Ford stays focused despite Hollywood 'hardships'

Chicago Sun Times
By Cindy Pearlman
June 8th, 2003

It's the kind of line that could kill a lesser man. Half-way through his new movie, "Hollywood Homicide," 61-year-old Harrison Ford gets that twinkle in his eye before telling his screen girlfriend, "If I take my ginkgo, I can remember where I put my Viagra."

In an industry where Botox is part of a regular grooming ritual and most stars hide the year on their driver's license, Ford seems driven to lay it all on the line.

"Was that line a way to acknowledge my advancing age," says Ford with an eye roll. "It's really a reflection on the pharmacology of our times."

Oh, and as for the fact that Indiana Jones now checks the "senior" box on forms, he announces, "I am my age. I'm not making any effort to change it."

Ford, who is dating 39-year-old Calista Flockhart, has never looked better. Fit, toned and tanned from a recent date on the tennis courts (without sunscreen!), he walks into his Los Angeles hotel suite in a blue linen checked shirt, navy slacks and that little silver earring in his left ear. He touches his famous scar and smiles.

Though he looks like a man who has 10 films that have exceeded $100 million at the box office, he doesn't sound like one. He sounds like a guy in love with his girlfriend and her little boy, Liam.

"Calista has a 2-1/2-year-old boy, and he's a handful," says Ford, who adds that his days are not spent lunching at the Ivy and just having meetings galore. "Liam has taught me all about Jay-Jay the Jet Plane and Bob the Builder. Thomas the Tank Engine is also really good stuff."

What's not good stuff is the public's fascination with his private life. Everywhere there are snapshots of Harrison and Calista --having coffee, walking hand in hand, shopping and playing with the baby. "The public's fascination with this doesn't boggle my mind," he says. "I understand it, because people are fascinated by celebrity. The average person somehow imagines that people with our advantages lead very different lives. The truth is we're just as prey to the same things are you are."

Well, not always. Average couples don't have paparazzi hiding out in their shrubbery.

"It's very annoying to me," he says. "I know the photographers who follow me very well. I can spot them. I know their faces, but there is nothing I can do under the law."

Ford shrugs. He remains calm and centered. "I'm here on a mission. I know what my mission is."

This includes making movies. In "Hollywood Homicide," opening Friday, Ford plays grizzled cop Joe Gavilan, who is moonlighting as a real-estate agent to make ends meet. His commissions are interrupted when he gets a younger partner in the form of Josh Hartnett, and they are assigned to investigate a murder in the rap world.

"Harrison is loose in this movie, which is the revelation," says "Homicide" director Ron Shelton. "You don't think of Han Solo falling. You don't see Jack Ryan tripping in it.

"Here you see the twinkle in his eye again. During one scene, he steals a pink bike from a little girl and rides it down the street."

"On the screen, I want to do the last thing you would expect me to do," Ford insists. He also does his own stunts--even at his age. "Stunts for me are like a sport. Plus, I don't want my face pasted on some stuntman's body," he says, adding, "I'll do as much as I can before the director starts getting upset."

Ford signed onto this movie with the realization that "it was a tough market this summer. I knew we would have a lot of competition. It's all about performing really well in just a couple of weeks, so you can get your money back and hopefully some extra."

In any case, movie flops don't faze him. "I can tell you that I have high hopes for this movie. I can also tell you that I wouldn't release a Russian submarine movie in the summer," says Ford, bringing up the example of his summer 2002 box-office failure "K-19: The Widowmaker." "I think it was bad strategy to put that one out in the summer," he says. Then he smiles and adds, "But I'm over it."

Audiences will never be over Ford, who received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last week. "I've spent my whole life dreaming of getting that star," he says, laughing. "Seriously, I was very flattered and pleased by the auspicious timing of the event."

No, he didn't look around to check out whose stars surround his. "All I know is that I'm near the Kodak Theater if you want to walk on me."

But even having that star is way too much a public thing for a very private man. "You don't see me attending more openings or galas, unless it's an environmental cause, or I'm selling a movie," he insists, although since he's linked up with Flockhart, he's been a little bit more out there at Hollywood events. In fact, Ford just appeared at the MTV Movie Awards because "that's our target audience. So it seemed like a good idea to get out there."

From his grimace you can tell that it was torture all the way.

He preferred his days of anonymity.

Ford was born in Chicago, and as the familiar story goes, grew up on the "rough" streets of Park Ridge in a brown brick Tudor-style home. Bullied because girls dug him at Maine East Township High School (the less popular kids rolled him down the hill), he left town after graduation to attend Ripon College in Wisconsin. A philosophy major, Ford decided to break with all the deep thoughts to take a drama class. "It was always the easy A," he says, laughing.

Yet easy A's didn't help when he flunked out. After his marriage to Mary Marquardt, which produced sons Ben (now a chef) and Willard (a teacher), he moved the brood to California, where he became a contract player for Columbia Pictures and later Universal. In 1966, he made his movie debut in "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round."

With his $150 a week salary, he was forced to moonlight as a carpenter to help pay the bills. This led to working on film sets and then later a breakthrough role in "American Graffiti" (1973).

His real break came in 1977, when George Lucas cast him as Han Solo in the first "Star Wars" film, which led to sequels "The Empire Strikes Back" and "The Return of the Jedi." In 1981, he tipped his big brown hat and became Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which also spawned two sequels. He hit pay dirt again as Jack Ryan in "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger."

In 1983, he married "E.T." screenwriter Melissa Mathison; they had two children, Malcolm, 16, and Georgia, 12. After separating from Mathison, Ford dated Minnie Driver, 33. Since 2002, he has been seen constantly with Flockhart.

They met cute when she accidentally dumped a glass of wine on him at the Golden Globe Awards and now seem inseparable. They even attended the 2003 Oscars together.

Ford splits his time between his new apartment in New York and his 389 acres in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Mostly, he likes to stay at home, because "I have no control over the proliferation of paparazzi journalism, and I don't like to participate in it. That's not new for me. It's the same old me who likes his privacy."

At his age, Ford isn't mulling over his contribution to the film world. He doesn't think about his legacy. "I'm just out there working on movies. Most of all, I want to have an effective life and leave happy children on this planet."

"That's it," he adds. "That's a lot."

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