At 63, Ford very much remains a leading man

His face - with its perpetually furrowed brow, the go-to-hell curl of the upper lip and that intriguing chin scar - has carried the emotional weight of countless plot twists since it flashed across the heavens nearly 30 years ago in Star Wars. It is a face that Americans have come to trust so steadfastly that it has made Harrison Ford the world's biggest box-office star for the past three decades. 

It has been a heavy burden to bear, and now, at 63, Ford's face is beginning to show signs of wear. The furrows in his billion-dollar brow have sprouted tributaries, and his eyes look tired from what he says was a late night the night before. Sporting a goatee and a piratical gold earring, Ford has the swagger of a guy hoping to be mistaken for 62. 

In Firewall, which opens Friday, Ford plays a man named Jack who finds himself in a desperate struggle to save his family from some very bad men. When it is suggested to Ford that this Jack resembles the Jack who was forced to save his family from some very bad men in one of his earlier hits, Patriot Games, and even to President James Marshall in his 1997 blockbuster Air Force One, the worried look that usually signals trouble ahead suddenly appears. 

"I think that was a very different kind of movie and a very different plot," he says, "so I'm not feeling that I'm going back to the same well, or that there is any cause for disappointment. In this one, the genre is one that I have visited before, and the character is not unlike some characters that have been relatively successful. Which is to say, he's not a Russian submarine captain." 

This is a reference to his role in K-19: The Widowmaker, which placed Ford in such unfamiliar waters when it was released in 2002 that it became one of his few flops.  

"I try to pick films that I think an audience will enjoy," he says. "And by that, it doesn't necessarily mean that I have for myself some set idea of what the audience requires from me, or even that I'm willing to service that expectation. Because from time to time, I fly in the face of expectations, and I do that for my own amusement." 

As Jack Stanfield, a computer security specialist at a Seattle bank in Firewall, Ford is flying not in the face of expectations as much as his first career slump, following the disappointing showing of the 2003 comedy Hollywood Homicide. He suspects his name above the title creates unrealistic expectations, brought on by his movies' domestic box office grosses of more than $3 billion. 

"If you're realistic, I don't think you'd have extremely high expectations for Hollywood Homicide," he says. "It was a small comedy. Sometimes, what I think of as a small picture, by the time it gets released, people have the expectation that it's a bigger picture than it is. It's not an expectation you can fulfil every shot out of the box." 

One picture that almost certainly would meet with success is the long-discussed fourth instalment of the Indiana Jones series. "We're closer than we've ever been," he says. "I think it will happen fairly soon."  

However, he dismisses a rumour that he was so smitten with his Firewall co-star, Virginia Madsen, that she has the role of leading lady in Indy 4 all but wrapped up. "There is no test of truth for things that appear on the Internet," he says. 

Ford is developing movies in which he would play character roles, "so that I can create a part that makes sense for me to play as a supporting actor," he says. But as he is quick to point out, "I'm not yet offered supporting characters, so I'll continue to play the lead character as long as those are the roles that are offered." 

He has several strenuous scenes in Firewall, including a desperate fight with the picture's villain, played by a much younger Paul Bettany. "Where I am in life is that I'm still fit enough to do what we're doing here," Ford says. "So for those people who say, 'A 63-year-old man couldn't do that,' I say, 'What are you talking about? I just did.'"

- By Bruce Newman