The $20 Million Dollar Man

1999
by Bob Strauss

The $20 million man on the burden of being the Sexiest Man Alive, making romance work and flying aimlessly around the country. Sure, he's the most successful movie star in the world, but let's face it, Harrison Ford's a man of action. What does Han Solo, Indiana Jones or Jack Ryan know from romance? Okay, he did play the President and attempt a cold-fish screen fling with Anne Heche. But in his latest, Random Hearts, Ford's diving headfirst into the mushy stuff, in the form of a D.C. cop who not only finds out his dead wife was having an affair, but falls for her lover's widow (Kristin Scott Thomas). At least he's got The Way We Were's Sydney Pollack along as costar and director. So, can he make us swoon this time around? After all, the 57-year-old guy must know something about the subject: He and his wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathison (Kundun), are in their 16th year of marriage, which has to be some sort of a Hollywood record. Hmmm...come to think of it, what does he know that we don't?

You were already a grandfather when People magazine dubbed you the Sexiest Man Alive last year. How do you live up to something like that?

I don't think there's any living up to it--just living with it.

Your romantic movies have never been as popular as your action films. Any idea why, Mr. Sexiest Man?

That was last year! [Laughs.] Action films, in general, have a broader, more kinetic appeal. And if you take out all coming-of-age movies from the love-story pile, there aren't that many [love stories] being written for mature adults, and I don't get offered all of those. A lot of actors have personal projects, and I don't do that. I don't develop things for myself. What does come my way is what's not already attached to other people, and it doesn't include a lot of good romances.

Would you like to do more romantic comedies?

I think I would quickly tire of either kind of film [action or romance] if I didn't have the chance to do both. I have great fun running, jumping and falling down--doing that kind of movie--and I also have fun dealing with a film like this.

Random Hearts is set in D.C., and your costar plays a congresswoman. Any chance that you'll finally come out in support of Bill Bradley?

I was outed by Sydney Pollack, for purposes of his own. [Laughs.] I like Bradley. I like what he stands for. I like what he's done in his life, and I think he's a great guy. His is just the kind of consciousness we need in that job.

And he was a great basketball player. By the way, I'd bet the star of Air Force One could get some support if he ran for President of the United States.

I think that's ludicrous. I have no capacity, no experience, no preparation, no interest. It's completely ridiculous. I have a great job now, thank you very much.

A job you almost quit when you preferred to support yourself as a carpenter rather than make bad movies.

[Acting] became a better job at a certain point when I began to have more responsibility, more freedom.

Like maybe after a little movie called Star Wars?

After the success of Star Wars, I became, somehow, commercially viable. Things were much easier and much more interesting for me from that point on.

Any desire to play Han Solo again--or one of his ancestors?

No. That character just isn't that interesting to me, or at least the character as I have known him in the past.

How about that fourth Indiana Jones movie?

I'm ready when they're ready.

Random Hearts isn't your typical love story. Is that what attracted you?

I loved the different dramatic setup. This is not a very plot-heavy movie, but the starting point--two characters lose their spouses in a commercial-airline crash and then find out they were having an affair--that's a very powerful emotional beginning for me. The more I heard about how the character behaved, the more interested I was. It's unusual material to make a love story from. I was intrigued by that.

It is interesting the way your character (Dutch Ven Den Broeck) flies from grief to obsessiveness to feeling betrayed to massive self-doubt to tenderness and vulnerability, sometimes all in the same scene.

Certainly, texture and definition and change are part of drama. You have to create the precise and correct behavior to give expression to an idea with this kind of material. He's not so much described by his grieving as by other forces on him. The betrayal, as a husband, is the first thing he deals with. The second thing is the question of his value in what he's chosen to do in life. As a policeman, he wonders how he might have missed this crime that was going on in his own house. That calls into question all of his capacities. The guy's really as devastated by that as by the loss of his wife.

Do you think it says that you don't really know anybody--not even your own spouse?

I think that's part of what it says, and I don't have any argument with that as a reality. I think it's true.

For many years after your breakthrough in movies, you still liked to build furniture in your down time. Do you still enjoy carpentry?

I pay for things to be built these days. I don't really build myself much anymore. I do have a workshop, but I don't have much of a chance to get in there, and when I do, it's just to fix something.

I guess most of your free time now is spent in the air flying your helicopter or airplanes.

Everybody thinks I'm flying aimlessly across the country, but I'm not. I'm going somewhere usually. I take the helicopter and the other planes out to Wyoming for the summer and then back to New York for the winter. Then I flew my helicopter down from Jackson [Jackson Hole, Wyoming] to L.A. so I could have it while I was filming What Lies Beneath, the supernatural thriller I'm making with Michelle Pfeiffer.

What happens when Harrison Ford suddenly shows up at little airports in the middle of nowhere?

Sometimes nothing at all. People are inevitably surprised to see me descend on them from out of the sky. They make a fuss or sometimes are unprepared to make a fuss. Sometimes I'm there for 15 minutes; other times I'll stick around until the weather clears and have more interaction with the people I meet. It's always fun, though. They have no choice but to relate to you first of all as a pilot, since that's how you've obviously arrived there. It takes a little bit of the strain off.

You now spend most of the year in New York City?

Yeah, while my kids are in school.

That's quite a change from an 800-acre spread in the Rockies. Have you adjusted?

I'm bearing up. I don't think I could take it full time without being able to get away from it, but I also needed to get away to the city when I was living in Wyoming full time. A combination of those experiences is preferable to being stuck in either place.

Can you move around the city without getting hassled too much?

I do it all the time. I walk across town every morning when I play tennis, then walk back. People nod, say hello; sometimes they'll ask for an autograph or something. It's New York. They see people who they recognize all the time. It's really not much of a bother.

You famously keep in such great shape with no more workout than that regular tennis game. Still, you're at an age when most men just play leisurely rounds of golf. Do you think you'll be able to keep up the action-hero stuff?

Well, not indefinitely. But I feel capable in that area still. I feel physically fit--and capable of pretending to be fitter.

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