Ed Harris debunks his bizarre quote at N.J.’s Jon Bon Jovi rest area
Ed Harris does not, in fact, think acting is like a touchdown.
If you’ve ever stopped at the Jon Bon Jovi Service Area on the Garden State Parkway, you’ve probably noticed the inspirational quotes from famous New Jerseyans that decorate the rest stop, including one from Westworld star Ed Harris, who is quoted as saying, “Acting is like scoring a touchdown.”
No, we don’t know what it means either, but it is printed on a pillar in the rest area.
And, it turns out, Harris never actually said it. The quote attributed to him is actually an over-paraphrased line concocted by the New Jersey Hall of Fame, according to a report from Defector.
Harris, who hails from Tenafly in Bergen County, was inducted into the hall of fame in 2020. He played football growing up in Jersey, so, yes, he knows what both scoring a touchdown and acting feel like, but that doesn’t make the quote make sense.
But as Harris told Defector, the quote was paraphrased from a story he told about realizing that his sports career was over, and that acting might be similar in terms of audience adulation.
“I said at one point, when I was deciding what to do with my life, having realized my athletic career was over with and having seen a wonderful actor at the [Oklahoma University] summer theater and the people applauding and cheering for his performance,” Harris told Defector, “I thought to myself: ‘Maybe I could do that … acting — and have people applaud like when I scored touchdowns.’”
But Harris’ quote is not the only inaccurate one at the rest area.
Beloved poet Walt Whitman, for example has the quote “Be curious, not judgmental,” which he never said. As Walt Whitman Archive codirector Ed Folsom told Snopes in 2021, that quote is “one of ten or fifteen ‘quotes’ often falsely attributed to Whitman.”
Philosophers Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato — who are not from New Jersey, as far as we know — also got a similar treatment with the concept of “arête,” which New Jersey Hall of Fame signs define as “the act of actualizing one’s highest and best sense of self, with a moral excellence of character, and for the greater good.” That definition is collectively attributed to the famed philosophers, who rest stops signs say lived in 2,500 B.C. (they did not).
Arête is an actual concept, and Defector reports that it’s fair to attribute it to all three philosophers. But none of them actually defined it by the terms shown on the hall of fame’s signs.
But as for Harris’ quote, its days may be numbered. Harris has reportedly asked the New Jersey Hall of Fame to remove the quote from the rest area.