Edna Harris

Born

1976-07-26

Birthplace

New York City, New York, USA

Biography

An actress/writer/director/producer/stand-up comic, Edna Julie Harris was born on June 26, 1976 in New York City. Her show biz career began at age 3, as a model for print advertisements. By age 6, she was performing in local theatre, doing commercials and lending her voice to numerous voice-overs and jingles for radio and television commercials (in fact as a child Harris recorded over 200 voice-overs for radio, television, and animation). She also landed a role on Broadway, at age 9, in The Marriage of Figaro, starring Christopher Reeve. She made numerous television appearances, including at age 11 having a supporting role in a 1988 made-for-television movie, Gryphon, starring Amanda Plummer (the movie was later released on home-video in 1990). Her writing talents also developed early on, and teachers and family members remember even as a child, Harris was a "very prolific" writer. At age 13, she became published for the first time, and has since gone on to have various writings published as well as received numerous writing awards. Her career as a stand-up comic began at the tender age of 14, when she started to write and perform a comedy routine around some of Manhattan's top comedy clubs (she was considered one of the youngest comics ever to work the nightclub scene). She also began to study and perform comedy improvisation. By age 17, she was teaching comedy improvisation and directing it. After high school, she attended college, with a major in filmmaking to the School of Visual Arts in New York. Harris had won a four-year merit scholarship to the film school, based on a student film she had written and directed when she was still in high school. In fact, Harris directed her first short movie at age 10, when she used her family's home video camera (saved up her allowance) and auditioned real actors for parts, so it came as no surprise when after receiving her BFA in film directing in 1999, she formed her first production company. Harris' first independent film project, "Generation Gap", aired on PBS in 2004. Harris wrote, directed, co-produced and co-starred in the role of "Julie" in the project. Her project co-starred Aileen Quinn former child star of the 1982 classic film, "Annie".