Jessica Harper

Attractive, bright-eyed, and talented leading lady with a winning smile and a soothingly placid quality. Harper's early roles had her playing nice girls surrounded and eventually impinged on by corruption in several diverse genre films of the 1970s. She sparkled in Brian De Palma's initially underrated rock musical "Phantom of the Paradise" (1974) as Phoenix, an aspiring recording artist who willingly sells out to become a star. After a small part in Woody Allen's "Love and Death" (1975), Harper won positive notices for her performance in the largely reviled erotic period film "Inserts" (1975), as the girlfriend of a porno backer during 1930s Hollywood. She proved a hardy and resourceful heroine in Italian horror meister Dario Argento's "Suspiria" (1976) as a new student at a very odd school for girls.