The two “really bad films” Ed Harris regrets making: “It’s not totally worthless”
Ed Harris always thought he was going to be an athlete as a teenager, but like many dreams we have when we’re young, they don’t always come true.
He soon realised that he wasn’t cut out for a career in the world of sports. What could he do now? Some trips to the theatre solidified his newfound interest, with a specific actor named Pat Rucker inspiring something within him.
He told The Guardian, “He had such vitality and was having such a good time and the audience applauded him so freely and wonderfully that I remember sitting there one night thinking, ‘Maybe I can do that. Instead of scoring a touchdown.’ That was my initial impulse, you know?”
Harris evidently made the right decision, because he began his career in the mid-1970s, and by 1983, he had broken into Hollywood with his role in Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff. Over the coming years, everything from Glengarry Glen Ross to Apollo 13 allowed Harris to establish his place in the industry as a star. And he’s a versatile one, too, with Harris playing his fair share of characters over the years, from Jackson Pollock to Ludwig van Beethoven.
It seems like Harris is down for movies that challenge him, whether that be a blockbuster or a slightly more subversive title, as demonstrated by his appearances in the likes of both the controversial psychological horror film mother! and the Tom Cruise vehicle Top Gun: Maverick.
Despite the success he has garnered over the years, Harris still has his regrets, as most actors do. It’s rare you’ll find a star who doesn’t have a few misfires under their belt that they wish they’d never appeared in, but life’s too short to dwell on the movies you’d rather have not done.
Harris has his regrets, but he doesn’t look back on them too negatively. “I did some really bad films in there too, man, I did Needful Things, and Milk Money… We should have those up there, man. There were good comedic moments in Milk Money, it’s not totally worthless,” the actor revealed in the same interview. He even joked that at least they paid well – that’s surely the one thing that stops an actor feeling too regretful about bad choices.
Needful Things was yet another Stephen King adaptation, although it failed to reach the heights of Carrie or The Shining. I don’t think you’ll ever find someone who cites Needful Things as their favourite King movie – you’ve probably never heard of it.
The movie wasn’t a big success, with film critic Roger Ebert writing, “Needful Things is yet another one of those films based on a Stephen King story that inspires you to wonder why his stories don’t make better films.” Brutal.
Meanwhile, Milk Money, which was released the following year in 1994, was a disastrous romantic comedy which was destined to be bad from the premise alone. It revolves around a group of boys who are desperate to see a naked woman, with a romantic relationship forming between Harris’ Tom, the father of one of these kids, and Melanie Griffiths’ V, a prostitute who is willing to show her breasts to the children. There’s no wonder he wants to forget about that one.
