Meet President Ford

Sep 13 1997
News Letter
by Debra Taylor

He plays the President in Airforce One, but Harrison Ford is more famous than any politician.

In Hollywood few people wield as much power as Harrison Ford - probably not even the President of the United States.

Granted, Bill Clinton won at the polls, but it is Ford who can bring in the crowds playing a hijacked head of state in Airforce One, released this week.

If he ran for office, Americans couldn't really be blamed for giving him their vote, something they have consistently done at the box office, making him into the biggest movie star of all time.

The chances of this quiet and intensely private star deciding to take to the campaign trail, however, are almost as slim as Airforce One villain Gary Oldman coming out on top.

Ford has trouble seeing himself as what he is - a superstar - let alone a head of state. ''I cringe when somebody calls me a superstar,'' he admits. ''When I look in the mirror I don't see the highest grossing movie star of all time; I see his idiot twin.''

There is nothing dumb, however, about the way Ford has conducted his hugely successful career. Since making an impact on the screen in George Lucas's American Graffiti, he has been box office gold - make that platinum - and consistently had an eye for characters who catch the public's imagination.

He was Han Solo in Lucas's legendary Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones in Spielberg's hugely popular adventure-fests, CIA man Jack Ryan in both Patriot Games and A Clear and Present Danger.

''From the beginning I believed that staying the course was what counted,'' recalls the 55-year-old actor. ''I outlast the others. The sheer process of attrition wears the others down. That was my belief. It still is now.'' 

"You just ain't got it, kid."

He didn't always have the Midas touch. It took more than 10 years before Hollywood recognised the talent of the man who was to become one of its biggest assets.

Arriving in Los Angeles aged 22, having dropped out of a philosophy degree in Wisconsin, Ford didn't exactly stop the traffic on Sunset Boulevard.

But if there wasn't an ego at work to keep him going, there was certainly a quiet conviction that acting was what he wanted to do, even when the inevitable knock-backs came.

One deeply misguided studio executive at Columbia actually told Ford: ''You just ain't got it, kid. You'll never make it in the movies.''

The would-be actor ignored this advice, and instead continued to plan for a career that would be built to last. ''I didn't want to take every acting job that came along. I always knew from the very beginning it was a matter of holding out.''

To ensure he didn't have to wind up playing the romantic lead on daytime soap, he took up carpentry and built houses when he wasn't constructing characters.

Finally, in 1973, when Ford was 35, Lucas cast him in American Graffiti and the actor began to feel his convictions had not been in vain. 

''It was the first film in which my part was important enough to the overall success of the film for them to give at least some consideration to the ideas I had about the character.''

Harrison Ford had arrived, but taking the Star Wars role of Solo was still a risk. A Boys Own yarn about outer space, after all, didn't appear to be the stuff of serious superstardom at a time when the sci-fi blockbuster was only a glimmer in the likes of Lucas's and Spielberg's eyes.

''I like taking risks,'' says the actor, looking back on what most people considered a gamble. ''I never look at films for star vehicles or commercial success.

''What counts for me is getting the best material - something I can respond to emotionally, and working with people I admire.'' 

Just an ordinary guy? 

These days, of course, Ford can pick and choose whoever he wants. It was he who leaned over to Glenn Close at a dinner party and casually asked, 'Why don't you take the part of the vice-president in Airforce One?' with the same tone that most of us would use asking someone to pass the salt.

If he has power, however, it has far from corrupted him and he struggles hard to maintain a normal home life with his screenwriter wife Melissa Mathieson and their two children, Malcolm, 10, and seven-year-old Georgia. They are, quite clearly, the real driving force of his life.

''I don't care about me, my career or my money,'' he says. ''But I'll kill for my kids.''

He also goes to great lengths to protect them from the publicity machine which inevitably follows him around, preferring to live on a Wyoming farm than amid the glamour and superficial glitz of LA.

''It's real remote,'' he explains. ''You can't see any other houses or hear any other people from our property. That's what I wanted - a place where people didn't much care what I did for a living, a place where I could start to build a life for myself and my family outside the city.''

It is, he says, a good place for anybody to raise a family. And no matter what figures he notches up at the box office and no matter what part he gets to play, Harrison Ford plainly considers himself just another 'anybody'

''I'm glad I'm successful,'' he admits. ''But I certainly don't see myself as anything unusual. I'm just an ordinary guy.''