Compelling role for hands-on action man
Despite 40 years in movies, Harrison Ford will not watch himself in a cinema, writes Sophie Tedmanson
FOR a former carpenter, Harrison Ford has very soft hands. And for one of the world's most famous action stars, he also has a surprisingly quiet voice.
Dressed entirely in black, Ford wipes the juice from a slice of mango off his hand before extending it, looking straight at me with his intense hazel eyes and, just for a moment, he smiles that famous crooked smile.
He is succinct in his conversation and more serious in person than you would imagine -- this is after all, the man best known to cinema-goers as the cheeky, reluctantly heroic Han Solo in the original three Star Wars films, and the whip- and wise-cracking archaeologist adventurer in the Indiana Jones trilogy.
The 63-year-old is in Australia with his girlfriend, former Ally McBeal star Calista Flockhart, and her five-year-old adopted son, Liam, to promote his latest movie, Firewall.
After taking the family to Taronga Zoo on Sunday, Ford walked the red carpet at the film's Sydney premiere and then headed out for dinner, skipping the screening.
"It's a bizarre situation," he says of sitting in a cinema with hundreds of fans watching himself on the big screen.
"I don't really like it - no offence."
With that he sits back, clasps his hands together and rests his elbows on the arms of the chair, ready for more questions.
Mid-sentence with the next question, my tape recorder stops working and Ford leans forward, picks it up and fiddles with it until the red light begins flashing again so we can resume the interview.
Maybe it was the handyman resurfacing in him, a gentlemanly gesture. Or perhaps it's an echo of his role in Firewall, and the fiddling with electronic gadgets it involved.
Ford plays Jack Stanfield, a computer security specialist for a large bank who comes home one day to find his wife (Virginia Madsen) and two children taken hostage by a group of men, led by Bill Cox (Paul Bettany).
They want Stanfield to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the bank through its computer system.
It's a typical Harrison Ford film: entertaining, lots of action, and involving a man fighting to save his family while also trying to save the world - or in this case, the bank.
Ford shrugs off comparisons with his Jack Ryan role in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.
"I like to play a real person who's got a real life, and that often includes a family," he says.
He has appeared in more than 50 films since his uncredited role as a bellhop in the 1966 crime comedy Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round.
But he's much better known for American Graffiti, Blade Runner, The Fugitive, The Mosquito Coast, Witness and, of course, the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. Firewall is his first film in three years, since the comedy cop flop Hollywood Homicide. So what made it stand out from the hundreds of scripts he is regularly sent?
"It was a guy who had a job which I thought people [would be] interested in, and the area of computer security and identity theft is an unusual and unique aspect of the story. I hadn't seen anything like that," he says. "And I thought it was an emotionally compelling situation that the character was in. I thought there was a very good role for the bad guy which was critical, and the people involved were talented people."
Ford has said he would be happy to play the bad guy given the right circumstances and would also like to extend himself into comedy.
He's looking at a couple of movies in which he will play a supporting role - the stories interest him, but the leads are for much younger men.
He has no inclination to step behind the camera as a director.
"No," he says firmly. "It's too hard, it takes too long and it doesn't pay well."
This coming from a man who can command $US25 million a movie plus a percentage of takings, and whose films, it's said, have collectively earned more at the box office than those of any other actor.
Ford dismisses that report with a roll of his eyes. But his bank balance is about to get a whole lot bigger.
He has three new films on the horizon: a sci-fi thriller, Godspeed, a political thriller Manhunt, and the next eagerly awaited installment in the Indiana Jones franchise, which Ford says will start production "sooner than later".
"There's a script that there's a degree of agreement on and it's still in process but I am hoping that it will be pretty soon," he said at a press conference during the week.
"It's getting there, it's a great script and it can only get better.
"It's a movie that's fun to make, [and] I like working with Steven [Spielberg]."
Additional reporting by AAP
Firewall opens on March 2.- By Sophie Tedmanson
