Facts about Harry Connick

Harry Connick, Jr. is 57 years old
Best known as: Jazz heartthrob and Independence Day star

     

     

Harry Connick, Jr. Biography

Name at birth: Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr.

Harry Connick, Jr. brought a crooner’s voice, lean good looks and a classic pop sensibility to jazz in the 1990s. His popularity at times earned him comparisons to a young Frank Sinatra,

Harry Connick was a child prodigy in New Orleans, playing piano in French Quarter clubs and rubbing elbows with fellow jazz prodigies Wynton and Branford Marsalis. By 1987 he was playing jazz piano in New York and had released his self-titled first album for Columbia. His 1998 album 20 (named for his age) was later followed by 25 (1992) and 30 (recorded in 1998 but not released until 2002)Oh, My NOLA (2007), In Concert on Broadway (2011), plus many other jazz and swing albums.

Connick composed the score to the 1989 film When Harry Met Sally and later turned to acting himself, playing a WWII flyboy in Memphis Belle (1990), wingman for Will Smith in Independence Day (1996), and a small-town Texas Romeo in Hope Floats (1998, with Sandra Bullock).

His other films include New In Town (2009, with Renee Zellweger), Dolphin Tale and Dolphin Tale 2 (2011 and 2014, both with Ashley Judd), the Christmas weepie Angels Sing (2013) and the creepy thriller Fear of Rain (2021). In 2001 he made his Broadway debut, scoring the New Orleans-tinged musical Thou Shalt Not.  He was named a judge on the reality show American Idol in 2013, joining fellow judges Jennifer Lopez and Keith Urban.

Extra credit

Harry Connick, Jr. married the Victoria’s Secret model Jill Goodacre in 1994. They have three daughters: Georgia (born 1996), Sarah (b. 1997) and Charlotte (b. 2002)… According to Wikipedia, his mother Anita Frances Livingston “was a lawyer and judge in New Orleans and, later, a Louisiana Supreme Court justice,” and his father, “Joseph Harry Fowler Connick, Sr., was the district attorney of Orleans Parish from 1973–2003.”


     

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