By Jason Bailey
Actress Jessica Harper was first profiled in The New York Times on Aug. 19, 1977. The occasion was the release of the Italian horror film “Suspiria,” and much was made of the fact that she had turned down a small role in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall.” She explained, “I would have loved to do ‘Annie Hall’ but this was a big role and it meant going to Rome. I couldn’t pass it up, but I don’t know if it was a wise choice.”
And so, in a video conversation with Harper about her new film, “Nightbitch,” I had the rare opportunity to ask a 47-years-later follow-up question: Was it, in fact, a wise choice?
“More than wise, it was a brilliant choice,” she said with a laugh. “‘Suspiria’ turned out to be what I think is a gorgeous movie in its genre, and I’m really proud to be in it — and quite amazed, and yet not entirely surprised, by its long, long, long-term success.”
“Suspiria” was a game-changer for Harper twice — first in 1977, when it confirmed her as one of the most charismatic yet unpredictable actors of her generation, and then again in 2018, when Luca Guadagnino remade the film and offered Harper her first major role in a feature film in 16 years. “I felt really lucky to be able to have an opportunity to jump back in,” she said cheerfully, adding, “He’s such a wild, mad, creative person, and I love working with him.” But even more, she was eager to “go back to Italy and step back into bigger features than I had been focusing on for a long time.”
Those include “Nightbitch,” about a mother, played by Amy Adams, who finds herself growing feral as she copes with her decision to stay at home with her husband, who’s often absent. Adams, also a producer on the film, said Harper had “this great sort of grounded mysticism that I thought was really beautiful,” explaining that the veteran brought “a wisdom” to the film. She added, “The relationship became very clear when she got onto set. And I always love that, when you’re working with an actor, and you have it on the page, and you’re exploring what that relationship means.”
Harper’s hiatus from the big screen was mostly by choice, stepping out of the spotlight to get married and raise a family, though she took pains to keep her creative muscles in shape. “I wrote a dozen children’s books and created several albums of family music,” she said. “So I found other outlets for creativity.” But she would not have imagined that kind of self-imposed exile when she began acting in 1969, as part of the company of “Hair.”
She came from a big Midwestern family (detailed in her delightful and thoughtful memoir podcast, “Winnetka”), one of six children born to conservative parents. “You wouldn’t think that they would be the kind of people who would applaud their daughter when she got a role on Broadway, appearing naked in front of 700 people eight shows a week,” she said with a chuckle, “but it was actually my mother who suggested that I try out for that show” after seeing an article in the Times.
She followed that up with an off-Broadway hit, “Dr. Selavy’s Magic Theater,” that drew rave reviews and theatergoers like Brian De Palma.
The up-and-coming director was casting for his gonzo horror musical comedy “Phantom of the Paradise,” and he wanted Harper to audition for the role of the ingénue. Despite never having appeared in a film before, Harper won the part (over such competitors as Linda Ronstadt), and found herself thrust into a chaotic production. “They say, ‘Hit your marks,’” she recalled. “Then they say, ‘Look camera left.’ I’m going, ‘Whose left? Your left, or my left?’ I didn’t know anything.” She learned quickly. Her electrifying work in “Phantom” caught the eye of the Italian genre maestro Dario Argento, who offered her the lead in “Suspiria.”
“I kind of loved it,” she confessed, “because, especially at that time in my life, I wasn’t really scared of anything. I was not risk averse, and so everything in life was a welcome adventure — particularly going to this strange city, and nobody on the crew, or very few, spoke English.”
So she learned some Italian, and “I remember at a certain point, just becoming entirely comfortable with what I was doing.” That confidence carried her through the next several years, as she continued to work with boundary-breaking directors in risky but rewarding projects.
But as the ’80s dawned, something changed for Harper, and it wasn’t just the studios (and the culture) becoming more conservative. After she co-starred with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in “Pennies From Heaven,” a downbeat Depression-era musical, and she recalled that after that film opened, “going home in a limousine by myself to my little house in Laurel Canyon, I thought, ‘You know, I need to populate my life a little better.’ I really got to that age where I wanted to zero in on making a family.”
In 1989, she married Tom Rothman, now the chair of Sony Pictures, and had two children pretty rapidly. “That changed life radically, obviously,” she said.
She didn’t stop acting altogether, “but it was more local stuff and television, and not as many features, which generally require that you travel to Yugoslavia or someplace.”
There were occasional showcase roles (“Safe” for Todd Haynes in 1995 was one; Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” in 2002 was another), “but for many years, I was, shall we say, struggling with the work-motherhood balance” — as Amy Adams’ character is in “Nightbitch.”
She wanted to be closer to her daughters and didn’t want to travel. However, she found ways to combine family and art, most notably by writing children’s books (some of which are illustrated by her sister, Lindsay Harper duPont.) “It just became a way to satisfy the creative drive while kind of involving my children in the process,” she said. Now that her girls are grown, she’s been able to indulge in a wider array of projects; she wrote, edited and narrated the “Winnetka” podcast, penned a cookbook and just completed a memoir prompted by the time she spent with her family during the COVID lockdown.
And now she’s acting again. After “Suspiria,” Guadagnino cast her in his follow-up film, “Bones and All.” Last year, she turned up in the indie drama “Memory”; she’s appeared in multiple episodes of the series “See,” “Fatal Attraction,” and “The Old Man.”
“I’m happy to say that more unusual movies have found me, and I have found them,” she said, adding, “I feel as though there’s always something groundbreaking and fun going on.” For “Nightbitch” — in which, in a nod to her life, she plays a children’s librarian — she was cast “the old-fashioned way: I auditioned, and lo and behold, they offered me a role. It was really quite straightforward.”
“I definitely would like to keep doing that, and hopefully some interesting roles will come my way,” Harper said. “I’m so excited to be on a roll. I’m having a really wonderful time.”
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