"to me success is choice"

1998
USA Weekend
by Lorrie Lynch

Harrison Ford has one of the most recognizable faces in America, but he's a reluctant star who sees fame as a condition. "It's like having a limp," says the actor who has headlined six of the 30 top-grossing movies of all time. "You live with it."

Ford, whose romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights opens this weekend, has been living some degree of fame since he created a wisecracking Han Solo in the 1977 special effects groundbreaker Star Wars (which he didn't go see in 1997's re-release). "I was always very grateful I was never 'hot,' " Ford says, though he's America's favorite male star in a new survey of USA WEEKEND readers, as well as this year's People's Choice poll winner in the same category. "In the entire length of my career, I haven't been the hottest, the No. 1, the most adored. I've always been somewhere down from the top, so I've never had to suffer being knocked off the top."

Without naming Leonardo DiCaprio or Matt Damon, Ford -- whose lived-in good looks make him as sexy as either -- notes he was never what they are today. "I was never that much a focus of interest that I became a 'thing' at an earlier point in my career. I'm aware of having become a 'thing' now, which doesn't give me a lot of pleasure." And a lucrative thing he is. Because his name on the marqee ensures a successful opening weekend, he earns more than almost anyone in Hollywood, $20 million-plus per movie. Yet he doesn't define success in dollars and cents. Says Ford: "To me, success is choice and opportunity." Today he has both. Ford was not an early bloomer, the sort who put on plays in the family living room by kindergarten age. "I wanted to be a forest ranger or a coal man," he says. "At a fairly early stage, I knew I didn't want to do what my dad did, which was work in an office." He left college in Wisconsin (an English and philosophy major) feeling he had no options. "All my friends were going off to be professionals, and I said I wanted to be an actor. It was because I wanted to live the life, a different life. I didn't want to go to the same place every day and see the same people and do the same job. I wanted interesting challenges. I wanted to work with different people over periods of time. I wanted to be in different places geographically. I didn't really calculate how difficult that was to achieve."

It took Ford 13 years to make a living in his chosen profession, and during those tough times he had a family to support. Like lots of men his age, Ford has separate sets of kids: two adult sons with first wife Mary Marquardt, and a young son and daughter with second wife Melissa Mathison, a screenwriter. He also has a grandchild. He takes little credit for raising the older two, Ben, 31, a chef, and Willard, 29, a teacher. "My older kids are fantastic people. It can't be the result of my influence on them." He loves being involved with son Malcolm, 11, and daughter Georgia, 7. But don't ask for parenting tips: "It's an impossible job at any age." Ford plays roles appealing to both sexes; often he's a handsome prince who scoops a damsel in distress out of harm's way, never making a mistake -- or at least laughing when he does. Ivan Reitman, who directed Six Days, Seven Nights, says Ford is "a throwback to those great '40s movie stars that we don't seem to have anymore, guys like Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable." "He's the guy who is every woman's dream and the man who's every man's dream," says Six Days co-star Anne Heche.

Their chemistry is sure to be the topic of water-cooler talk Monday morning because Heche, 29, is the offscreen love of comedian Ellen DeGeneres. The couple went public with their relationship soon after Heche was cast in Six Days, causing a bit of a stir. Ford's support never wavered, and they talk about each other with genuine warmth. Reports from the set were that they got along swell. Filming was arduous because the stars did their own stunts. "He told me how to keep safe," Heche says. "He was always taking care of me, helping me know about the explosives before we had to jump off the boat."

Of course, jumping off cliffs and out of planes is part of Ford's daredevil screen image. But the real guy is more complicated and circumspect. In an age of celebrity confessionals and dirt-digging tabloids, he manages to keep his personal business his own. It's not surprising, then, to learn that the most popular actor in America doesn't have an identifiable best friend. "I have relationships with people I'm working with. ... The relationship is based on our combined interest. It doesn't make the relationship any less sincere, but it does give it a focus that may not last beyond the experience." And to experience Harrison Ford is to find he is both not what he appears and everything you might expect. He's been known to be cranky or gruff, yet, as Reitman says, "There's a nobility to Harrison when you first meet him." A seriousness, too, though Ford claims he's not a serious person. "If I were a serious person, I'd probably have a real job." Ford and family keep houses in Wyoming and Los Angeles, but they have made New York their main home for several years. He has admitted to getting antsy about city life, but he easily indulges his passion for airplanes and helicopters there. "I love flying. It's very important to me." He's been a pilot for three years and flies "all the time. It's something I always wanted to do, and at a certain point I bought a plane for myself and I became more interested and involved in it.