Presumed Cool

August 20th, 1990
Us Magazine

When you think of male sex symbols, he’s far down the list dominated by the likes of Gibson, Cruise and Costner. Though his characters have displayed a dry wit, his comic reputation pales next to Murphy, Hanks and Williams. But in the mythic roles of Han Solo and Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford has indeed starred in a half-dozen of the industry’s biggest blockbusters.

What a difference a quarter of a century makes. Ford’s inauspicious film debut came in 1966, playing a bellhop in the instantly forgettable Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round. Seven years later, director George Lucas gave him a small role in American Graffiti and in 1977 cast him in his breakthrough role as an intergalactic rogue in Star Wars. Then in 1981 came Steven Spielberg’s saga of a fedora-clad archaeologist and his whip. Ford was now the biggest movie star on the planet. Yet it’s only recently that he has been universally accepted as a serious actor - and a legitimate box office draw - on his own merits. The turning point was Peter Weir’s Witness, which garnered Ford an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in 1985. The actor had finally graduated from one-dimensional cartoondom. For the first time, audiences were able to perceive not only his low-key charisma, but his potential as a mature romantic lead. As opposed to most modem screen heroes, who are full of bravado and menace,

Ford’s professional persona is that of a human-scaled, vulnerable tough guy - and therein lies his sex appeal. Today, at the age of 48, Ford is finally on the A-list of stars who get first crack at quality scripts. It now seems inconceivable that Ford would ever have doubted his ability to make it as an actor, but there was a time when he did. There was a period pre-Star Wars when he withdrew in frustration from his stalled acting career and took up carpentry so that he could support his then wife Mary and their two sons, Benjamin and Willard (who are now in their early 20s). Now that he’s making upward of $10 million per film, he engages in both endeavors strictly on his own terms - when and where and for whom he wants.

Born and raised in Chicago, Ford has clung to traditional Midwestern values, and he gets far away from Hollywood as frequently as possible. He is every bit the outdoorsman you would picture him to be. Since 1985, home base has been an 800-acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the deer and the antelope really do play. At home, on location and even on press junkets, privacy is the coin of his realm.

In 1983, he married screenwriter Melissa Mathison (not to be outdone by her husband’s credits, she is the author of the top-grossing movie of all time, E. T.). They have a 3-year-old son, Malcolm, and a daughter was born shortly after this interview took place. Unintentionally fueling Ford’s contempt for the media, a New York “ daily jumped the gun and reported that she was born the morning of the interview. “News to us,” Ford said with a pained smile. No wonder the actor is notorious for keeping up his guard m public, emerging from his western compound only to tout his latest film. He is always gracious but never expansive; his responses are polite but to the point. Like some of his more memorable characters, Fbrd opts to maintain an air of mystery. Or maybe he just doesn’t have much to say Or maybe he’s got plenty to say but he just doesn’t feel like saying it to the whole world.

In person, he looked more Hollywood than woodsman. When he entered his posh Hotel Bel-Air suite, his attire conformed to contemporary California chic: black Tshirt, black trousers, black sports jacket, black shades and black Birkenstock sandals. As he nibbled fruit and sipped Evian water, he frequently leaped from his seat to flatten his back against a wall. “I did about 400 tennis serves yesterday” he explained stoically. “I just threw my back out.”

Ford was only truly at ease while discussing his latest film, Presumed Innocent, ~ directed by Alan Pakula and based on the best-selling novel by Scott Turow. Ford stolidly portrays a big-city prosecutor Rusty I Sabich, who is accused of murdering his sexy colleague. Carolyn Polhemus (Greta  Scacchi), with whom be had an obsessive extramarital affair. “Harrison looks just like Rusty Sabich as I envisioned bin,” says Turow. As in the novel, it’s impossible to tell whether Ford’s character is a killer or not. The beauty of Ford’s performance is that be keeps you guessing-and changing your mind-in every scene. In a surprising move, Warner Bros. made a  special appeal to the press: Don’t reveal the ending. But considering that the novel spent 44 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list, it seems moot point...

AREN’T YOU CONCERNED THAT HALF OF AMERICA HAS ALREADY READ PRESUMED INNOCENT AND KNOWS HOW THE MOVIE ENDS?

Yeah. Well, I don’t think half of America. We often forget that it takes - what? - just 10,000 books to get on the best-seller list. I don’t deny that this book had a great success. But still, a movie audience is going to be a lot broader than that book- reading audience. I’m very pleased with the reaction of people who had read the book and still found the movie compelling. Some of them have said, as well, that they forgot who did it while they were watching.

WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THE FILM?

I was interested in the character and his dilemma. But the difficulty was that [the novel] had been written in a first-person narrative form. And that worked well in the book, but there was no way that could be made to work ma film. As well, we had the difficult job of disguising “whodunit” m a dramatic way. I think that is a real intellectual challenge. Happily, we had a director who’s up to that sort of thing - incredibly tenacious about going after the values that he wanted. I’m very happy with the film.

HOW DID YOU CONNECT WITH THE CHARACTER OF RUSTY SABICH?

Well, we come from the same geographical background. I was raised in the Midwest. I found it very easy to connect with him. He’s a guy who has a very strong moral attitude, who nonetheless finds himself drawn into a compulsive love affair

HOLD ON - ARE YOU SAYING YOU CONNECT TO THAT?

I’m saying I think anybody can. [Pauses, smiles] How will I worm my way out of

this? It’s not a part of my experience necessarily, but it’s something that I can certainly relate to and understand And what I can especially understand is the depth of the conflict that this caused him. And the helplessness he must have felt when the events took the turn they do.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN UNJUSTLY ACCUSED OF SOMETHING?

[Shakes his head] I was almost always justly accused. I almost always did it.

TURNING A BOOK INTO A MOVIE CAN BE TRICKY. WHAT KINDS OF PROBLEMS CAME UP?

Certainly one problem was that the dialogue of Rusty Sabich as written in the book was somewhat difficult. This is not to characterize Scott Turow’s skill at writing dialogue. So wrestling Rusty’s dialogue into shape was one of the problems. Also, maintaining the mystery and deciding upon whom the suspicion should fall at any particular juncture was a difficulty Not a difficulty, but It was one of the complications. And the ending was a very complicated challenge.

WHY DOES THE MOVIE END BEFORE THE BOOK DOES?

We felt we had to get out of it at a certain point and not answer certain questions that the moviegoer might want to mull over for himself. But I think [the ending] suggests a resolution akin to the one in the novel.

PRESUMED INNOCENT IS BEING RELEASED IN A SUMMER FULL OF BIG ACTION BLOCKBUSTERS. WAS THERE ANY CONCERN ABOUT THAT?

In a way, it is counter to the conventional wisdom to release a film like this at that time. But I think it’s quite a good idea. We‘ve tested well in all the age ranges. And if we had not, I think it would be very -~risky. But I think the film seems to appeal to a very broad audience. Even teenage girls. I couldn’t be happier if that’s the case. I hadn’t expected it to do that well with a younger audience. I think it’s a film that people will think about for more than the time it takes for them to get into their cars.

WERE YOUR WIFE AND SON WITH YOU ON LOCATION?

Yeah, that’s something we really insist on.

YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE A DAD AGAIN.

Any minute now. It was reported this morning in a New York newspaper that we had a baby girl. [Smirks]

DO YOU KNOW IF IT WILL BE A GIRL? We do, yes. And now you do as well.

[NOTE: Ford’s first daughter, Georgia, was born on June 30,11 days after this interview.]

HOW ABOUT YOUR OLDER SONS - WERE THEY INDIANA JONES FANS?

I don’t think they’re Indiana Jones fans, no. I think they liked the movies, but I don’t think they’re the fan types. They saw it more as, you know, it’s a job that I do.

AND THEIR FRIENDS?

Well, kids are cool. They’re hipper than that. They don’t display their enthusiasm too much. I’m still just another dad - somebody’s dad who’s got this odd job.

HAD EITHER CONSIDERED ACTING?

Well, they were both forced to be in plays in school, and I don’t think either of them really enjoyed it too much. I’d never steer them away from or toward a theatrical career. My oldest is at the California Culinary Academy studying to be a chef. And his brother is at UC, Santa Cruz, studying history He wants to teach high school history.

LETS TALK ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD. REFLECT UPON HARRISON FORD AT AGE 10.

[Long pause] I lived in Chicago ... Happy, normal kid. Probably wanted to be a forest ranger.

HARRISON FORD AT 20?

I was a junior in college. I think I was asleep most of that time. Unhappy college student. . . I was concerned about doing badly in school. And about not having an idea of what to do with myself and my life.

YOU WEREN'T CONTEMPLATING AN ACTING CAREER?

It’s probably just around this time that the idea of acting began to take root. I did a couple of plays in my junior year, and that’s when I first became interested in acting.

WERE YOU A PARTY ANIMAL?

Yeah, I suppose I was. Although, at the same time, a loner.

POPULAR WITH THE GIRLS?

Not very as I remember.

HARRISON FORD AT SO?

That would have been the period when I was working as a carpenter and occasionally taking acting jobs, but more or less concentrating an making a living as a carpenter. I had decided to become a carpenter in order to have another source of income and not have to take every acting ‘job that came along, because I had the sense that I was not building a career. I was doing the same kind of thing over and over again. And I had a wife and two sons.

NOW THAT YOU DOW1’ HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT MAKING A LIVING, WILL YOU EVER CHANCE ANOTHER CAREER -. SAY, DIRECTING?

I have no ambition to direct. I like what I do. I like the job that I have. I like having the time off from the job. And were Ito direct or become more involved in production, I would lose a lot of that. Time away from the business is so important to me. I like to have enough time to get well away from the movie business and this sort of process of publicizing films.

GIVE US AN IDEA OF A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A WYOMING RANCHER.

Well, there are no two days alike. And it’s not a working ranch. We pastured same cattle for our neighbors, but slid them off about three years ago. Just so the grass would grow back. Our life isn’t regular enough to keep horses. But we have a lot of wild animals. Sometimes we’ll have some work to be done to improve their environment. There are fences to be main- tamed and snow to be plowed.

ARE YOU THE FENCE MAINTAINER AND THE SNOW PLOWER?

I have a guy that works with me, a caretaker. But that’s basically the day. I’m out of the house by nine o’clock and over in the shop working on something. [And) there’s skiing and hiking and fishing. Going down the river in a raft.

IT’S ALL FAR FROM THE PRYING EYES OF HOLLYWOOD AND THE PRESS. WHY ARE YOU SO WARY OF THE PRESS?

Well, I don’t really have any distrust or dissatisfaction in general with the press. “Wary” is not an appropriate word, but neither is it an inappropriate attitude. You are whatever you tell people you are. And, first of all, I’d just as soon people knew as little about me as possible, for a variety of reasons. One is I don’t think it helps with your work. Two, I think people get bored with you. And three, I think that there’s just too much emphasis on celebrity and success in this country and I don’t want to have any more to do with that mythology than is necessary.

YET THERE’S A PRODUCT TO PLUG.

And I think it’s fair enough. It would be unrealistic of me not to recognize that there’s an opportunity here to communicate to the audience who are supporting me. But Ithink the press will Use you up, if you give them half the chance, then spit you out and find somebody else to use.

BUT YOUR PRESS HAS CERTAINLY BEEN AMONG THE MOST FAVORABLE.

I’m not complaining about how I’ve been treated by the press at all. But I have never been fashionable with the press. I’ve been available to them when I have something to promote.

OKAY, LET’S GET BACK TO PRESUMED INNOCENT, SPECIFICALLY THE MURDER WEAPON. IN THE BOOK, IT’S DESCRIBED AS A TOOL CALLED “A WHATCHAMACALLIT.” YOU’RE A CARPENTER. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT THING?

It’s a whatchamacallit. Really. I’ve seen it advertised in catalogues as a whatchamacalltt

DOES IT EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD?

Oh yes. Oh yeah. It’s a very common tool. It’s something you might find around the house.

AND IT’S TRADITIONALLY USED FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

[Deadpan] I think it’s almost always used as a murder weapon. They sell thousands of them...

YOU CAN ALMOST IMAGINE A LATE- NIGHT TV AD FOR IT: “IT SLICES, IT  DICES

Right. A Murder-Matic.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR TERRIBLY IMPRESSIVE CHIN SCAR?

It doesn’t bother me. I really enjoy the process of making movies, and it’s something that I now have built up a body of experience with. It’s something I feel I could still learn about. When it comes to the point where I don’t think I can learn anything more about it, I’ll be done with it.

CHANGING THE SUBJECT COMPLETELY, YOUR FOREARMS HAVE SOME NASTY-LOOKING SCRATCHES - FROM RANCHING CHORES?

No, I had a little car accident a few weeks ago. I was the only one in the car. Somebody started to make a left-hand turn in front of me, and I didn’t get out of the way. just got scraped up on my arms, that’s all. [Shrugs] It’s nothing.

IS THERE ONE THING THAT YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO THAT YOU HAVEN’T YET DONE? AN UNFULFILLED FANTASY?

Oh, there are lots of things. Always wanted to learn to sail. I’ve always wanted to take a long canoe trip through the wilderness. I haven’t made some furniture I want to make. I’d like to have a month and actually not do anything else but work on some furniture, work on honing those skills which I haven’t practiced for so long.

DO YOU TRAVEL FOR PLEASURE?

Well, we don’t travel as much as we used to because with the baby it’s hard. And also being away from home as much as we are with work, the last thing you want to do after you’ve been on location for five months is to go further a field. You want to go home.

DO YOU FORESEE A TIME WHEN YOU’LL RETIRE FROM FILMMA2KJNG ALTOGETHER?

I think one of the things that attracted me to it is that it is something you can do as long as you want to, as long as they’ll tolerate your doing it. And I don’t see any reason one would have to stop. The only thing that would ar stop me would be me getting bored with it. And that doesn’t seem likely because the experience of making a film is something that has not yet failed to engage me completely.

WILL YOU EVER GIVE THOUGHT TO RETURNING TO TELEVISION?

No . . . the difficulty, it seems to me, with television is the many layers of authority that one has to work through.

HOW ABOUT THEATER?

Theater really seems to be a different job, ma way. And too much like a real job, going to the theater every day and doing the same thing. Although it gives you the opportunity to perfect something. Still, I guess I’d rather slug it out and do the best I can, and go on to a new problem.

A LOT OF FILM ACTORS ARE FRUSTRATED BECAUSE THEY MISS PERFORMING

Well, it is because its tangible representation is the property that I bought in Jackson. I was able to buy a piece of property that is big enough to have some privacy.

IS THERE FURNITURE AT HOME THAT YOU’VE BUILT YOURSELF?

Not a great deal. Malcolm’s bed was the last thing I can remember making in the last year or so. He watched me make it. But I’m sure he thinks that everybody’s dad makes their bed. And I think probably more people than you realiae do build their son’s bed.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR FOLKS. YOUR DAD WAS AN AD EXECUTIVE?

When I was growing up. And when I was in college, or shortly after I got out of college, he quit that and opened an antique shop in Chicago with my mother.

IS IT STILL THERE?

No. We had a couple of shops. And then my father, for the last 10 or 15 years, has been doing voice-overs. He had been a radio actor early on and had written for radio.

IF SOMEONE SAW YOU IN THE SAME ROOM TOGETHER, WOULD THEY BE ABLE TO MAKE THE CONNECTION?

I don’t think so. I don’t think we look so much alike. And you know, I don’t think our personalities are so similar that one would even assume that there was a relationship.

ANY SIBLINGS?

I have one brother. Three years younger. He’s an actor. His name is Terence FOrd. He’s just beginning to get his breaks. He’s done a couple of films.

INSPIRED BY YOUR SUCCESS?

I wouldn’t think that that would be entirely fair to him. I think he’s inspired by his own energies.

WHAT KIND OF TIPS HAVE YOU GIVEN HIM?

I wouldn’t presume to give anybody tips on anything. Occasionally, he’ll ask me what I think about something, and I’ll tell him. But I never tell him unless I’m asked.

WHICH SEEMS CHARACTERISTIC OF YOU. LIKE, YOU’RE KNOWN AS SOMEONE WHO AVOIDS SPEAKING ON BEHALF OF CHARITIES AND POLITICAL CAUSES.

I don’t necessarily avoid them, but I don’t make it part of my public persona. ... I don’t think this is something I want to get into because it may seem to be an implied criticism of how other [actors] conduct themselves. Certainly, there are righteous causes, and I’m constantly approached. And I try and help those which I think -4

YOU’RE PAID PRETTY WELL FOR SUCH MOVIES. YOU MUST BE WORTH ROUGHLY A ZILLION DOLLARS, GIVE OR TAKE

[Bemused] This isn’t going to be a personal question, is it?

NOT AT ALL JUST: WHAT’S THE ONE THING THAT MONEY CAN BUY?

Time. Time to do whatever you want to do. Freedom from having to work. Privacy.

IF YOU WERE INVITED TO THE LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL TO TALK ABOUT ACTING AS A CAREER, WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THE KIDS?

I would say it’s one of the toughest jobs in the world to get. You have to be really focused on it, and you’ve got to want to do it for the right reasons. Not to be famous or to be rich, but because that’s what interests and moves you. But it is a nearly impossible career ambition. The ones who are going to make it are not going to be asking anybody at high school career day how to go about doing it.

THEY’D PROBABLY CUT CLASS THAT DAY ANYWAY.

(Laughs] Right!

HAVE YOU THOUGHT OF COLLABORATING WITH YOUR WIFE, STARRING IN ONE OF HER SCRIPTS?

We talk about projects occasionally. Things come up, but it’s never gelled. (And] she doesn’t write with someone in mind - I don’t think her mind works that way. And I would always prefer that someone didn’t have me in mind when they wrote just because it’s then likely to be more unexpected.

WHAT IS THE FILM AUDIENCE S PRECONCEPTION OF YOU?

I don’t think they have one. Had I continued only to do action/adventure films of the Indiana Jones stripe, I think I would be stuck in that bag But I’ve gone out of my way to avoid being categorized that way, and I think it’s worked.

NOW THAT YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING ROLES IN SUITS AND TIES, DO YOU MISS THE EXOTIC COSTUMES?

(Laughs] No, I don’t miss the costumes. I have been looking for an action/adventure film to do, but I haven’t found one that is about something more than car chases. They’re not about anything, most of the ones I’ve seen. I’m still interested in doing that kind of film - it just hasn’t happened. It just has to be the right one.

YOU’VE SAID THAT YOU WERE TIRED OF THE RUNNING AND JUMPING MOVIES.

Well, someone must have asked me after I’d just finished running and jumping - or falling down. I’ve often said glib things about getting away from that image or those movies. But it’s usually after I’d been on them for five or six months.

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