The King of the Box Office is the trump card in a deck

1999
Mr. Showbiz
by Jane Wollman Rusoff

Phone rings: "Hi. Harrison Ford." With that minimalist salutation, history's No. 1 box office star sets the tone for a frank, no-nonsense interstate chat. Ford is known as a tough interview. But even over the phone, he radiates the same casual, sensual charm that he projects on-screen — it's a calling card that has gone a long way toward making him Hollywood's most popular hero. The ruggedly handsome, 6-foot action star who swaggered through Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even punched out a few bad guys when he played the president in Air Force One, is coloring outside the lines with his latest movie, Random Hearts. Ford plays an even-tempered cop who becomes emotionally entangled with a congresswoman (Kristin Scott Thomas) after they discover their recently deceased spouses were lovers.

At the start of his career Ford never imagined he'd be playing this kind of leading-man role. Now, the Sydney Pollack-directed romantic drama is a poignant reminder that the 57-year-old Ford may be nearing the end of a long line of lust-inspiring lead parts. Indeed, during a recent appearance on David Letterman's Late Show, the actor with the youthfully pierced ear (keep an eye out for his stud in Random Hearts) half-jokingly moaned about his bad knees, bad back, and not being "a young guy anymore." Years ago, Ford turned to professional carpentry to help him earn a living, worried that his too-frequent appearances in guest-starring roles on popular TV series were "wearing out" his face. Now it seems the reluctant celebrity is inclined toward a similar conclusion regarding his big-ticket blockbusters: Will he trade in the romantic leading roles for finely crafted character parts? If nothing else, he seems to be consciously narrowing the age gap between himself and his leading ladies. Following a credulity-straining pairing with then 29-year-old Anne Heche in last summer's Six Days, Seven Nights, he moved up to Scott Thomas, 39, for Hearts, and is currently shooting the supernatural thriller What Lies Beneath with 4l-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer.

Mr. Showbiz reached Ford at his ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo., as he and his screenwriter wife, Melissa Mathison — whose golden inkwell has produced E.T., The Black Stallion, and Kundun over the years — were preparing to shift their base of operations to New York City, where their two children, Malcolm, 12, and Georgia, 9, attend school. The famously private actor spoke openly about some aspects of his life — he takes obvious pleasure in reminiscing about his father, who died last year at age 92 — and kept his peace about others. (Better not to ask, for example, whether he hopes to one day make a film with wife Mathison.)

Random Hearts is being called a "romantic thriller." How romantic is it?

It's very tough, atypical, and not romantic. There's a romantic interlude, but these people don't meet cute. They meet tough, and they stay tough on each other and themselves for a much longer time than our conventional notion of a romance allows.

Apart from the romantic interlude, there's also another scene that takes place in the front seat of a car …

That's erotic, not romantic. The scene is about rough sex. It's not tie-me-up kind of rough sex, but a brutal expression of the psychology of these two characters. They've both spent some time together in a charged atmosphere. It begins with her hitting me and ends with her having an orgasm. What comes in between is not [quite] a rape. The film is full of unconventional expressions of the dilemmas that characters find themselves in.

There's a lot of emotional pain in this movie.

There's pain, and there's relief from it. It's not exhausting or a negative experience. There's a process that occurs in this relationship and in my character's working his way through a combination of grief and disappointment and shock at discovering his wife's infidelity.

What attracted you to this project?

Mostly the emotional weight and substance of the material — like a prospector stumbling on a vein of strong emotion.

What was the most challenging part of working on the movie?

Satisfying Sydney [Pollack].

Is he hard to satisfy?

Well, yes. I mean, in the best possible way — he's a perfectionist. He's as hard on himself as he is on us. The detail of these character relationships is the plot of the movie. So you had the obligation to make it dramatically interesting to watch and participate in — and you couldn't rely on what you'd already given. The nature of drama is that you must keep the story going. And if the story is the nature of the characters and their relationship, then you have to weave something new into every scene.

Would you have made a good cop in real life?

Me? Yeah, probably. There are as many different kinds of policemen as there are lawyers or actors or directors or journalists. It's a mistake, always, to think generically.

I've read that you did some carpentry work at a point when you dropped acting. Is that accurate?

Not at all. I never dropped acting. I merely took up carpentry [because it] allowed me to not take every acting job that came along — to provide myself with an alternate income so that I could begin to reject episodic television guest-star shots. I thought I was beginning to wear out my face on episodic TV. I wanted to hold out for more ambitious kind of work. Of course, today there's a great deal more ambitious work in television than there was then.

Did you ever dream about becoming the No.1 favorite, most popular movie star?

I never had any ambition other than to make a living as an actor. I didn't know how it would play out. I never thought I would be a leading man. I always thought I was a character actor.

How did you get interested in acting in the first place?

I got into it kind of sideways. I was a philosophy and English major in college and was failing my last year. I was looking for something to get my grade-point average up, and I saw a class called "Drama." My school didn't offer basket weaving, so I thought that was probably the next best thing. But I failed to note, in the class description, that it was required to get up and act — something that just terrified me. I became interested in overcoming that lack of control over myself, which came from fear. So my first ambition was to overcome the fear, and then I became involved in the process once that went away and began to enjoy — I've always been a bit of a loner — the society of people working on this kind of project. I found a way to commit to a character and lose my own concerns in it and became sort of … not quite excited, but interested in the prospect of living many lives as an actor. I had this idea that you would work for a finite period of time with one group of people on one idea and then you'd go some place else and meet a new group of people and work on a new idea.

And did that match up with reality?

Yeah. That's one of the primary interests for me. You are continually in front of new people, new relationships; with new challenges and new ideas.

You're quoted in Talk magazine as saying: "Celebrity is the pox of success." You don't like the fame, the celebrity part?

I don't like the inconvenience of it. I like the fact that it allows me to work and that it's a register of some kind of success. But we are a celebrity-obsessed society, and I'm not a celebrity — I'm an actor. "Celebrity" is not what I do when I go to work.

"Inconvenience" means being recognized? Not having the freedom to go about?

Being categorized, being recognized, being the object of attention. The natural role of the actor is the observer, not the observed. I do not like what it says about our society and about our obsession with success. Celebrity is the pox of success.

Which performance or character that you've played is your favorite?

I don't work that way. Everything is different. One character is very different from another. The process is different every time. It's like saying which child is your favorite. I have four children — they're all different.

Have you ever acted in a movie that your wife wrote?

No.

Is that in the cards?

I don't know.

Do you want to?

It's hardly the object of my process to work in a film that my wife has written. I choose films based on other criteria than the fact that my wife has written them. I also don't develop. I stay out of the development process, if possible. I'd rather do a film that was written for Dustin Hoffman than for me. [Ironically, Random Hearts author Warren Adler recently reported that in the mid-'80s his best-selling novel was initially considered as a vehicle for Hoffman.]

Why is that?

Because one would expect there would be more challenge in doing something that was written for somebody else; whereas if they're writing for you, you suppose they're writing to your strengths to obviate your weaknesses and to take advantage of your iconography. In the case of Random Hearts, Sydney, being the kind of perverse genius that he is, did ask the writer to write it for me. This script had actually been around for about 15 years and had [gone through] many rewrites. But the character was already so different from the kind of character and film that people generally go to see me in.

Do you feel, then, that this role plays to your strengths to obviate your weaknesses?

I think that, in Sydney's sense of how to write it for me, it was written as more of a challenge for me to go to a place that I haven't taken an audience before.

How important, if at all, is it to you to be awarded an Oscar?

Not at all.

Not even a little bit?

No. I've made a very nice living, you know, doing this without it.

Let's shift gears a bit. What would you say is a character trait that's helped you get through life?

Persistence.

How was that manifest?

[During] the early stages of my career, I knew I had a lot to learn, that there was a great deal to know about the business of making movies — not just the business, but the craft and the art of it. So I didn't expect to have quick success, and I'm grateful that I didn't. I also knew that the process of attrition would thin the ranks of my competition and that if I simply held on long enough, I would get work because I'd be learning during that period and I'd have opportunities. So I didn't give up.

You grew up in Chicago. What did your parents do?

When I was growing up my father, Christopher Ford, was in advertising, but he had been a radio actor and writer in his early years. He passed away last year. He toured in "Gangbusters," which used to broadcast from vaudeville stages and toured the country with a group of five or six actors dressed in tuxedos who'd stand around two microphones on a stage. They would feed it live to the radio network. After my father's career in advertising, he spent quite a few years doing voiceovers in commercials. He was very successful at that.

You were acting by that time?

Sort of. Marginally. I was under contract to Columbia for $115 a week, if you call that an acting career.

Well, it got you started.

I certainly did start at the bottom, but I was very grateful for that. It had been my ambition to make a living as an actor. I couldn't say I was an actor unless I was actually getting paid for it.

Are you an only child?

No, I have a brother three years younger, Terence, who, at various times has been in production. For a short period, he was an actor, but he didn't like it.

I've read that you own four planes.

Oh, let's not quibble about the number. I own more than my fair share of airplanes and helicopters.

And you pilot them all?

I pilot all but the biggest. I don't pilot my Gulf Stream. That's not the kind of flying that interests me. It's like a desk job.

What kind of flying do you like?

I like [landing on] little grass strips, little planes, helicopters. I like flying in the mountains. I like challenging kinds of conditions.

What went through your mind when JFK Jr.'s plane went down?

More than you could know. [But] it never once occurred to me to stop flying, or to call into question my own ability in view of the circumstances that led to John's tragic accident.

You live in Wyoming?

In summer. We lived there full-time for about 12 years, before my kids were in school. Then, when my wife and I were both doing films in New York, we put the kids in school there and found out how much more of an advantage we could give them. So we live in New York during the school year and get back to Wyoming as much as we possibly can.

You don't care, then, to live in Los Angeles?

I spent 25 years living in Los Angeles.

And that was enough!

It doesn't work anymore. It's broken. There are just too many people there now. The density just makes it not work.

Is it true you have a pierced ear?

Yes, I have an earring that I occasionally wear. I have a pierced ear.

Something you always wanted, or you just fancied the style?

It was a whim, and I wear it when I feel like wearing it and I don't, when I don't.

In view of what you said earlier regarding celebrity, when People magazine named you "Sexiest Man of the Year" last year, how did that go over with you?

I saw it in the context of Six Days, Seven Nights. That was the reason. You know, I don't agree to publicity, generally, unless there's something to be sold. I think that people only have so much interest in any one person.

Your next movie is What Lies Beneath?

Right. I play a professor of genetics at a Vermont College. Michelle Pfeiffer is my wife, and some bizarre things began to happen in our lives.

Supernatural?

There's a bit of that.

I understand you're going out of town tomorrow.

Yeah, I'm gonna start to ferry my small planes to New York for the school year.

You mean, one by one?

Yeah. In fact, we usually get a bunch of guys together and take two or three planes at a time. I'm taking one, and one of my professional pilots is taking another. Working our way out.

You get a feeling of relaxation when you fly?

Absolutely.

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