What does a dream guy dream of?

28.9.2000
Bunte Magazine
(translated by YG)

Harrison Ford, 58, about the secrets that men keep from their wives. And about his heart's biggest concern: our nature. Clad from head to toe in Armani black, Harrison Ford, 58, enters a saloon of the Munich hotel "Four Seasons". The Hollywood star knows the city on the river Isar because, ten years ago, one of his sons attended the local Steiner school as an exchange pupil. Today, Ford is here to present his new movie "What Lies Beneath". There he plays a college professor who hides a dark secret from his wife. A psycho-thriller.

Q: Do you think your own wife knows really everything about you?

A: Ha! I hope she doesn't!

Q: Do you know everything about your wife?

A: No. But I don't mean that we are hiding something from each other. Maybe it's just trains of thought of the other one we don't know down to the last detail. But we have been together for 20 years and have a wonderful relationship.

Q: But it's a known fact that spouses don't know each other down to the last detail after umpteen years...

A: Yeah, I believe that, too. A human being will never really know everything about someone else. Sometimes I think that the secret of a harmonious relationship - especially with women - is to keep your mouth shut. You should not always say what you feel. Maybe that's already a kind of secret you keep from the other one. Anyway, my wife still keeps surprising me with her thoughts - and especially with what she's thinking about me.

Q: What is she thinking about you?

A: It's a bit too intimate for me to talk about this, just to sell my movie. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this.

Q: Okay, let's talk about something different: Recently you saved a young woman from a mountain. Does that happen regularly?

A: Yes, it was just the first time that it appeared in the headlines. In Wyoming, where I live, I volunteered to put my helicopter and myself as pilot at the disposal of the rescue team. There are of course other helicopters there, too, but they cost 1000 $ per hour. I understand this as a contribution to the community. Furthermore, I can train my flying skills, these missions often are a real challenge. But sometimes I just fly a technician on a mountain to a transmitter mast.

Q: What fascinates you about flying?

A: It's the technology and the fact that I am totally responsible for myself. When I fly, I have to absolutely concentrate on that one thing and to suppress everything else. I like the discipline that it demands. Moreover, I like seeing the world from a totally different point of view. And I like the people I meet on the small airports, the other pilots. I do appreciate it when I'm something different to the people I meet than a filmstar. I have always dreamt of flying, but I took quite a long time with it. I only started it five years ago. Since then I've been flying an awful lot.

Q: Does your wife fly with you?

A: Yeah, my children do, too.

Q: All the time there are crashes of small machines in the news. Are you never afraid when you're flying?

A: No, I am never afraid.

Q: Not even of death?

A: Nobody lives forever. I don't think about dying, but about keeping my life. I'm not afraid of being dead and I don't want the thought of death to be permanently on my mind.

Q: Are you a religious person?

A: No, not in the conventional meaning of the word. But I do believe in nature. The rules of nature are something so extraordinary that it exceeds the capacities of the human mind. Nature is very important to me, that's why I commited myself to its conservation. For more than ten years I've been supporting the organization "Conservation International" which tries to save the biological diversity. More and more plant and animal species become extinct because of human influences. That's alarming. But we can do something against it. Because 90 % of the existing species live on only two percent of the earth's surface. We want to save these "hot spots".

Q: Did you buy a part of the rain forest?

A: No. Our organization has bought land distributed over the whole world. But buying land is not our priority. We were the first ones to pay for the debts of third world countries. In return, these countries founded national parks and stopped felling trees. We also negotiate with big American companies, with the oil industry or the world bank about the ecological side of their products and projects. Gordon Moore, the inventor of the Intel chip, just gave us 50 million dollar to set up an ecological think tank.

Q: What do you think about Greenpeace?

A: I think the actions of Greenpeace are a bit silly and rather ineffective. They don't tackle the real issues.

Q: So you're very close to nature, and you live on a farm. Do you also do farm work?

A: No. There is no farm work to do. My wife and I bought a big piece of pasture, where cattle used to grass, in Wyoming twenty years ago. There were no streets and no electricity, but a huge stretch of unspoilt countryside, and our piece of land is about as big as the Central Park in New York. That is now our home and we do everything to preserve the wildlife on it.

Q: Is it true that you want to play Indiana Jones again?

A: Oh yes, Steven Spielberg is talking to M. Night Shyamalan, who is a wonderful writer and who is supposed to write the script. Of course Spielberg is going to direct it himself.

Q: Tell us one last secret: You wear an earring - what's up with it?

A: Nothing special. Four or five years ago I met two friends in New York for lunch, and both of them had earrings. One of them was the singer Jimmy Buffett. Maybe I had one glass too much, anyway, suddenly I wanted to have an earring, too. My wife was with me and encouraged me. After the lunch we went immediately down to Lexington Avenue to a piercing shop - one plop! and that was it. So there's no deeper meaning to.

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