Q&A / Harrison Ford
KEYS TO FORD: 'I want [viewers] to feel what the character is feeling'
The Vin Diesels and the Steven Seagals come and go. The 007s are replaceable. But Harrison Ford remains one of our resident heroes.
He's played dashing rascals like Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Flawed good men ("Witness" and "Presumed Innocent") and outright good guys ("Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger"). Presidents ("Air Force One") and predators ("What Lies Beneath"). He's been ruthless ("Blade Runner"), romantic ("Working Girl" and "Sabrina") and the wrong man ("The Fugitive"). Yet he's always Harrison Ford, the actor whose deadpan scowl and cynical half-grin have made him one of the biggest-grossing stars in cinema history.
True, the last decade hasn't been especially kind to him. Movies such as "Six Days, Seven Nights," "Random Hearts" and "K-19: The Widowmaker" haven't done anywhere near the business his earlier films did. And it's been 2 1/2 years since his last movie, "Hollywood Homicide," hit theaters. But he's still in the game.
Ford, 63, was in town recently to talk up his newest release, "Firewall" (opening today), in which he plays Jack Stanfield, a security expert at a high-tech bank who must break into his own system to save his family. But the conversation roamed to his many roles and movies in general.
Q: Were you sorry the last three "Star Wars" movie were prequels?
A: You know, at the end of the third one ("Return of the Jedi," 1983), I told George Lucas Han Solo should die. I wanted to give some emotional bottom to the circumstances. He didn't go for it. (Gives a hint of the scowl.)
Q: Your very first line onscreen was as a bellboy in 1966's "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round." You said, "Paging Mr. Jones."
A: Yeah, "Paging Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones. Paging Mr. Jones."
Q: Did you think somehow you were metaphorically paging your future? You know, paging Indiana Jones?
A: (Slight pause, then the deadpan delivery.) No. I'm not that way.
Q: I read that, after the film came out, the studio brass wasn't happy. One Columbia executive called you into his office and said, "Sit down, kid. I wanna tell you a story. When Tony Curtis was in a movie, he delivered a bag of groceries. We took one look at him and knew he was a movie star." And you replied, "Gee, I thought you were supposed to look at him and believe he was a grocery boy." Is that a true story?
A: Absolutely. Every word of it.
Q: Steven Spielberg said of you, "He's a movie star who happens to be a regular guy."
A: It depends on your definition of a regular guy. But I appreciate what Steven was alluding to. It was sweet of him to say that.
Q: You've said there are parts of yourself in every role you play. In "Witness," your character had a loner quality. In Indiana Jones, there's a tenacity. The rogue with the heart of gold in "Star Wars." What is it in "Firewall"?
A: There are a lot of aspects of Jack I find in myself. Problem-solving under pressure. And again, tenacity. His refusal to give up.
Q: You've been making movies for 40 years. To what do you owe your longevity?
A: I always wanted to take my obvious good fortune --- to be attached to the success of something like "Star Wars" --- and manipulate that into a career. I had an advantage, and I could easily have blown it. But I wanted to develop a career, and I've done that by making certain choices.
Q: What's changed the most since you began?
A: A lot of things have changed. The movie business has changed. I've changed. The movies have changed from analog to digital. I'm an analog guy in a digital world. The last three movies George made are a totally different kind of movie. They're still informed by the same mythology, but largely speaking, the audience has become used to computer graphics and things like that.
Q: What do you look for in a movie?
A: I want to discover something about myself through an emotional relationship with somebody else. Many of the characters in movies now do not require that you know very much about them. They're more about movies than they are about life. Then you see a film like "Good Night, and Good Luck," and you think, it's all fine. It's going to be fine. It was such a good movie.
Q: I wouldn't exactly call you a chameleon. We always know we're watching Harrison Ford. But John Book in "Witness" is totally different from Allie Fox (the demented inventor) in "The Mosquito Coast."
A: An actor only has his own experience to draw from. There are two ways to approach acting. One is from the outside in.
Q: Like Olivier?
A: Yeah. The other, perhaps lazier, way of doing things --- but, for me, the more truthful way --- is to pull a tool from my kit. I can be emotionally involved in a story, and the audience can participate in that emotion. I think that's the strongest way into a story. Not intellectually. Not by a demonstration of theatrical prowess. But by being available through their emotions. I want them to feel what the character is feeling. I want them to participate in the film.
Q: There's a certain shorthand you've developed with audiences.
A: I try not to pay any attention to what they like. I don't want that to get in the way of the story we're telling.
Q: Which of your characters do you think your girlfriend Calista Flockhart would be most drawn to?
A: She hasn't seen a lot of my movies (the grin). She liked " Mosquito Coast" very much, so I guess Allie Fox.
Q: I loved that movie. I thought your character was part Indiana Jones, part Jim Jones.
A: (Laughs.) Yeah. Those Jones boys ...
Q: Certainly it was a risk. For me, that and "The Frisco Kid" are your most underappreciated movies. Which one would you choose?
A: I think "K-19" (about a heroic Russian submarine captain) would be the most underappreciated. I don't know if it was underappreciated or unappreciated, but I think I exceeded my cultural utility for most people.
Q: Translation?
A: I talked funny.
Q: Is there a character you'd like to revisit?
A: I don't think that way. But I've always thought it was important, if you do do a sequel, that you learn something new about the character.
Q: So, for the thousandth time, the next Indiana Jones?
A: We're closer than we've ever been. We're working on the script, and I'm very excited about it.
Q: A character you think you've learned something from?
A: I think that would be the two films I did with Alan Pakula ("Presumed Innocent" and "The Devil's Own"). I don't know if it was the character. It was just Alan. For him, every film was an exploration of the devil inside himself.
Q: Another Harrison Ford story. You were working as a carpenter on a door for Francis Ford Coppola when George Lucas walked by with Richard Dreyfuss to read for "Star Wars." Richard Dreyfuss as Han Solo?
A: The irony was, word was out on the street that George was making a new movie and did not want to meet with anyone who'd been in "American Graffiti." So I was amused to see Richard. But later, George called me in and asked me if I would do him the favor of reading with the other actors. He never said I was a possible choice or even castable.
Q: Most people know you made ends meet as a carpenter in your struggling-actor days. What carpentry tool best describes you?
A: (Long pause.) I guess the plane. It's used for smoothing things out. For paring and truing. It doesn't work at all unless it's sharp and set up correctly. So it's satisfying to use. And it smells really good.- By Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
