Biography
Born in Arkansas and schooled in Missouri, actress Tess Harper worked hard to shed her Southern accent. Nevertheless, some of her best movies have been set in the American South. Her film breakthrough came in 1983 opposite
Robert Duvall in
Bruce Beresford's
Tender Mercies. As compassionate Rosa Lee, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. After a few TV movies, miniseries, and feature films, she earned an Oscar nomination for her role of cousin Chick in the comedy drama
Crimes of the Heart. Also directed by Beresford, the film was based on the play by
Beth Henley and starred
Diane Keaton,
Jessica Lange, and
Sissy Spacek. In the late '80s, other comedy roles followed in Beresford's
Her Alibi and
Elaine May's
Ishtar.
Harper began the next decade with a return to her Southern-style roots. In 1990, she starred in the Southern Gothic black comedy Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will? as a greedy daughter fighting for her family fortune. In the drama
My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, she was a sister of a rodeo rider. The actress appeared opposite
Sam Waterston in
Robert Mulligan's coming-of-age drama
The Man in the Moon, also starring fellow Southerner
Reese Witherspoon and set in small-town Louisiana. In 1992, Harper played an alcoholic mom in the drama
Home Fires Burning, set in Pocohantas, VA. She switched to television for most of the '90s, including based-on-a-true-story dramas like Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story. The TV movie
Christy led to a regular role on the CBS dramatic series of the same name, starring
Kellie Martin as a schoolteacher in rural Tennessee. In 2000, Harper narrated the CBS TV movie Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, as the older Laura Ingalls Wilder herself. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide