takes on a Hitchcock-style role

July 20, 2000
Detroit Free Press
by Terry Lawson

It's always a challenge to get much more than name, rank and a firm handshake out of Harrison Ford. He's known in the movie press corps for being endlessly supportive of the films in which he stars while giving up precious little beyond carefully measured boilerplate.

So it's a pleasant surprise to be greeted by the relaxed and comparatively forthcoming Ford doing his duty on behalf of "What Lies Beneath," a thriller with classy credentials and lofty ambitions. Directed by Robert Zemeckis ("Contact," "Forrest Gump") and costarring Michelle Pfeiffer, it looks to wed the insidious suspense of Alfred Hitchcock classics like "Suspicion" and "Rear Window" with the unbearable tension of "Psycho." It also offers Ford a part unlike those with which he is usually associated. But explaining exactly how it differs would reveal more than most moviegoers would want to know.

"It's tricky, I understand," says Ford, tearing off a quarter of a bagel and applying cream cheese and jam. "Norman is an interesting guy, but to explain why would spoil some of the film's surprise, and being surprised, upended, is what makes thrillers thrilling."

What can be said is that Ford plays Dr. Norman Spencer, a driven and brilliant scientist, working in the shadow of a renowned father. While Norman labors to complete a breakthrough study that would elevate him to the status of his late dad, his wife, Claire (Pfeiffer), begins to hear voices and see visions, specifically, a female apparition. Norman dismisses her mounting terror as separation anxiety -- a beloved daughter has just been sent off to college. Only when she stumbles on a secret he had hoped she would never discover does he allow that her delusions may in fact be something more -- and something far beyond their control.

"I didn't have to think much about it all," says Ford, described by one former collaborator as "a notorious overthinker," of the script sent him by Zemeckis. "It was something I knew, if done well, could work on the levels of both a thriller and as a look at human relationships. Anyone who has seen Bob's movies know they always go deeper than genre pieces ...I knew it would be more than a ghost story."

Zemeckis says Ford was the only actor he ever considered for the role, and Zemeckis might not have done the movie without him.

"It's a role that really requires a movie star of Harrison's strength and stature," says Zemeckis, who wanted to use Ford the way Hitchcock used stars like Cary Grant and James Stewart to "confound the audience's expectations." With Ford committed, Zemeckis was able to interest Pfeiffer, who says she had long been on the lookout for something she and Ford might do together. But when the two, who had never previously met, did finally get together, Pfeiffer, who has shared screens with everyone from Al Pacino to Robert Redford, found herself feeling something she hadn't felt in a long time.

"I was a little intimidated, I admit," she says. "I was very taken by his power, just the power of his presence. I haven't run into that a lot, but I remember Sean Connery having it as well. That ability to just fill up a room."

Ford, who would much rather talk about Pfeiffer's performance ("she's remarkable, I think") than his own, says anyone who tries to act from the perspective of a "movie star" is defeated before he begins. He says the primary benefit of the job description is that people are more inclined to take your opinions seriously. And while Ford rejects the suggestion that he ends up dominating any project in which he becomes involved, he says he never shies away "from doing my part to make whatever I commit to better."

In some cases, he even makes what he doesn't commit to better. Earlier this year, Ford became intrigued by the idea of appearing in an independent movie titled "Traffic," to be directed by Steven Soderbergh and based on a British TV miniseries about the impact drug trafficking has both globally and personally. Ford would have played the part of a government drug czar whose daughter becomes an addict, a part previously passed on by Michael Douglas. Ford spent months helping reshape the script before finally deciding not to make the movie. But as the story goes, Ford's changes were so dramatic they prompted Douglas to reconsider and accept the role.

"Well, that story would be wrong," says Ford. "I made certain suggestions about the screenplay that would make it more attractive to me, and the producers were willing to indulge some of those suggestions. And I think they were pleased with the changes. The reason I decided not to do it is that the character had problems relating to his daughter that cast a pall on the character. And I didn't want to play another grim character so soon after 'Random Hearts.' " "Random Hearts," written by former Free Press editor Kurt Luedtke and released earlier this year, was a rare commercial failure for Ford, whose appeal has proved strong and enduring enough to lure audiences to a romantic comedy as forgettable as "Six Days Seven Nights." Ford makes no apologies for "Random Hearts," the story of a cop devastated by the discovery that his dead wife was having an affair, saying it was the film "we wanted to make, a grownup movie for grownups, made with considerable skill and effort."

"We made the film we set out to make, and it had an insufficient appeal to audiences, simple as that," he says. "But I'm a very practical person about the business, and I didn't want to play another character with that potential to put people off so soon. My own preference is to mix things up, to keep things interesting for myself as well as audiences. I don't think wanting to entertain an audience and challenging an audience is always mutually exclusive."

But Ford, at 58, is looking for new challenges. He's eager to work with the new generation of filmmakers working outside the Hollywood system, which he says has regressed to that period in the '80s where all films were packaged -- i.e. delivered to studios with stars and director already attached. He's eager, he says to work with directors like Soderbergh, or the Coen brothers, or even the Farrelly brothers, and willing to cut or defer his $20-million asking price for the privilege.

This does not, he says, preclude the prospect of making more films with great storytellers like Zemeckis, or Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. He plans to reunite with the latter two for a fourth installment of the Indiana Jones chronicles. Ford is provisionally committed to cracking the whip again in a film that "won't ignore the fact that a few years have passed" since his last adventure. But with Lucas working on the next two "Star Wars" films and Spielberg committed to direct "The Minority Report," "A.I." and "Memoirs of a Geisha," it will likely be a few years before Indy goes exploring again.

So, how does a 65-year-old Ford play Indy?
"As 55," winks Ford.

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