Jessica Harper

Jessica Harper (born October 10, 1949) is an American actress and producer, as well as a singer and author of children’s music and books.

Harper was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Eleanor (née Emery), a writer, and Paul C. Harper, Jr., a painter and the former chairman of the Needham Harper Worldwide advertising agency in New York. She attended the North Shore Country Day School and Sarah Lawrence College. She has three brothers including a twin brother, William Harper, a composer, Sam Harper, a screenwriter, Charles Harper, and two sisters, Lindsay Harper duPont and Diana Harper.

Harper has appeared in more than twenty motion pictures, most notably Dario Argento’s horror classic Suspiria, alongside Peter O’Toole and Mark Linn-Baker in My Favorite Year, as Phoenix in Phantom of the Paradise, and as Janet Majors in Shock Treatment, where she demonstrated great skills as a singer in the rock/pop style. She costarred with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in Pennies from Heaven. Woody Allen featured her in his films Stardust Memories and Love and Death. She appeared in the fourth season of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and in the Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise film Minority Report. She was most recently seen in a 2005 episode (“Forget Me Not”) of the television series Crossing Jordan.

She has written eleven books for children and made seven albums of songs for children. She was named by Parenting magazine as “Parent of the Month” in 2004. In 2000, she sang background vocals on selected tracks on the Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks album Beatin’ the Heat. —wikipedia