Upright & Personal

The actor who plays the president in Air Force One is harder to crack than the U.S. nuclear missle codes. What’s Harrison Ford’s big secret?

The instant Harrison Ford steps out of his chauffeur-driven sedan onto Madison Avenue in New York and begins the short walk into the Sony Corporation headquarters for an interview, he attracts attention. It's not that his clothes are flashy. He blends in perfectly with the other successful-looking businessmen, in their dark suits and loafers, hurrying by at this lunchtime rush hour. It's his walk - shoulders leading the way - that makes people stop and step back for the man plowing toward the door. And then they notice that the man trying desperately not to be noticed is their hero.

Ford has played the role of America's savior for 20 years. With remarkable consistency, in each of his films, he accepts the call to adventure, goes deep into enemy territory and saves his family, his country's honor, or other priceless intangibles, using a mix of brains and brawn. He always returns with the Grail.

Now, Ford is bringing this can-do integrity to the role of the U.S. president in Air Force One. In a year in which films like Absolute Power and Murder at 1600 portray our nation's leader as corrupt, it seems fitting that Ford should be the star chosen to restore honor to the presidency “I can't think of anyone in the industry who would make a better real president than Harrison,” says his longtime agent, Patricia McQueeney, whose only client is Ford. “He's very stern.” Even David Letterman got excited about the concept. “You're the ass-kickin’ president,” he told a beaming Ford, when the actor appeared on his show recently. Then Letterman repeatedly flashed the moniker onscreen.

But for Ford, Air Force One was just another acting job, the best work available at the time. He decided to play a commander in chief who battles Kazakhstani terrorists aboard the presidential aircraft, because the script is, he says, “a damn good yarn, well told.” The studio paid his price of $20 million. He sees no evolution from his past roles to this one. Ford didn't even draw much from his casual friendship with Bill Clinton, whom he first met at the president's birthday party in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in August 1995. “I don't base the character on President Clinton in any way, shape, or form,” Ford says, once our interview has commenced in the large Sony dining room. “I spent a short but sufficient period of time [with the president] to get a sense of the flavor of the air around him. I'm much more interested in the relationships between him and those people who can fill his needs and how that feels.”

In Air Force One, Ford, as president, declares that morality will supercede political concerns in dealing with terrorists. “[Americans] would like to believe we're capable of having a president who would make that statement, follow through on it, and be judged by his ambition when he couldn't make that happen,” Ford states. Then he hesitates: “But we were merely referencing a political reality to create a dramatic context.”

Ford understands, though, why others read meaning into the fact that he is the star chosen to play an honorable leader. “I am an actor,” Ford says, pausing between each word. “That's what I do. As a matter of cultural utility, I am assigned a certain role. If I stick to that assignment, then everything's fine.”

While most actors will wax on about their personal travails, or at the very least their political causes, Ford is guarded to the point that he has made reticence a part of his job description. “At the very beginning of my career, I said that I don't want people to know what I like, what I don't like, who I am, where I live, how I live, what the names of my children are. Shit, that's completely contrary to the effort that I'm making when I go into the theater, which is to try and get them to believe that I'm somebody else. Discussing my personal life is contrary to achieving any efficiency in doing the job.”

So what does Ford say when asked, for example, about the breakup of his first marriage or his relationship with the children it produced: Benjamin, 30, and Willard, 28? “I say it's none of your fuckin’ business.”

He actually swears at reporters?

“Well, they never print that,” he says with a laugh. “Depending on the day, I might say something more socially palatable, but I will not discuss my personal life. I don't think it's right, and I'm not interested.”

Ford also feels it's reckless for an actor to use his fame to advance a political or social cause. “I don't talk about religion, politics, or money - by breeding and training,” he says. McQueeney, who has known Ford for 27 years, says she doesn't even know if he's a Democrat or Republican.

Herein lies the peculiar reality of Harrison Ford. He is the most successful actor in film history, having starred in seven of the 30 top-grossing films of all time. His work - particularly the Star Wars trilogy, the Raiders of the Lost Ark trilogy, Witness, Working Girl, his two turns as the Tom Clancy hero Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger and The Fugitive - has become so ingrained in American culture that it is hard to fathom. Yet Ford has no movie-star desire to be personally loved. He simply wants to be respected for doing his job and then be left alone. In his ideal vision of himself, the 55-year-old is not a hero but the highest-paid blue-collar worker in the world.

There seems to be little in Ford's past to explain how he became the country's everyman action star - or even what compelled him to go into acting. He grew up Harry Ford in the Chicago suburbs of Des Plaines and Morton Grove, the son of an advertising executive and a homemaker. In grade school, he was worryingly passive. Regularly, he would be beaten up by a group of bullies and rolled down a hill near the playground. The young Ford would not respond.

He went to Maine Township High (later attended by Hillary Rodham Clinton) in Park Ridge, where he was a member of the model-railroad club and the social science dub. Afterward, he enrolled at Ripon College in Wisconsin simply because his adviser knew the director of admissions. Ford says he basically slept through college. But he won a place in summer stock. There Ford began to hone the ability that he believes was first knocked into him during his ritual after-school beatings: namely, to step outside himself and become an observer of his own life.

In 1964, Ford's class graduated from Ripon without him, since he had insufficient credits. Rather than return for another semester, Ford and his new wife, Mary Marquardt, packed up their Volkswagen bus and headed for Los Angeles. Ford's hippie good looks got him into the talent program at Columbia Studios and then Universal, although he was eventually dropped by both. A legendary story illustrates Ford's innate savvy and the zygote of his acting philosophy. While at Columbia, he was cast as a bellboy in the 1966 film Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round. His lines were, “Paging Mr. Jones, paging Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones. Telegram, sir.” After watching Ford's performance, one of the studio executives told the young actor he had no star quality. The man explained that when Tony Curtis played a grocery clerk in his first film, one could take one look at him and know he was a star. Ford retorted, “I thought the point was that you were supposed to look at him and think that this is a grocery clerk.” The executive threw Ford out of his office.

To understand Ford, one must first know that he's not a movie buff - not by any stretch of the imagination. He hasn't even seen Casablanca. “Probably never will,” he sighs with complete disinterest. He once said that he doesn't generally like watching movies because “the carelessness drives me crazy” Acting is a precision job for Ford. He's not searching for himself in his characters or trying to advance social or political causes. Rather, he tries to use his character to tell the best possible story to the audience - his “customers,” he calls them. He has no interest in directing or producing, and he doesn't initiate film projects.

Which is not to say that Ford doesn't care about moviemaking. Each time he says yes to a script, he looks at it as if a small business has been created. Sometimes it's a $60 million business, sometimes it's a $100 million business. (Air Force One was reportedly an $85 million business.) Since Ford's name is always on the proverbial front door, he feels responsible to the studio, the audience, and those working on the film. “He seems to take full responsibility to make sure the entire film is good,” says actress Anne Archer, who co-starred with Ford in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. Indeed, when he saw the final cut of Air Force One, he was so pleased he hugged the director, Wolfgang Petersen, and started crying.

Ford's attention to craftsmanship first developed in the late '60s - but in another field. Ford had purchased a fixer-upper house in Hollywood Hills, but the work was so extensive, the struggling actor had to take on the task himself. Ford invested so much money in tools that he had to take carpentry jobs to pay them off. As he slowly became the woodworker to the stars - building a recording studio for bandleader Sergio Mendes, bookcases for writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, and a deck for actress Sally Kellerman - Ford discovered that he could earn more with his hammer than he could by playing bit parts on TV shows. By supplementing his income that way, he could afford the freedom to build his true career by carefully picking his roles.

A carpentry job for producer and casting director Fred Roos led to Ford's first break, the role of outsider Bob Falfa in George Lucas's 1973 film, American Graffiti. Ford first refused the part over money. They offered him $485 per week, but he was earning $1,000 as a carpenter. When the offer was upped to $500, Ford accepted it to work with “professionals,” as he calls Lucas's team. Roos, who next helped Ford get a small but memorable part in Francis Ford Coppola's film The Conversation, has called Ford “the best carpenter I ever had and one of the two smartest actors I've ever known.” (The other actor is Jack Nicholson.)

Of course, Lucas used Ford again in Star Wars, casting him as Han Solo, which allowed Ford to make carpentry a hobby and acting a career. Ford was 35 when Star Wars was released in 1977. A few years later, Steven Spielberg cast him as Indiana Jones in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, which Lucas co-created and helped produce. Tom Selleck had been Spielberg's first choice, but he couldn't get out of his TV contract. “Measurable luck,” Ford says. Two decades later, Stars Wars continues to resonate with audiences, having earned $130 million-plus in its 1997 rerelease.

Ford is now one of the few actors who earns $20 million per film up front, plus a share of the box office take. Though Ford was willing to fight for a $15-a-week raise in his first job, he spent the '80s earning considerably less than he could have, a source of frustration to his agent. “He used to say to me, ‘Pat, I don't want to be the highest-paid actor in the industry. I simply don't,’” McQueeney recalls. Then a few years ago, with The Devil's Own, she says, Ford changed his mind and asked for (and got) parity with the other top stars, upping his salary by almost $5 million.

As an actor, Ford is as underrated as he is successful. Since Star Wars, he has headlined memorable films in nearly every genre and subgenre. Though five of his films received Oscar nominations for best picture (six, if you count Apocalypse Now, in which he had a cameo), Ford has been nominated only once, in 1985 for Witness. This lack of critical appreciation may stem from the fact that what Ford does onscreen often looks so effortless that it's often mistaken for simply being natural, rather than acting. “That's a bum rap,” says Archer. “Harrison is more than an actor. He's an extremely skilled craftsman. It's like comparing different types of music. You can't say that classical music is better than jazz or rock 'n' roll.”

Ford says he is simply one of the four or five leading men at the top of their games. (Always steering dear of controversy, he declines to name the others.) He's not the least bit interested in “stretching his range” by playing the occasional role in an edgy film. Last winter, he was approached by Sean Penn about joining the ensemble cast of the World War II drama The Thin Red Line, which now includes Penn, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney, John Travolta, and Nick Nolte. Ford told Penn he wasn't interested, not even in working for revered Badlands director Terrence Malick, who is returning to film after a 20-year absence. “I think I'm damn lucky to have the job I've got,” Ford says. “It's like saying, ‘I don't want to be a plumber even though I know how to do it. I want to be a fucking nuclear scientist!’ I find it somewhat amusing and strange that there seems to be a trend, among journalists especially, to ask me why I don't do something else, having assumed, I suppose, that I've done all that I can in this area. Why not move on to something more - and this is implicit - interesting?” Ford leans forward and lowers his voice. “Well, fuck you, man. I think what I'm doing is interesting.” He leans back in his chair and takes a sip of white wine. “I don't mean you personally,” he quickly apologizes. Since moviemaking is simply a business to Ford, he understands that the interviewer is just doing a job too.

Ford knows exactly what audiences want from him. “Both executives and the public do not like me to play a broad character,” he says. “They have so much experience with me over the years as the leading man that they look at that and say, ‘Wait a second! For Christ's sake, he's acting! Why is he doing that?’”

“Audiences see Harrison as the consummate all-American hero,” McQueeney says. “When they don't see him in those roles, they have a tendency not to support the film.” On this short list, she includes Sabrina and The Mosquito Coast, risks she says Ford took because he doesn't like playing similar characters back to back. Ford explains that he took the part in The Mosquito Coast because he thought his character, an asocial idealist who moves his family to a rain forest in Central America to build a new utopia, had something interesting to say about America selling out. His close friends called it “The Harrison Ford Story” but it didn't fare well at the box office. “If I try to do something like The Mosquito Coast, there is a slight consternation that I can feel,” says Ford carefully.

In June, he began filming the romantic comedy Six Days, Seven Nights. Ford's leading lady in the film, Anne Heche, very publicly announced last spring that she is gay (and dating Ellen DeGeneres). Ford knew about Heche's relationship with DeGeneres before she was cast but says he was not concerned. “We pursued her for this part in spite of what others might have thought would become problematic because she was the best actress for the part,” Ford says. “I'm not concerned about that hurting the film.”

Not surprisingly, Ford has little use for an analytical discussion of his movies. Asked why Star Wars has endured for 20 years, he says, “I don't have a complete answer, but I think George Lucas must be a damn smart guy” All Ford will say about the Indiana Jones series is that there will be a fourth film once the script is right and he and director Steven Spielberg are available at the same time. Ford's choices are based on the entertainment value of the material. For example, he turned down Ghost because he thought the audience would hate the lead character's dying in the first act. He claims to never consider a film's possible political or social ramifications. If the audience or the critics ultimately read some larger meaning into his films, so be it. “I can't control that,” he says.

The actor who was named Star of the Century by the National Association of Theater Owners in 1994 does believe that movies play a crucial role in society “People require stories to help them define their relationship to other people in the world,” Ford says. “I am part of that storytelling department. I find myself being tedious in repeating it, but there are very few places in our culture where we have an opportunity to confirm our common humanity more than when we go into a dark room and sit alone with a bunch of strangers and all feel the same thing. I think that makes us feel closer and more responsible to others.”

Clearly, what Ford likes most about movies is making them. The first actor to commit to Air Force One, Ford helped mold the script and then approved the director, Petersen (In the Line of Fire). “Harrison knows how making a movie works, inside and out,” says Jonathan Shestack, co-producer of Air Force One. “He knows how to block a fight scene. He gets down alongside the cinematographer and discusses camera angles. And when the day is over, he is the first one to pop a beer and kick back with the rest of the crew.”

The star wasn't afraid to get dirty either. “He did 90 percent of his stunts,” says Michael Ballhaus, the film's cinematographer. “Normally, when people get beaten up in a scene, they're always scared. They say, 'Don't hit me too hard.' Harrison was the opposite.” While filming one scuffle with Gary Oldman, who plays one of the terrorists, Ford insisted that Oldman get more aggressive because the fight didn't look real, Ballhaus says. Ford showed up the next day with a black eye. “That's the kind of guy he is.”

Ballhaus, who was also the cinematographer on Working Girl, says that Ford's technical proficiency is highly unusual for an actor. “That is extremely helpful because an assistant can say to him, Harrison, when you do this scene, please don't come any closer than this mark. The focus ends here,” Ballhaus explains. “He would hit his mark exactly and know what they meant. If you said the same thing to [Robert] De Niro, he would look at you and say, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Ford typically limits himself to one movie a year. The rest of the time he spends riding motorcycles, piloting his planes, and puttering around his ranch in Jackson Hole. “I feed opportunistically because otherwise I'd be spending all of my time in the movie business, and that would kill me,” he says convincingly. He currently lives in New York City, which is a fine place for a movie star to settle but no place for Harrison Ford. He and his second wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathison, moved to the city in 1996 with their two children, Malcolm, 10, and Georgia, 7. (Ford and Mathison met in the late '70s and married in 1983; he separated from his first wife in 1978.) Ford was preparing to shoot The Devil's Own; and Mathison, best known for writing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, was working with New York-based director Martin Scorsese on the script for Kundun, a film about the Dalai Lama. Now, Ford is stuck in New York, homesick for Jackson Hole. “I think we're going to stay so the kids have some continuity,” he says with resignation.

But life in the city is dearly wearing on him. “At first, you feel all this energy in New York,” he says. “Then you realize it's just energy. Also, I can't go outside and mess around, because my tools are in Jackson. I don't like to go out at night. I don't do lunch, and I don't take meetings - because I don't have to.” He pauses. “So there isn't much for me to do here.”

Why doesn't he buy a rustic getaway on Long Island, New York? Ford bristles. Too many Jaguar convertibles and studio executives? “Your words,” Ford grins. “I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. The whole scene just makes me a little uncomfortable.” He admits to liking parts of the North Shore of Long Island, where Sabrina was filmed: “It's much more plebeian and therefore comfortable.”

Despite his protestations to the contrary Ford has taken political stands. In 1995, he testified before a Senate subcommittee about Tibet's struggle for independence from China because he was persuaded to by his wife and a few friends. Ford read a short speech before the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs and introduced a Tibetan named Gendun Rinchen, who had been imprisoned by the Chinese. Ford and his wife had befriended Einchen during a research trip to Tibet for Kundun. Chinese authorities have since barred the Fords from visiting Tibet. “I support Tibet publidy I just don't make it a public issue,” Ford says, growing slightly irritated, more at himself for breaking his code than at me for quizzing him about it. “Here are the things I have done in support of Tibet: I called the president, before I had ever met him, to ask him to refuse MFN [most-favored-nation] trading status to China because of its failure to do the right thing in Tibet; I have introduced the Dalai Lama on a couple of occasions; and I have privately supported and am involved in other efforts to redress the inequity of the situation. But I don't actively look for opportunities to advance these issues.” After a long pause, he says, as if to reassure himself, “Privately, I am involved.”

When I ask Ford why he is more interested in Tibet than, say, Cuba, where human rights abuses have also been documented, he cuts me off. “I don't think Cuba is a similar situation,” Ford snaps. “We're the China in Cuba, to a certain extent.” Now, he cuts himself off. “These kinds of loose lips I have no respect for, in myself or anybody else. These are important issues, and I don't feel these kinds of conversations are worthwhile. I'd prefer to see the debate over important issues conducted by experts rather than by celebrities. I also don't want to attract attention to myself.”

Ford makes a distinction when it comes to asking for a business favor, which he did during a sit-down dinner honoring President Clinton in Jackson Hole in August 1996. “Since the president was conveniently seated next to Glenn Close and I wanted her to play the vice president, I made a table-hopping visit,” he recalls in one of the few anecdotal stories he parts with. “I asked him if he might favor my working group with a tour of Air Force One, and at the same time, I asked Glenn if she would be my vice president.” Ford smiles. “Got a yes on both of those.”

“Sometimes you have to go out to dinner,” I remark.

“For business, sometimes you do,” he says, taking the last sip of his wine.

- By Josh Young