February 2008

Harrison Ford Q&A: Indy Speaks!

The ''Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'' star talks about fame, aging, and how he wanted to kill off Han Solo

Entertainment Weekly
By Steve Daly Steve Daly

Great movie stars are often underrated as actors because they make what they do look effortless. Case in point: Harrison Ford. In person, talking to EW about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, he sounds nothing like his adventuresome character — or like anyone he's played onscreen. His voice is pitched much lower, and he's not emphatic in his delivery at all. There's not a trace of hurry in his cadences. It underscores the fact that every detail of what Ford does as Indy is a careful invention. The actor, now 65, is guarded, almost prickly, in speaking of his work; he seems to have a horror of being perceived as even remotely conceited (which he isn't). But he opened up about the tradeoffs of stardom, why making Indy movies remains a career high, and how his stubbornness regarding contracts paid off on the Star Wars films.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So you haven't seen the final cut of Crystal Skull yet.

HARRISON FORD: After making the movie out of continuity, I really would be hard-pressed to sit you down and walk you through the entire plot. If somebody tortured me for information about it, I'd probably end up dying.

George Lucas says it's not the money that prompted him to revisit this franchise — he did it for love of these kinds of movies.

Speak for yourself, George. [Laughs] Speak for yourself.

Sometimes when George talks about you, he sort of imitates you — or at least he uses a voice different than his normal voice.

He has a Harrison? Has he? [Deadpan] I'll bet it's great. He's such a good actor. [More laughter]

You're deliberately letting Indy age in Crystal Skull. That never happens in, say, the James Bond films. They seem to replace the actor once he gets too old. Or too expensive.

Do you fit either of those categories?

We'll see. That's one of the things I was most keen about. Just acknowledge the years between the last one and this one. Without reservation. Just acknowledge it. What's the big deal? The guy's 18, 20 years older. So what? I resisted some early efforts, for instance, to think about coloring my hair. I said, Uh, no.

What was the pro-hair-dye argument?

To look better, in some sense. I don't think there was ever a resistance to acknowledging the character's age. It's just a question of whether some people thought I'd be a better-looking 65 if my hair was colored.

American culture is generally paranoid about aging.

Well, I'm here to help. [Laughs] What would you like me to do?

By being in this movie with gray hair, you're doing it! A lot of people, when they hear about Crystal Skull, do a double take. Harrison Ford? Isn't he...um...

Yeah, I've heard it. ''Aaaaw, he's older.'' Well s---, yes. And by the way? So are you. So...are...you! Take a look in the f---ing mirror!

But the public doesn't want to look in the mirror — they can't face their own mortality. And they don't especially like seeing their favorite movies stars get older, either.

Well, what's really happening is that we're making movies for only one segment of the audience. We're making movies that are geared to youth culture. Movies that have to have a representative of that age group in the leading role. But this is a movie which is geared not to one segment of the demographic, an age-defined segment. It's interesting that while we've been off doing other things, a generation and a half of moviegoers have been introduced to [the Indiana Jones films] through the agency of their family. Fathers and mothers passing on this experience to their sons and daughters. It's pretty interesting that this is such a family event. We've got a great shot at breaking the movie demographic constraints.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Has Spielberg changed at all as a director?

HARRISON FORD: Nothing else has ever been as much fun for me as working with him, because he's both very clear about what he wants and very collaborative about how we get there. It's not a free-for-all. It's very focused. That's the way I like to work, anyway.

Way back on the first movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven storyboarded a lot of stuff, partly to help the schedule. Does he still do that?

Steven does something I've rarely seen. He'll walk onto a set he has not seen before. I mean he's seen sketches, he may even have seen a model. He may have thought about it a great deal. But he prefers to walk onto it sort of cold. And very quickly he'll sort out a way of staging the action, along with [cinematographer] Janusz [Kaminski]. His skills are so refined that he's not fearful about the process. It's a comfortable process. On a set, he's home. And so it's comfortable to be there with him.

George talks about how he only turned to you to play Indy after Tom Selleck fell out of Raiders — he was obligated to do Magnum P.I. instead. And Lucas has said a lot of factors went into your not being first choice. Among other things, there was concern the public wouldn't accept ''that Han Solo guy'' as a new character, and also an assumption that you'd never agree to making all the sequels, because you gave Lucas such a hard time about that on Star Wars.

I didn't sign a contract for the Star Wars films [beyond the first one]. I refused to sign the sequel deal. Which is why we [Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and I] aren't all living on roots and berries in the jungle somewhere. Because we had a favored-nations clause, the three actors. Which meant that whatever one got paid, all got paid. But when Indiana Jones came along, after reading the first one, and knowing that they had an ambition to do more, I was willing. And I was in a better negotiating position than I had been on Star Wars, for sure. I thought that the character was interesting enough to be able to develop further. I didn't feel there was as much interest in the character of Han Solo.

Why?

I did urge George to kill the character, because I thought that would be his best utility. To die, and give the story some resonance. I call it some bottom. He's got no mama, got no papa — out there all by himself. He's a piece you can move around, or get rid of. You don't need him for the rest of the story. That's what I thought. But I couldn't get George to go along with that. He didn't want to stop making the toys.

Well, why let a little thing like death stop that? You could have the Han Solo Funeral Playset.

[Laughs] Yeah. Right. You could bury his little ass. Woulda been good. Woulda been a seller.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You've got a younger sidekick this time, played by Shia LaBeouf. His character, Mutt, is a ''greaser.'' Did he even know what a greaser was?

HARRISON FORD: Shia's a very smart kid. He does his homework, does his research. Don't make the mistake of looking at Shia and thinking you're looking at an ordinary kid. One of the attractive aspects of him is that he's capable of behaving as, and portraying, an ordinary kid. And he doesn't have that gloss of ego that is so easily smelt and avoided. You want to step around it. It smells like dogs---, it is dogs---. He doesn't have that. I was really delighted to come to know him. Great to work with, for everybody. The whole cast is a remarkable bunch this time. Cate [Blanchett] is fantastic.

Shia says she was elusive on the set — that she didn't hang out much, and when she was around, she was mainly in character, as this Soviet agent, Irina Spalko. Which might have been a deliberate psych-out, since she's playing a villainess.

Two weeks into the movie, I'd only seen her in costume. She showed up one morning [in plain clothes] 'cause she wasn't working till later in the day, and I said, ''Who's that? That's who? Oh, shit — really?'' There's no aspect of her behavior that was not consistent with this bizarre person she's playing. And Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent — great actors. Not that we haven't always had great actors.

How was it reuniting with Karen Allen, back as Marion Ravenwood?

She's one of the easiest people to work with I've ever known. She's a completely self-sufficient woman, and that's part of the character she plays. A lot of her charm and the charm of the character is there. And again, it's not an age-dependent thing. It has to do with her spirit and her nature.

Denholm Elliott played Marcus Brody, a sort of artifact broker, in the first three movies. And of course he passed away in the '90s. Was it strange reuniting without him?

Denholm sort of haunts the place. In a good way. So he's not missing from the film. He was an enormously generous spirit, and everyone really loved him. He was a good guy.

There was some talk Sean Connery might return to play Indy's dad, but he declined.

You mean that old man? [Laughs]

What — you didn't want him back again?

I said no, no no no. I'm old enough to play my own father in this one. Sean's only 12 years older than I am. [In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade] I had to play so much younger than I am in order to make it work for him. It was really a strain.

Lucas has said, Probably better that Connery not cameo in Crystal Skull. If Connery showed up, people would expect he'd be along for the entire story.

And we couldn't afford that. [Laughs] I missed him, 'cause he was fun, he was a hoot. Great comic chops. But it's a different movie.

Everyone says you do as many or more stunts in Crystal Skull as you did in the earlier ones.

I probably did, because of one development: They've learned how to ''safety'' us with [guide wires] in a way that we didn't do before. It's a simple matter now to remove the wire [with digital CG doctoring]. That meant it was safe to do a number of things that probably wouldn't have been as safe 15, 20 years ago.

Why not let a stunt guy do it and just have them paste your face on digitally?

I like doing stunts. There's a degree of honesty when it comes down to physical work, that I enjoy. Gotta dig a ditch from here to there, and you gotta beat up five guys to get there. I love physical storytelling, too. I like all the little beats and moments in the middle of a physical confrontation. And I like hanging out with the stunt guys, and rolling around on the floor with sweaty men.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: By all accounts, security and secrecy on the Crystal Skull set was a really big deal, because Steven is so leery about giving away plot points.

HARRISON FORD: I wasn't the strictest adherent. I would have a representative of Lucasfilm dogging me on the backlot at Universal, asking me not to wear my hat when I went from stage to trailer. [He mimes a cranky expression] Get outta here!

Have you noticed that thanks to the Internet, news of location shooting spreads fast now, which brings out all the fans with cameras — and paparazzi, too?

I do notice that cell-phone cameras are everywhere, all the time. I'm more or less inured to it at this point. I wasn't so worried that an image [getting out] would destroy the potency of it all. [But] it's probably wise of Steven and George to be so secretive. They did make images and little Internet [videos] available, at regular times during the progress of the filming. I think they own the right to publicize the film in their terms, in a context that they think is favorable and correct.

Is it difficult trying to work on location with so many gawkers?

That's what you get paid for. Who gives a s---? Look, I read the contract when I sold my soul. You give up a right to privacy. You give it up begrudgingly, and you don't have to give it up every step of the way, and you don't have to inconvenience yourself. But for God's sake, you know that's the deal.

But hasn't the level of scrutiny gotten much worse for actors?

There was no such thing as that kind of intrusive invasion of your personal life when I started. I just wanted to make a living as an actor. But still, I knew at a certain point that I had lost my anonymity. Your face is up there 30 feet high and 50 feet wide, and after five, six years of that, you've lost it. You do not have that anonymity any more. It's a tremendous loss. It changes your life. But I'm over it. I understand, and let's get on with it.... It's a pain in the ass, to be frank. It's a royal pain in the ass. Part of what's annoying about it is that [your life] has become somebody else's business. It's not just that you're interesting. Because you're not. They have to give it context to make it interesting, and the context that they give it is often not correct, or appropriate, or useful to you. And they own that. You don't own that. And that's kind of bizarre.

Is it tougher for younger actors to protect themselves from overexposure?

I just think it's the speed of promulgation [that's changed], and the fact that it moves so quick. The shelf life is so short that it's gotta be replaced by some new bulls--- every minute. I always said about myself that I didn't want to be fashionable. I didn't want to be the most famous, the highest paid, the any of that. Because that's temporary. There's always gotta be somebody newer. You can use up people's interest in you very, very quickly.

The world has changed a lot since the '80s. What does Indy mean to overseas audiences now, with the U.S. not nearly so admired any more?

I don't think about my character in a movie that way. The character exists in the context of the film. It doesn't exist outside of that. He's there for the purpose of illuminating and illustrating the ideas of the film, for giving flesh to a notion, and to be the emotional representation of the audience on the screen. I don't have an academic point of view about what it is I'm doing. I have only the craft experience. The rest of it's for other people to do.

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