Every week we take a look in the RTÉ Guide archives to check out the stories from years gone by. On this week in 1997, Michael Doherty met one of the greatest modern movie stars, Harrison Ford, who was promoting the thriller Air Force One. You can read this interview below.
Harrison Ford first arrived in Hollywood twenty-odd years ago, in a battered camper van en route to a $90-a-week contract with Columbia pictures. How times have changed...Today, I'm standing on the balcony of Ford's salubrious suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The room is only a tad smaller than. Dalymount Park... Far from arriving in a dodgy camper, Ford has flown himself in by private jet for the interview, as befits a man whose salary has risen from less than $100 a week to $25 million a film.The second most famous ex-carpenter ever has arrived in Tinseltown to promote his latest film, Air Force One, reviewed in The Movie Show this Thursday. Wearing his 55 years remarkably well, he looks lean, healthy and ultra-smart in his black designer suit. It is thus quite a shock, when he approaches to proffer a typically firm handshake, to see the actor sporting a cropped haircut which is now almost completely grey in hue. Even more alarming is the presence of a gold band in his left ear which calls to mind Steven Spielberg's description of the actor as "a remarkable combination of Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Don Juan and Bogart in The Treasure of The Sierra Madre". The jaw still resembles a lantern and still bears the mark of the time he crashed his car into a telegraph pole) and there's a palpable air of confidence about the man.
And why not? The measure of Ford's success is the fact that he has starred in six of the twelve top-grossing films of all time. And the measure of his celebrity is the fact that when President Clinton celebrated his fiftieth birthday at a private function last year, the actor and his wife were supping at the top table. An opportunity to case the real subject of his upcoming film, perhaps? "I have met President Clinton on a few occasions," responds the actor with his famous wry smile, "but I didn't think it was necessary or wise to try to model my character on him. There were plenty of opportunities in the screenplay to create a distinct character."
'Ijust think about my job on a case by case basis," he says, in that famously slow drawl 1 have no sense of, or interest in myself as an object. l enjoy my work for the challenge it presents and the opportunity to work with other people. I'm not at all interested in the exterior view of myself as an icon, or whatever.'
Perhaps it is his humble origins that keeps Ford's feet on the ground. After all, he just has to visit a few of his friends in Hollywood to remind himself of the days when he used to earn three hundred dollars a month as a carpenter: To this day, the actress Sally Kellerman has a sign on her patio which reads, "This is the sun-deck Harrison Ford built". He might be the Star of the Century (according to the National Association of Theatre Owners in America), and an actor who can command $25 million per film (plus 15% of the gross), but Ford just takes each script as it comes.
'The luck and success I've had over the years has enabled me to have a greater choice of roles,' he states, simply. 'I've never made any attempt to control my persona or to skew my appeal in one way or the other. I just try to make the best movies that I can and let the chips fall where they may. I'm aware of how each film appeals to the demographics because I am involved in test screenings and marketing. I was very gratified that in our testing of Air Force One, females over 25 and women in general scored the film very high, which is unusual for an action/thriller. It's a good thing if I can appeal to both a male and female audience'
Ford's involvement in his films extends beyond the test screening stage. He personally rang the head of Paramount Pictures to ask him not to open the competing blockbuster Titanic on the same day as Air Force One.The strategy paid off as the film brought in $37 million during its opening weekend, his biggest opening ever. Ask the actor for the key to his success over the years and he won't point to the bone-crushing stunts or the tongue-in-cheek action sequences: he immediately cites finding a human side to even the most macho of his characters.
'Sometimes people think it is difficult for a person in my position, for some reason, to want to show emotion or to show vulnerability,; says Ford, becoming animated for the first time. 'It's always been a feature of the characters I've portrayed over the years that they have had great capacity but also a degree of human weakness.' His desire to make the US president more human in Air Force One has certainly paid off. Not only are audiences flocking to see the film but Clinton is so pleased that he has found time in his hectic round of political engagements to see the film three times.
So, having enjoyed the patronage of Bill and Hillary Clinton and portrayed the US president so convincingly on screen, the question naturally arises at to whether or not Harrison Ford has political ambitions of his own.'Only as a voter,' he responds quickly, clearly used to the question by now. 'I'm really not interested in the process of politics;I'm only interested in the effect. I'm interested in American foreign policy and responsibility. As a citizen, I'm always interested in what my government is doing in the world.' That interest led him to travel to Brazil recently for a conference organised by the environmental group Conservation International. Both he and his wife are outspoken supporters of the Dalai Lama and campaign whenever possible on behalf of the people of Tibet (she is writing Scorsese's film, Kundun, based on the life and times of the Dalai Lama). Unlike his fellow actors, Tim Robbins and Richard Gere, however, Ford doesn't utilise his celebrity publicly to promote causes. You won't see him speaking out at the Oscars, but then nobody saw him appearing before a US Senate committee two years ago speaking out on Tibet.
So it goes with Harrison Ford. While others would bask in Hollywood glory, Ford distances himself from the movie scene and spends six months of the year far from the madding crowd on an 800-acre ranch in Wyoming with his second wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathieson, and their children, Malcolm (10) and Georgia (7). During that downtime, the actor is constantly reading scripts or developing future projects. Which begs the question, what does this man do to unwind? 'I love literature, I love reading books and going to films,' the actor responds, 'although I don't spend that much time watching movies; it's kind of a busman's holiday when I do go. I don't go as much as I should, to be informed of other people's work. Nor do I spend as much time reading as I should. Last vacation I had with my family in the Caribbean I read six or seven books in a couple of weeks. When I'm working on a film I can't read anything, whether it's a book or another script.'
As for the challenges ahead, the actor smiles when I suggest that, at the age of 55, it might be getting near that time when he thinks about curtailing the running and jumping films.'At a natural point I'll switch from running and jumping movies to a wheelchair!' he says, wry smile to the fore. 'But I don't feel I've stretched the limit of the physical stuff at all. I've always enjoyed that aspect of it and as long as it's possible and age appropriate, I'll continue to do it.' So what does the future hold for the biggest movie star in the world? 'Aside from death? I don't really know,' laughs the actor. 'I look forward to having the opportunity to continue to work as long as I'm useful and interested. I have not waned in my interest in the job over these 20 years, but I don't feel any compulsion to plan what type of movie I do. However, if we come up with an Indiana Jones script that is as interesting as the last one, I will play him again.'
And with that, he's gone. The single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza is fuelled and ready for the actor to fly himself back to Hawaii where he is filming the romantic comedy, 6 Days/ 7 Nights, with Anne Heche. After being in his company you feel that this most private of actors has only allowed a certain amount of his personality to come across. The Armani suit, you suspect, is for show.The gold ear-ring is the real giveaway.
Three decades later, Harrison Ford is still a star, and was nominated for an Emmy this year.
