Ed Harris Relishes Priest Role
Ed Harris is a man with a mission in the new film The Third Miracle.
Recently, CBS News Correspondent Mark McEwen sat down with Harris to talk about the movie and its religious nature.
Harris plays a priest in the movie, and Anne Heche plays the daughter of the woman Harris' character investigates, to see whether or not she has what it takes to be a saint. The story features a statue of the Virgin Mary that reportedly bleeds when it rains.
The tension arises when the priest and the daughter become powerfully attracted to each other.
"Questions of faith are interesting to me," says Harris. "And my own personal relationship with God, whatever that might be, is something I don't spend a lot of time with. And it was great to just have this block of time where I was playing this priest, and to think about the questions he was thinking about for myself."
Harris says the priest he plays is at a point in his life when he's questioning everything he believes in - including his faith and his priesthood.
"He meets this woman and is immensely attracted to her and they, you know - they have a little bit of a liaison. And unfortunately for him, it starts raining and he has to get back to the church because the statue only bleeds when it rains. And I'm not sure what would've happened if it didn't start raining there. I think he might have stopped himself from doing the big deed. I'm not sure."
Harris has been in 50 movies, many of them available on video.
He has good things to say about many of them, including The Truman Show, Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff. But one of the movies that he would especially like people to see is Jackknife.
"It's a film that wasn't hardly in the theaters at all, and I think it's a really good movie. I play a vet, a vietnam vet, and I just think that it has a lot of feeling to itI think it's important in that sense. It meant a lot to a lot of people."
Harris was a baseball and football player when he was younger. When asked what he would choose if he could have either an Oscar or be at-bat in the major leagues, he doesn't hesitate.
"It would be nice if I were up against a knuckleballer so I could at least see the ball! Not that I could hit it. Believe me, I don't know if I'd want an at-bat against Randy Johnson! But if I had a chance at a career, I would have loved to be a baseball catcher."