Profile: Harrison Ford

He knows as much about camera placement as his directors and sees acting as collaborative story- telling. Harrison Ford's stamp is all over Firewall, writes LIAM LACEY

There's a camera shot, late in the movie Firewall, where the camera pans over an old truck in a garage, and the logo FORD appears vertically on the screen, which says it all.

Firewall can be defined as a vintage Ford (as in Harrison) thriller. Though Ford has done comedy (Hollywood Homicide) and romance (Sabrina) and horror (What Lies Beneath), he's the biggest box-office star in Hollywood history thanks to his roles as the cerebral man of action, often fighting for survival in a high-tech environment. From Star Wars to Blade Runner, the Indiana Jones movies, and such nineties films as The Fugitive, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, the themes have repeated.

Now 63, Ford has slowed down the pace somewhat, not because of physical limitations (he's scheduled to star in Indiana Jones IV with Steven Spielberg in the next year or two), but because he has chosen to become more creatively involved in bringing movies to the screen.

In person, he's tall and lean (his favourite exercise is tennis) and he dresses in layers of grey, charcoal and blue, to off-set his eyes and salt-and-pepper hair. He has a no-nonsense focus and a manner of wary intelligence that smart people have around journalists. He's frank about what gets him out "knocking on doors for this movie."

Hollywood box-office figures have been falling lately, and "you need to be a bit more aggressive in promotion nowadays," he says. "This weekend, for example, we've got our film, The Pink Panther and the horror film [Final Destination 3]. We're realistic about the demographics. The kids will go to the horror film and our demographic will be split with The Pink Panther. You have to do what you can to give your film some space because if you don't make it in those first two weekends, you're lost."

There's a personal investment in Firewall, which took Ford the last three years to create. He had initially begun the project with director Mark Pellington ( Arlington Road, The Mothman Prophecies) but, weeks before shooting was to begin, Pellington's wife died of a rare infection. Next came Phillip Noyce (director of Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games) but Noyce left to work on another movie. Ford was again shopping for a director. He found British filmmaker Richard Loncraine ( Wimbledon, Richard III) and once again the script had to be reworked.

"We had always anticipated that we'd be doing some significant restructuring and rewriting on the film, but we waited until we had a director on board so we could do the work to accommodate my ambitions and the director's at the same time. I enjoy that process of rewriting so much because it's during that period of time I establish those things that I feel equip me to do the acting part of the job."

He scoffs at the bias, beloved by critics, that the script should come first. "They must be perfect critics who perfectly understand the world. There's certainly room for sticking word for word to a script if it's written by David Mamet or Shakespeare, but that's never been a reality in the long, long time I've worked in movies."

Ford said he was keen to play the role to explore a character "who is under duress for most of the movie. The interesting issue is how do you sustain that kind of tension realistically for that period of time. And how do you find the moments when you can let the audience slightly off the hook so you can get that kind of nervous laughter that sometimes happens when people build up too much tension? We were very careful how we attended to that issue."

Ford, who made a living as a carpenter well into his acting career, admits he's a "technical" actor who knows as much about camera placement and lenses as his directors. (Director Loncraine says that Ford essentially directed the climactic fight scene in Firewall). He studies dailies footage and adjusts his performance accordingly. He views acting less as a form of personal self-expression than as a form of collaborative story-telling.

"The only way I know how to create a character is in reference to a story. An 'interesting character' is an abstraction to me. I find everything you need is in the story and if it isn't, you need to put it in the story so you can build a character that develops with the story."

He says he has no ambitions to direct and no gift for writing, but he keeps the creative juices alive "through collaboration. When you can draw on what everyone has to offer and you're working together in the same place, it makes a big difference. For me, it's a work ethic thing -- to make the best product you can so the paying audience gets satisfaction. Since I'm providing at least some of the raw material for the movie, I want to have the opportunity to use that material well."

- By Liam Lacey