Jessica Harper

The Scream That Came from Broadway

In 1974, Brian De Palma was looking for a voice capable of carrying a satanic musical, and Jessica Harper showed up with a fragility that fooled everyone at first glance. She didn't fit the beauty standards of the era. She had oversized eyes and a solid theater background that set her apart from the usual hopefuls in Los Angeles.

She accepted the role of Phoenix in Phantom of the Paradise after auditioning for the cast of Hair in New York. Her performance blended innocence with a raw ambition that jumped off the screen. The soundtrack sold thousands of copies in Canada while critics in the United States didn't know what to make of the film.

She took on the challenge without looking back.

Dario Argento invited her to shoot in Italy three years later. The shoot for Suspiria in 1977 was a test of physical and mental endurance. Harper spent hours under primary-colored lights and rain machines that never stopped running. But she brought a much-needed restraint amid the visual excess of the Italian school.

In 1981, she starred in Shock Treatment, the spiritual follow-up to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The film spectacularly flopped at the box office. That commercial setback didn't stop her, because that same year she worked under Herbert Ross in Pennies from Heaven alongside Steve Martin.

The industry never quite knew where to place her.

The Years of Voluntary Silence

In the mid-eighties, her presence in major productions began to dwindle. It wasn't a fall from grace but a matter of priorities. She married Fox executive Tom Rothman in 1989 and decided that the demands of film shoots didn't fit with her new family life.

But Harper didn't stand still. She focused on writing stories and music for children. She published more than a dozen children's books and recorded seven albums aimed at younger audiences. She managed to sell two million copies of her books without having to walk a red carpet for a decade.

She focused on writing short stories.

In 1996, she appeared in Boys, and a year later she had a supporting role in Minority Report by Steven Spielberg. These brief appearances reminded audiences that her gaze was still as sharp as ever. But her real interest lay in independent production and in projects that would let her control her own schedule.

In 2018, Luca Guadagnino asked her to return to the world of Suspiria for the remake. She didn't reprise her role as Suzy Bannion; instead, she played Anke, the psychologist's missing wife. It was a gesture of respect for her career that critics praised unanimously.

In 2022, she worked on the film Bones and All under the direction of Guadagnino himself. During 2024, she appeared in the second season of the series The Old Man, playing Cheryl Chase. At 74 years old, she still owns the intellectual property rights to her entire children's music catalog, managed through her own digital platform.

In 2019, she launched the podcast Winnetka, a documentary production in which she narrates her family's story herself through original audio recordings from the 1950s.