Getting normal with Harrison Ford

THE WORLD'S richest male actor is picking at the label on a bottle of water.

For Harrison Ford, who received the "richest" designation in the 2001 Guinness Book of Records, the action's a distraction, an attempt at normalcy, a reaction to discomfort.

The interview process creates a forced intimacy where one stranger asks another personal questions in a finite amount of time.

It's not natural, and Ford appears stiff.

He wears a suit coat and trousers but no tie. He sports a goatee, his hair is graying.

His handshake was firm. He looked me in the eye.

Now Ford sits forward on a couch in a suite in the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, preparing to answer questions about "Firewall," a claustrophobic thriller that opened Friday.

"This is not the easiest place to do it, in a 10-minute interview," says Ford, who turns 64 this year. "You need more time. It feels forced."

He must be reading my nerves.

Years ago, during an interview for "A Clear and Present Danger," the actor behaved as if he had eaten a box of grumpy flakes.

Ford is aware of the label. "I think I did have a reputation for being grumpy," he once told an interviewer. "I don't think I'm grumpy. I have opinions.... I am a purposeful person. But on a daily basis, I think I'm other than grumpy.

"I think it is a case where I am coming to do business and not there just to be flattered and cajoled and used."

I need to use him today. That's the way it is.

Fortunately, Ford is receptive.

He recently returned from his annual three-day outing in the back country in central Idaho. He and more than a dozen other pilots flew in small planes capable of landing on the short strip.

Ford loves to fly. He calls it his vocation.

I ask him if he knows Spike Minczeski, a young friend of mine and pilot who used to live in Walnut Creek. Spike, his parents and sister took me under their wing when I moved to the suburbs. Later they moved to Jackson, Wyo., where Ford owns an 800-acre ranch.

"He's a wonderful pilot," Ford says. "Spike didn't have his own plane so I took him with me (on the Idaho trip). I gave him one landing."

And we are off and chatting.

Despite the Spike connection, Ford remains serious. He keeps his voice just above a whisper. Getting him to almost smile twice, once ironically, feels like a major victory.

Then it occurs to me: Maybe Ford is shy.

That would explain so much.

I bet it stems from his Midwestern roots.

"You didn't ask a person's religion, or how much money they made, or any intimate details of their life," Ford says, referring to his growing up in Chicago.

His mother and father were raised during the Depression. His father worked as an advertising exec, his mother as a housewife. "They worked hard," Ford says, when asked what he learned from them. "They had a great work ethic."

He calls his own work ethic "a product of my environment."

"Firewall" is Ford's first film in a couple of years. He spent much of the time helping with the script. He has input into all of his parts.

"What I mainly am looking for is an emotional texture to the piece, because I think that's the material that folds the audience into it, that and the dramatic circumstances," Ford says.

In "Firewall" he plays a bank computer-security chief whose family is held captive by thieves who threaten to kill them if he doesn't cooperate in a bank robbery.

"I still enjoy the work," Ford says. "It's playing with big toys. And I like the people I work with and I love the crew.

"I'm not a guy who does things that aren't a lot of fun — if I can get out of it."

I don't take that personally.

Ford made his movie debut in 1966's "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round." Besides the "Star Wars" and Indiana Jones trilogies, his heavy hitters include "American Graffiti," "Blade Runner," "Witness," "The Fugitive" and Tom Clancy adaptations such as "Patriot Games."

"I have been very lucky with my associations and the choices I have made overall," he says.

"I think if there's any particular skill in acting, and I think there is, it's for empathy — for understanding how they (characters) feel and how they come to feel what they feel."

A fourth Indiana Jones picture lingers in the planning stages. "We're closer than we've ever been," Ford says. "I think it will happen soon."

Reportedly, he calls "The Mosquito Coast" his favorite film, in part because he was able to use his carpentry skills.

I call "Random Hearts" his biggest flop, but the bad ones are gnats on an amazing career. His best? "Witness" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

To stay sane in the midst of so much adulation, Ford goes home. "They don't treat me like anything special at home," he says.

I bet he likes it that way.

- By "The Movie Guy", B. Caine