Queen Of Stage Julie Harris Is Back -- At 72, The Still-Luminous Actress Takes Time To Savor The `Scent Of The Roses' At Act

Julie Harris is in Seattle, and savoring every minute of it.

The famed actress is visiting Pike Place Market and sampling downtown bistros. She has plans to see Seattle Opera's "Tristan and Isolde" and catch the reissue of "Gone with the Wind."

But at 72, instead of simply reveling in retirement, Harris still spends most of her time in the place she loves best: the theater. In Seattle, it's A Contemporary Theatre, where she is rehearsing a new play by South African author Lisette Lecat Ross. Titled "Scent of the Roses," it begins previews at ACT on Friday.

The shiny copper-red hair is graying now, the sensitive face as softly lined as aged bone china. But Harris remains an avid trouper, with the same zest for life that has illuminated many of her best performances.

During a hearty recent dinner of lamb shanks and wild mushroom soup, washed down with a glass of chardonnay, the five-time Tony Award winner responded graciously to questions about her distinguished 50-year stage and film career.

Harris is not one to dwell on past glories, however. Recently she filmed two TV movies ("Ellen Foster" and "Love is Strange"), appeared in another South African play (Athol Fugard's "The Road to Mecca") and shone in a Broadway revival of "The Gin Game," opposite Charles Durning.

Nor does she cling jealously to her signature roles. Asked about Natasha Richardson's Broadway success as madcap Sally Bowles in "Cabaret," Harris smiled and rummaged in a roomy handbag. Out came an article about the various incarnations of Bowles, from Harris's acclaimed original portrayal in the 1952 play "I Am a Camera" to Richardson's "Cabaret" stand.

"I haven't seen Natasha's performance yet, but I think it's all very exciting," Harris said, her brown eyes aglow. "I'm so glad the role is still out there in the world.

"You know, I loved Liza Minnelli in the movie `Cabaret,' " but it was nothing like what we did in the play. Liza was a superstar. My Sally was not. I was a lousy - well, a passable - singer. I saw Sally as very much an escaped schoolgirl on a lark."

Nor does Harris feel she has a lock on the poet Emily Dickinson, the subject of the hit play "The Belle of Amherst." Harris loved Dickinson's poetry, commissioned a solo homage to her by playwright William Luce and premiered the script in Seattle before taking it on to great success in New York and London. Now Harris seems most interested in how Mexican, Swedish and Japanese actresses are handling the role.

Such collegiality, and a fierce dedication to her craft, make Harris an inspiration to her colleagues.

"Julie's a very rare bird, and, sadly, a dying species of star who is truly devoted to the theater," says "Scent of the Roses" director and ACT artistic head Gordon Edelstein.

"Her presence just lights up a rehearsal. She's not a flashy, showy actor, though she has enormous skill and technique. But what strikes you most is her extraordinary truthfulness, this depth of humanity and profound sweetness that becomes a kind of opium in the room."

Though Harris helped found the fabled Actor's Studio, and studied with method-acting guru Lee Strasberg, she "never liked to sit at the feet of any master."

Her artistic credo remains simple: "If you are intensely attentive to what a character is going through, it leads you down the right path. Acting is always an adventure, and a struggle, and a quest to find the truth."

Her own quest began in wealthy Grosse Point, Mich., where as the daughter of a financial investor, she developed a burning desire to act and a hatred of social inequity.

"I've always said I grew up in paradise," she recalls, "but I looked over the fence and saw a lot of suffering. I knew I was privileged, but seeing a lot of evil and prejudice made me very sad. I didn't want to be part of it, so I left."

While Harris was still in her 20s, her New York career shot off like a rocket. She charmed as blithe Sally in "I Am a Camera," awkward Frankie in Carson McCuller's "The Member of the Wedding" and valiant Joan of Arc in "The Lark."

"My early success in the theater wasn't overwhelming, not the way it would be now for young people," she notes. "Today you're suddenly showered with film and TV offers."

Harris did snag Emmy Awards for TV work in "Little Moon of Alban" and "Victoria Regina." And she was luminous opposite James Dean in the 1955 film "East of Eden."

But it took her decades to master camera acting, she claims.

"Fred Zinnemann kept telling me `do less, do less' when he directed the film of `Member of the Wedding.' I finally began to get it right in `The Hiding Place"' - a 1975 movie, about Dutch Christians who sheltered Jews in World War II."

And she never kept away from theater for long, sneaking in plays even during a seven-year stint on the TV soap "Knots Landing".

In ACT's "Scent of the Roses," she stars as Annalise Morant, an elderly, well-to-do South African woman who shocks her family by confronting some long-held secrets and regrets. Jessalyn Gilsig plays Annalise's naive younger self, Ntare Mwine is a black painter she loves and veteran Seattle Repertory Theatre actor William Biff McGuire is an empathetic art dealer who helps her with some unfinished business.

What drew Harris to "Roses"?

"I am fascinated by people who have secrets, especially people who keep secrets to the grave," she reflects.

"I see Annalise as a very gentle soul, who can't bear the fact of apartheid but didn't have the strength to fight against it as a young person. She was decent and kind to black people, but only late in life finds a kind of heroism to do what she really feels is right."

To Harris, the play "is about love, true love, which really doesn't have anything to do with sex. I adore what St. Paul said: `Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.' When you truly love someone, it's forever."

Edelstein says he pursued Harris for the Seattle premiere because "I needed a glowing soul at the center of this play - and who better?"

The enthusiasm of a fellow actor helped convince her to accept the offer. This spring, while performing "Power Plays" at ACT, Alan Arkin told Harris "how much he loved this theater, this city, these audiences. But I don't think real actors mind going wherever the work is."

The long-divorced Harris occasionally snatches a little down time at her home on Cape Cod. (Her only child, Peter, also lives in New England.) But her 1998 calendar is, typically, packed with more work projects: a tour of "Gin Game" with Durning ("It's not coming to Seattle, but I wish it was!"), more films, a new solo play about a Gertrude Stein intimate, Alice B. Toklas.

Wherever she goes, Harris explores, reads the newspaper voraciously ("Isn't it incredible what's happening in China?") and keeps up-to-date on new films and plays.

The trouping continues. But can there be any show-biz glory left for an actress already so steeped in honors and acclaim? Sipping coffee, Harris has a down-to-earth reply.

"The work itself is the glory," she said. "In the end, that is all it's really about." ------------------------------- More on Julie Harris In Seattle "Scent of the Roses" begins previews Friday at A Contemporary Theatre, 700 Union St., Seattle. It opens July 23 and runs through Aug. 16; $19-38, 206-292-7676.

On video These movies capture Harris at her best on film: "The Member of the Wedding" (1952) "East of Eden" (1955) "I Am a Camera" (1955) "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1962) "The Haunting" (1963) "The Hiding Place" (1975)