Q&A: Harrison Ford
Ford fields questions from Star Wars to Firewall
January 27, 2006 - Last Monday in Boston, after a screening of his new movie Firewall, Harrison Ford participated in an informal question and answer session. Wearing jeans and a blue sweater, and sporting a gray goatee, the actor took a seat down-front, picked up a microphone, and invited a rare opportunity for audience members to ask whatever they desired.
Q: As we just saw in Firewall, you play a character who at times is extremely intense. You really feel the fear and emotion. How do you prepare yourself for scenes like this? How do you put yourself into that reality?
Harrison Ford: Well, there is money involved. (Audience laughs) I don't mean to be glib. It is, in fact, my job, and that's what I do for a living. So, I make a considerable effort to do as best I can with it.
Q: Besides treasure hunting and space pimping, what other things are you passionate about?
Ford: (He laughs) Well, I'm very fond of and passion about my family. My large family. I'm passionate about flying, conservation, human rights. That's enough. (Audience laughs)
Q: Flying being your passion outside of acting, what is it about flying that you love so much? How did you get in to it?
Ford: I started to fly when I was in college, and didn't start again until I was in my mid-50s. I wanted to learn something. I wanted to see if at my advanced age I could learn something. And I found that I could. I've always loved flying for the visual aspect of it; what you see. Then, I found a lot of other reasons to love it, so I'm very passionate about it.
Q: You've worked with so many people, but is there an actor that you've really always wanted to work with?
Ford: Frankly, my mind doesn't work that way. It doesn't go to free-associate on those themes. There are a lot of actors, young actors now, who are a real crop of good ones, and I'd love to work with any of them. But I just don't think in abstracts that way.
Q: Taking a step back into the past, you appeared in the movieDead Heat on a Marry Go-Round. I heard a rumor that it was filmed in Boston. Is that true? I know it was 40 years ago, but what do you remember doing for that film?
Ford: Well, there may have been some scenes shot in Boston, but the scene in which I appeared, the one very small scene in which I appeared, was shot on a sound-stage at Hollywood and Gower in Los Angeles. (He laughs)
Q: Have you spent much time in Boston before?
Ford: I've been here half a dozen times. I haven't spent much time here, but have enjoyed each of the short times I've been here.
Q: How do you go about selecting the right script for you? Do you have process in selecting the one's your going to do?
Ford: I do most of the ones I get all the way through. (He laughs, as does the audience) I'm looking for a good story. I'm looking for something different than what I've recently done, another genre or a different kind of character. I'm looking for a comedy. I've done a bunch of dramas, but I want to do a comedy. I do what I think will please an audience. I think this is a service occupation where we are storytellers, and there's no sense in telling stories that people don't want to hear. So, I look for those things that I think are well made. Things that have a degree of challenge for myself, and for the audience. And I'm looking for some things that I think will be a good ride.
Q: In all of you movies, you play the good guy. Have you ever played, or do you want to play a bad guy?
Ford: Have done the bad guy. You didn't see a movie called What Lies Beneath? And you thought that was Michael Douglas? (Audience laughs)
Q: But it is something you're interested in doing. I mean, you've considered it and still are thinking you may play a bad guy?
Ford: Yes. What I look for in terms of playing bad guys is a character that I think is interesting. Villains have kind of a great job. You can do anything you want, basically, and do well in the range of behaviors, which is a lot to a bad guy. And a lot of it is sort of party tricks. I would love to play a bad guy. And in looking for a bad guy, I'm looking for something that I can follow; something that I think is both an interesting development of the bad guy. I'd like to play a good guy that goes bad, or a bad guy that goes good. I mean, I'm more interested in the progress of what happens to him in the context of the film. And if nothing happens to a bad guy, other than he's dead by the end of the movie (he laughs), that's not solely interesting to me.
Q: In Firewall your nemesis played by Paul Bettany takes his character to the next level.
Ford: What you've seen Paul Bettany do here is take a part that, on paper, may not have read as interesting - but I think that it is; I think there was a real good bad guy written down - but he did a wonderful job in presenting this guy.
Q: Out of all of our work, do you have a favorite film of yours?
Ford: No. It's like asking 'Which is your favorite child?'
Q: Do you have a favorite child? (Ford and the audience laugh)
Ford: Nope.
Q: Do you have an opinions on the new Star Wars movies?
Ford: I think they're very different kind of movie than the first three were. They made full-on digital movies, and the movies we made were analog movies. I mean, they were like '50s Saturday serials. And so, those were very different kinds of films for a very different audience. Twenty-five years. But I don't know. They're just a different kind of movies.
Q: You very much have a style, a way that you present yourself on screen that audiences respond to. As that's the case, how do you approach a role like yours in Firewall? What do you bring to it to make it different than your other roles?
Ford: I bring clothes. (Audience laughs) That's a good question. I'm not being glib. First of all, I do a lot of research, whether it's necessary or not, just to stumble along with the character so I can inhibit the character. And I see things and behaviors, the way people behave, the way the dress, and that's where it starts for me. Then, most of the rest of it is in trying to decide what to do. The acting itself isn't very difficult; I don't have to worry about that. What's difficult is deciding what to do, and what the best choice for the film is in each particular scene. And how that can all sort of fit together. I get sort of fixated on what it takes to tell that story. That's the process, and I don't get it confused with some other film or some other character.
Ford: No. It takes too long. It's really hard, and it doesn't pay very well. (Audience laughs) Bob Hoskins said after his first directing job, he said it was like being pecked to death by penguins. Because people are coming up to you all day long saying, 'Do you want that one, or do you want that one?' It's a very intense job, and I think you have to develop very special talents to do it. And I've never spent any real amount of time trying to develop those talents.
Q: As a young person, when was it that you realized you wanted to develop your talents as an actor? Or when did you first realize that you wanted to even be an actor?
Ford: I was in college and I was a philosophy major and I wasn't doing very well. In an effort to try and find something in the course book that sounded like it was a cinch to help bring my grade point average up, I picked drama. (Audience laughs) Having failed to read the course description all the way through, I didn't realize it involved standing up on stage and acting. (He laughs) I was terrified at first, and that made me a little angry at myself, and so I was determined to get over that knee-knocking feeling and have some fearlessness. And when I did, I also found that what I was engaged in, with people trying to tell a story, was something that felt better than any other thing I'd ever done before. It felt like I had found some kind of purpose, or some kind of cultural utility. I mean, I was comfortable of being part of storytelling and finding an outlet to work with other people, and ambition to work with other people, and discovered it was a good fit, and it happened in college.
Q: This is where you realized you were going to be an actor for the rest of your life. Did you have a grand plan about how you were going to make it as an actor?
Ford: Well, all I wanted to do was make a living as an actor. I thought I was going to be a character actor. I thought I would be lucky to get jobs in television and stuff. I was as surprise as anybody when I actually got the roles in films that were so successful that, you know, I was a valuable piece of a valuable machine. So, I was useful. But I never really though I was gonna... I was never really interested in fortunate or fame. I just wanted to make a living as an actor. I guess I know that I was doomed when Star Wars was successful. (Audience laughs)
Q: You get so many scripts, and all sort of different story ideas are presented to you. Looking back, did you ever pass on something that you regretted.
Ford: No, I don't regret it. I mean, there were some parts I almost did, but I couldn't quite figure out how to do it, so I passed on it. But then I'd see the movie and I'd think, "Tthat's good. That actor figured out how to do it."
Q: What techniques to you believe serve you as an actor?
Ford: I don't have a technique that I'm aware of. There are two things that I can say about it. One is: I think that what serves me as actor is to really pursue character, story and plot overall. Thus, identify in each scene the range of potentials. The other is, I ask: What specific thing will help most to tell the story? And how can I find myself trying to express that? I try to give some emotional context to it.
Q: If you ever decided you're finished with acting, would you ever go back to being a carpenter?
Ford: I enjoy doing it a little bit, but I've got a better job. (Audience laughs)
Q: As a journalist, it's our job to write certain things about you; what we believe is the truth. Do you ever care about what people write about you?
Ford: I care desperately. Depends on what you write. (Audience laughs)
Q: Did anything unusually memorable happen while filming Firewall?
Ford: Well, you know. I hate to sound like this, but it was work, work, work. We had fun, and all of that resolves itself into a really good story. It was a good time, and it was hard work. It was that kind of set.
Q: How do you feel about your career as it is right now, and what can we expect from you in the future?
Ford: Great, really. For the first time I really am working and developing projects a lot more. So, there really are a bunch of things that I think are seeing their way through. I have an ambition, and I think there's a fair chance that we may have another Indiana Jones. (Audience cheers.) I thought you were going to ask the most asked question of all. It's 'When am I going to do Indiana Jones 4.'
Q: When might you begin filming Indiana Jones 4?
Ford: (He laughs) Hopefully this summer.
Q: You very much like spending time with the stuntmen on your films. And they let you do most of your own stunts. For Firewall, did they draw the line on anything?
Ford: For Firewall the action was sort of contrived so that I could do everything myself. But there was one cut where I didn't do the fall. It's where Paul tossed me over the railing and into the ditch. I couldn't do that. And neither could the stunt guy after the first time do it a second time. (Audience laughs) I had rightly isolated myself from the one moment where I knew it was going to hurt. The rest of it is just smoke and mirrors, and putting the pads in the right place.
Q: When the cast for The DaVinci Code was announced I was very surprised that it was Tom Hanks and not yourself....
Ford: So was I. (Audience laughs) I think the book said that the character looked like me, but curiously it must have been me at a much younger age.
Q: You've played the President of the United States. Has your politics ever found its way into your performance?
Ford: No. I try not to confuse the job of being an actor with politics. But I do think that there is right and wrong and that's the area that we deal in as actors. We all can tell stories that about morality. And so, my private politics inform my morality; my sense of morality.
Q: You've been making movies for so long, and accomplished many things. I was wondering, do you have any goals that you have yet to accomplish?
Ford: I don't have any specific goals as far as movies are concerned. I feed opportunistically. I mean, if something good comes along and it feels right, I'll go with it. I hope that answers your question.
Q: One of the tough things as an actor is how to appropriately communicate what you think is right for your character. How do you go confront someone if you disagree with their choice for a character or for a scene.
Ford: How to conduct an appropriative argument with people that you're working with is important. It's listening and communicating. If you believe something, how should the character get here. It really is a complicated issue in movies where there's a studio and there's a producer and, what do they call that guy? The director. (Audience laughs) There's all these people, the writers, and more, it goes on and on and on, who has something to say about it, and they should. But when it comes down to saying the words and finally making it happen, when it gets down to the final crunch in the last couple minutes, where what works is what's manifestly important, you have to try and get as close as you can to that place.
- By IGN FilmForce
