- Jessica Harper
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Jessica Harper 
Harper on the red carpet at the 62nd Annual Academy Awards, March 1990Born October 10, 1949
Chicago, IllinoisSpouse Tom Rothman, Co-Chairman of 20th Century Fox Jessica Harper (born October 10, 1949) is an American actress and producer, as well as a singer and author of children's music and books.
Contents
Early life
Harper was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Eleanor (née Emery), a writer, and Paul Church Harper, Jr., a painter and the former chairman of the Needham Harper Worldwide advertising agency in New York.[1][2][3] She attended the North Shore Country Day School and Sarah Lawrence College.[4] She has three brothers including a twin brother, William Harper, a composer, Sam Harper, a screenwriter and director, Charles Harper, and two sisters, Lindsay Harper duPont[2] and Diana Harper.
Career
Harper has appeared in more than twenty motion pictures, most notably Dario Argento's horror classic Suspiria, alongside Peter O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker in My Favorite Year, as Phoenix in Phantom of the Paradise, and as Janet Majors in Shock Treatment, where she demonstrated great skills as a singer in the rock/pop style. She costarred with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in Pennies from Heaven. Woody Allen featured her in his films Stardust Memories and Love and Death. She appeared in the fourth season of It's Garry Shandling's Show and in the Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise film Minority Report. She was most recently seen in a 2005 episode ("Forget Me Not") of the television series Crossing Jordan.
She has written eleven books for children, and made seven albums of songs for children. She was named by Parenting magazine as "Parent of the Month" in 2004. In 2000, she sang background vocals on selected tracks on the Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks album Beatin' the Heat.
In December 2010, Harper released a cookbook titled The Crabby Cook Cookbook: Recipes and Rants. In a January 2011 interview [5] Harper, explained the book as "I thought it was high time there was a book that acknowledged that not everybody experiences the joy of cooking, that sometimes cooking for a family on a daily basis can be really irritating! This book, with 135 easy recipes, is for those people, crabby cooks like me! It’s a collection of humor, survival tips and recipes, for the kitchen-challenged!"
As of March 2011, she is currently on tour promoting her book. Stops include Chicago,[6] where she held a "Lunch and Learn with Jessica Harper". Guests were invited to meet Jessica and discuss her current book.[7]
Family
Harper is married to Thomas Edgar Rothman.[2] She is mother of two, Elizabeth and Nora, who are featured on her children's albums and books.
References
External links
Categories:- 1949 births
- Actors from Chicago, Illinois
- American film actors
- American television actors
- Living people
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