Harris was born Julia Ann Harris in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the daughter of Elsie L. (née Smith), a nurse, and William Pickett Harris, an investment banker. She graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, which later merged with two others to form the University Liggett School. In New York City she attended The Hewitt School. As a teenager, she also trained at the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School & Camp in Colorado with Charlotte Perry, a mentor who encouraged Harris to apply to the Yale School of Drama, which she soon attended for a year.
She marked her Broadway debut in the short-lived play "It's a Gift" (1945) and proceeded to establish a lengthy association with the stage, as she performed in a wide range of production during the next five decades as she garnered an astonishing five Tony Awards for her efforts in "I Am a Camera" (1952), "The Lark" (1956), "Forty Carats" (1969), "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln" (1973) and "The Belle of Amherst" (1977). Among directors and fellow actors, she was highly-regarded and greatly admired for her gift of stage presence. She was equally comfortable in motion pictures as she made an immediate impression in 1952 as Frances in "A Member of the Wedding" (her film debut) for which earned her an Academy Award nomination. She will perhaps be remembered mostly by movie audiences for playing Abra in the classic "East of Eden" (1955). Among her other memorable films include "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1962), "The Haunting" (1963), "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967) and "Voyage of the Damned" (1976). She played the role of Lilimae Clements in the TV series "Knots Landing" from 1980 until 1987 and received an Emmy Award nomination in 1982. She was honored by the Kennedy Center in 2005.

Harris continued to work until her death, narrating five historical documentaries by Christopher Seufert and Mooncusser Films, as well as being active as a director on the board of the independent Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. She also did extensive voice work for documentary maker Ken Burns: the voices of Emily Warren Roebling in Brooklyn Bridge, Ann Lee in The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God, Susan B. Anthony in Not For Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and most notably Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut for Burns' 1990 series The Civil War.

In the summer of 2008, she appeared on stage again in her hometown of Chatham as Nanny in a Monomoy Theater production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

Harris battled breast cancer, a severe fall requiring surgery, a stroke in 2001, and a second stroke in 2010. She died on August 24, 2013, of congestive heart failure at her home in West Chatham, Massachusetts, aged 87.

Source: Wikipedia.org