Rarely does an actor get to come out of the gates with a screen debut as memorable as Tender Mercies, in which Tess Harper plays Rosa Lee, a Baptist Vietnam War widow who runs a small Texas motel and provides comfort to Robert Duvall's burnt-out country singer Mac Sledge. She followed that up a few years later with Crimes of the Heart, receiving a supporting actress Oscar nomination for her comic turn as Chick Boyle, the MaGrath sisters' bitchy cousin. Audiences might also remember Harper for her solid body of television movie work—Road to Galveston being her personal favorite. But Harper has also devoted a substantial amount of time to pursuing work in small independent films such as Sam Shepard's Far North, Stacy Cochran's My New Gun, and Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon. She has also served as an 11th vice president of the Screen Actors Guild and is a current national board member.
A native of Arkansas, Harper studied theatre at Southwest Missouri State University before moving to Texas, where she worked for the next eight years in regional theatre and commercials. Her big break came when Texas casting director Shari Rhodes suggested that director Bruce Beresford—then working on his first American film—audition a few women from Texas for the role of Rosa Lee.
Getting her break and going West: "I immediately got an agent, of course, because I had this incredible reel from Tender Mercies and they gave me outtakes to use," says Harper. "But I waited about 14 months for it to come out, so that was kind of scary, but I immediately started getting auditions when I came out here."
She says she had little trouble adjusting to Los Angeles and to the industry. "I have a degree in theatre, and I think people with a theatre background adjust more easily because they develop their work ethic through their education," says Harper. "Getting a degree in theatre, you do every job behind the stage, you have a basic understanding of production, so that's what I did. It was an easy transition. The first day in L.A. after shooting Tender Mercies, I said, 'I'm home. This makes perfect sense to me.'"
The hard part: "Work is always fun. It's getting the work that makes life difficult," notes Harper. "Once you have the job, then all of your creative processes kick in. For me, it's always about doing the work. It's about being allowed to do the work, and the hardest thing is to get people to consider you for the work. I think it's a buyer's market, and it amazes me how uncreative casting people are. Once you get a good pigeonhole, they don't want you out of it. And once you get your mortgage payment and your debt, then you are really limited in your choices because you just have to work."
Union dues: Harper became actively involved in the union in 2000, the same year as the commercials contract strike—though Harper had a different issue at the forefront of her mind. "I'd done a lot of work in Canada because I made my living doing movies of the week for a very long time, and all of those started moving to Canada," recalls Harper. "Then one day I got offered a role, and they said, 'We will not pass through your pension and health to SAG.' The producers were saying, 'It's a deal breaker,' and I said, 'That's just union-busting.' So I went down [to SAG], and luckily I got there about the same time as some other people who really wanted to get Global Rule One enforced, and the producers were idiots in making health a deal breaker. So it was easy to organize those actors so we could pass Global Rule One.
"I don't have any children of my own, and I have been a kind of surrogate mom to a lot of people over the years," adds Harper. "My maternal instinct was to try to help keep the business in a way that people starting out will have a career in this business instead of having a five-year run and then having it be over. I have a degree in education. I took that degree and my interest in helping people [get] work and understand the work, and that took me to the union. Acting is a profession where people will do it for free, so when you become a professional you've got to say, 'I'd like money for doing this thing that I'd do for free.' You have to develop some sort of business sense along with the artistic sense, and that's hard."
Pet issues: "I think consolidation is the only way to move into the future," says Harper. "I believe that all actors should work under one contract. With health and pension so difficult to attain because of the high cost of medical care, and because of the way that we negotiate and that there are two unions who can vie for that work, the only way to keep our wages up is to have one union that speaks for all actors."
Independent woman: As is the case with most talented women over 50, Harper admits that the good roles get harder to come by. She sees independent films as an important place for women of all ages to stretch out. "I come from a generation of incredibly talented actresses," says Harper. "And I think it was always tough competition. And now that there are fewer roles, it's even tougher competition. I think we are youth-driven, especially television, and that's where the work is now in my business. Feature films are an international product, and if it weren't for little independent films—where the actresses do not get paid full scale—we wouldn't be able to round out our acting categories in the Oscar race. Charlize Theron did not make her normal salary for Monster, but that was the only way she was going to get to show her versatility, and she understood that. But the roads have always been hard for women because this business is predominantly written by young men who haven't come to terms with their feelings about their mothers—so how can they write for someone who is old enough to be their mother?"
Meet Tess Harper at ActorFest!
Tess Harper will be appearing on May 8 at ActorFest, Back Stage West's annual day for actors. Harper will speak at our 9 a.m. seminar called, "Ready on Cue: A Sit-down with SAG" at the Universal Hilton. See ad on page 18 for details.