper, a screenwriter and director; Lindsay Harper duPont, an illustrator; Diana Harper, a teacher; and Rev. Charles Harper.