20 Questions: Fred Ward

If you enjoyed Jack Kerouac's book "On the Road," you'll love Fred Ward's life. Before turning to acting full-time, he was a nomad and a laborer. Since then, he's made a habit of adapting challenging roles to his idiosyncratic style and has gained critical success. He has shaved his head to play writer Henry Miller in "Henry and June," brought his expressive boxer's face to Robert Altman's "The Player" and "Short Cuts" and memorably portrayed astronaut Gus Grissom in "The Right Stuff." This spring he appeared as the villain in "Naked Gun 33-1/3: The Final Insult." Next up is Alain Robbe-Grillet's French-language "Un Bruit Qui Rend Fou." "And for very little money," says Ward, not minding at all. We sent Contributing Editor David Rensin to meet with Ward at the actor's home in Venice, California.

1.

[Q] Playboy: In Short Cuts you have a scene with Anne Archer in which you try to explain why you and your buddies didn't tell the police about a dead woman in the stream until after your fishing trip was over. Instead of trying to explain, should men say, "Sorry. We're just different"?

[A] Ward: Sometimes it's impossible to explain the testosterone-driven elements of man--like why we go to war--to someone who's estrogen-driven. War is a plague on this earth, but our rites of passage have been here since the beginning. That sensibility has also been reflected in team sports, which are just feudal battles on a playing field. If you don't actually play, you can sit in front of the TV and cheer for a particular color or locality.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Would you describe the joys of alfresco urination?

[A] Ward: There's a liberating feeling to whipping it out and peeing into the wind. Anti-authoritarian, to say the least. It starts in boyhood with the competition to see how far and how high you can piss. Like dogs do.

3.

[Q] Playboy: You've been a short-order cook, lumberjack, laborer, demolition man, janitor, produce picker, topside rigger, subway tunneler--and more. What do you say to someone who just got their degree in dramatic arts and complains that they can't find a job?

[A] Ward: What kind of job? [Laughs] I didn't do these things to prepare for my art. They were for survival and, a lot of times, luck was involved. At one point I was doing theater in San Francisco and actually living in the theater. I was broke. I was boxing--working out in a gym--and this trainer got me into the union. He started putting all the guys in his stable into the union. So I started making money, stopped acting and saved, to get to Europe. I kept moving around. Three years later I started acting again, because acting drove me. But I was still restless. I studied acting in New York for only six months before I wanted to get a ship for Europe. I'd heard that in Brooklyn you could get into the Scandinavian maritime union and get a ship without having papers. Wound up in Florida, then New Orleans, then Houston. I eventually came to California, worked in a bowling alley as a short-order cook. I drifted, picked tomatoes and beans and lived in labor camps in Ventura County. I wound up in Big Sur. I just kept moving. I went to Ketchikan, Alaska, lived with the Indians in stilt houses, worked in a lumber mill. And I still knew I would get back into acting. Eventually I traveled to Yugoslavia on a freighter, then went to Valencia, Spain and then on to Tangier. I spent three months in Morocco. I wound up in Rome--and finally started acting.

4.

[Q] Playboy: What's the toughest job you've ever had?

[A] Ward: Timber faller. It's the most dangerous, aside from combat, that you can ever have. There are a lot of ways you can get killed. A tree can "barber chair"--come back on you. "Widow-makers," which are dead limbs, can fall out. You can't predict what a tree will do sometimes. You have to watch sawdust and make sure the tree's not rotting. If it is, it might split on you. It's dangerous, it's hot--it's hard work. You have a big chain saw that's rattling away and bouncing around, and you're slipping and sliding and standing on land that's sometimes nearly straight up and down. It can get crazy. On the other hand, I never wanted to work in an office under fluorescent lights.

5.

[Q] Playboy: With all this wandering, do you remember the moment the acting bug bit?

[A] Ward: I decided to act when I was in the Air Force. I was going with a stripper in San Antonio, hanging out with some bizarre fringe people--who considered themselves "show people"--including this 250-pound transvestite who designed costumes for strip joints, and a few gangsters. I was a young kid in the middle of this stuff, and it led to my decision. They weren't role models in a strict sense; more like the old freaks in the freak show. When I was younger I always felt like an outsider, and they said it was all right to be "the other." They had a nice little society, a little culture, and they dealt with life. So, as soon as I got out of the Air Force, I went right to New York. I figured that I could do anything I wanted. I had no one to answer to, nothing holding me back.

6.

[Q] Playboy: To play Henry Miller in Henry and June, you reread Miller's works. What did you notice the second time that you hadn't the first?

[A] Ward: The first time I read him was in 1964 when I was stranded in some motel in Houston with a copy of Tropic of Cancer. I most noticed the raw sexuality and the spontaneous humor. The second time I realized what a wonderful stylist he was. In some of his works there are just pages and pages of blab, and then a paragraph will jump out and grab you by the throat, one of the most unique and beautiful paragraphs you've ever read. Then he'll wing back into some other blab. But that was Miller--he just talked. Mailer said about him that he was actually just a guy who stood on the corner and spun yarns; constantly on the move, making sounds and taking people in. I spoke to a woman the other night who had spent time with (continued on page 154) Fred Ward (continued from page 123) Miller when he was in Pacific Palisades. She was 16 years old at the time. She said that whatever a person's age or education, Miller spoke to them directly, eye to eye. He opened up, listened. The wonderful thing about Miller was his huge appetite for people, for life. A true humanist. He walked this thin line between poverty and falling off the other side. But he did it because of his love of freedom. He could try to embrace what was important to him in life--and that's rare in a person, especially at 40 years old, when he made a major break from his life. He forced himself to go into the wilderness.

7.

[Q] Playboy: You had to be bald to play Henry Miller. What did you learn about baldness that would make you want to keep your hair, or would make you impatient for it to fall out?

[A] Ward: [Laughs] The first thing I realized is that there are a lot of bald men running around Paris--and, I guess, the whole world. It was like buying a certain car and then realizing lots of other people have the same automobile. But when I saw all these bald guys, I accepted them. However, I prefer to have hair. It's vanity, I'm sure. I just feel better with it. [Laughs] Besides, there was this blue five o'clock shadow on my head. It looked bizarre, like maybe I had a disease. The camera would pick up the shadow even under layers of makeup. Sometimes, for that reason, I'd have my head shaved twice a day. Otherwise, I wore a hat all the time. Thank God it was winter.

8.

[Q] Playboy: You're considered a thoughtful, intellectual actor. So what lured you to Naked Gun 33-1/3: The Final Insult? Was it an opportunity for a mental vacation?

[A] Ward: The absurdity of it. I'd never seen the other two, but I read the script and laughed out loud five or six times at the stupid fun. But it's no vacation. It's taxing work. Very exact. When you go on the set they throw lines at you that they're thinking up right then or did the night before. It's a challenge. If anything, I think they cast me because I would play the role from my own particular truth as the character, instead of as a comedic actor.

9.

[Q] Playboy: You, more than any actor, have explored the seriocomic use of dentures, notably in Miami Blues. Did that experience encourage a more rigorous regimen of dental hygiene?

[A] Ward: Definitely. Of course, my stepfather had false teeth because his had been knocked out in World War Two. So I was aware of what a big pain in the ass they could be.

10.

[Q] Playboy: How do you work?

[A] Ward: By mixing the intellect--figuring what points I want to make--with the physical. At one time in my career I did a lot of theater, and the physical approach helped me define a reality for myself night after night. It means trusting your body because your emotions are neurologically connected. A gesture can lead you into areas where you want to go. When I was in Italy I did a lot of mask and mime theater. You put a mask over your face, and it's all about moving the mask--making the audience think the expression changes--if the energy in your body is in the right place. The guy I trained with always talked about the energy coming from the stomach region--the same area Buddhists talk about. When it worked, when the mask moved, you could feel it.

11.

[Q] Playboy: When you lived in Italy, you also dubbed spaghetti Westerns. Can you read lips in another language?

[A] Ward: [Laughs] I lip-synched in English over Italian, Spanish, Croatian, French--whatever--while trying to hit certain labials. That's how I survived. There's a loop. You have their dialogue and you listen to the tone of voice. You also have a script the director has written that, one hopes, fits the story. Some people are brilliant at this. One dubbing director would spontaneously pop something off and just knock you down laughing. Once there was this tough guy going into a smoky bar, drunks and sixguns all over the place. He walked up to the bar and said, "Seen my mother?"

12.

[Q] Playboy: Despite your wandering ways, you raised a son. How has that changed your life?

[A] Ward: It opens a well of love that's surprising because it's so primal. That's something you don't question, it's beyond discussion. You can try to intellectualize or explain it away, but it doesn't do any good. It's in the marrow of your bones, like some beast that moves into your house. I suspect the energy was there before, but used in a different way. For me it felt like a faucet opening. Suddenly there were no doubts, no questions, no insecurities. There was no little fight like that which goes on sometimes in love between adults--the compromising. The primal force has given me a sense of completion, a fait accompli. It now seems it was necessary, a genetic reason for perpetuating existence.

13.

[Q] Playboy: You box for sport. In what ways is boxing responsible for your face? What are your strengths and vulnerabilities in the ring?

[A] Ward: Well, my nose was broken four times. I've had eye muscle problems--I just had another surgery on it--that were complicated by boxing and by a motorcycle accident. Right now I don't spar because of the eye. And I broke my thumb. When I was young I was never a great boxer, but I stood in there. I had a good left jab and a hard right, if I could get it off. I was pretty good defensively, but I would never claim to have been a great fighter. Had I started younger, I might have fought professionally. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time. The bell rings and there you are. It's fast. It's total attention. It's ecstatic, too. You're sort of in combat. You have to be wide-awake. Everything sort of falls away but those three minutes and what they pull out of you. You get to this place where, goddamn, you got the shit beat out of you, you didn't do too well, and you have to come back. Then you come back and you do well--you learn something and you apply it--and after you've done well, of course you've got to come back. So you get into this cycle.

14.

[Q] Playboy: If someone other than Robert Altman had made The Player, would it have received half the attention it did?

[A] Ward: I don't know if anyone could have made it as well as Altman. Altman is a wizard, both in his life and in his work. He's one of the few. He's full of magic. He has a view of life that is magical and humorous and dark all at the same time. He gives that to everyone, too. For an actor it's amazing. Actors come out of the woods and share dressing rooms with no toilets to work with the guy. But that's what it's all about; that's why you act--because you want that magic. You want that sorcerer. You want to be the sorcerer's apprentice. He loves doing that, and the love comes through. It comes through the work, it comes through everybody. If it hadn't been him, it wouldn't have been The Player.

15.

[Q] Playboy: Many actors have films that were never released. Is there anything you want to warn us about?

[A] Ward: There's a film that I love called UFOria, written and directed by John Binder, that didn't get much of a release. It stayed on the shelf for about four years, then there was a film festival in Los Angeles where it got good reviews. Since then it's had a life in art houses, and now it's out on video. It's a great, crazy film. Cindy Williams plays a checkout girl in a supermarket in the desert. Harry Dean Stanton is a phony healer who has a tent show. I play a buddy of Harry Dean's, this drifter with a Cadillac who wants to be the next Waylon Jennings, breaking into rubber machines to pay for my gasoline down the road. I shoplift in Cindy's place. Cindy sees me and says, "You're not Waylon Jennings--he wouldn't do that." Then she goes to this tent show because she reads in a tabloid that Jesus is going to come down in a UFO and take everybody to heaven. There, she sees me having my leg healed. [Laughs] Subsequently we have a relationship; Harry Dean is moving stolen cars over the border. It's a crazy, wacky film. It's funny and it doesn't look down on its characters, these fringe human beings living in a desert community.

16.

[Q] Playboy: You love France and own an apartment in Paris. Americans think that the French don't like us. Can you defend the French to a skeptical American?

[A] Ward: I like them. I feel good in France. I feel balanced. But I like exile, so maybe that's part of it. I can accept them for what they are. Having lived in Europe, I know you have to leave your Americanism--a lot of it--here. Especially in Rome, which is a city on the edge of chaos. If you have expectations, you may as well be running into a wall. Italians are traditional. The thing about my life--and a lot of Americans' lives--is that I'm always breaking tradition. If you understand what their tradition is, you're all right. But the Parisians, especially, are tolerant and intolerant at the same time. They're intolerant because they sometimes have a cosmopolitan arrogance, and they've been overrun by people. The country's often been occupied. They see these tourists stomping through their parks and climbing over their café tables, not even attempting to speak their language. There are arrogant French. There are also arrogant Americans.

17.

[Q] Playboy: You have joined the ranks of actors of a certain age who, because of their distinctive look, have been lured into doing fashion print ads. What's it like being appreciated for your looks? If we were to peek into your closet, would we find more Giorgio Armani or more Army-Navy?

[A] Ward: It's flattering. Not that I would do it all the time. The money I would have been paid went to an AIDS benefit. Acting is harder work. [Laughs] I have a few Armani suits. The material's great. I have Army-Navy, too. I don't profess to be either.

18.

[Q] Playboy: As astronaut Gus Grissom in The Right Stuff, you helped introduce "screw the pooch" to the language. Did Grissom get an unfair rap for sinking his space capsule in the Atlantic?

[A] Ward: I don't think that Gus was at fault. I heard a recording of Gus' voice inside that capsule, and he was calm. I was in the Air Force--I know what those guys sound like. Gus said, "Ah, give me another minute here, let me, ah, do something"--that kind of droning monotone that pilots get. He may have hit something with his helmet, but it certainly wasn't said in a panic. I also heard that he'd hung a lemon on the Apollo I capsule some time before it caught on fire on the launch pad and killed him. They were afraid of electrical wires in a highly saturated oxygen atmosphere. He was a pretty astute engineer and he knew.

19.

[Q] Playboy: What are the challenges and rewards of being a nomad?

[A] Ward: My fantasies are kind of Rimbaudesque: to disappear for a while in a strange place, to see what happens. See what I become. I want to create my own theater, so to speak. It's just like this universe. What the fuck is there? What the fuck am I? Can I really enter somewhere that's unsafe, that's insecure? Can I slip around on ice and see if I can stand up? That's the exciting thing about traveling. I once spent about three months by myself in Morocco, wandering around. Ran into a friend of mine in Fez. I'd been at the edge of the Sahara for a while. He told me years later, "You were bizarre, very strange." When I look back I remember, yeah, sometimes the space of the desert does suck something out of you. Hitchhiking on a desert road gives you a rush. Getting rides in trucks. There's an elation, ecstasy sometimes. A falling in love with leaving somewhere and wondering what's going to unfold in front of you. A sense of movement. Kind of like the aborigines and their walkabouts. I just wander in cities, and in the wandering define myself. A while ago, I decided to spend a few weeks in Barcelona, and also the Basque part of Spain, and a bit in southern France. I sat in cafés, watching people. I talked with those who came up and talked to me. I wrote notes. There's a sort of vibration between loneliness and the wonderment of being there, in life. It's hard to explain. There's a monolog in your head, like some Beckett character who can't shut up.

20.

[Q] Playboy: When you shop, do you gravitate toward JCPenney, Sears or Ward's?

[A] Ward: I bought a battery at Sears and signed up for a credit card at the same time. I never did receive the credit card. But then I got a bill for like $8000, $9000. Then a letter from the head of the furniture department in a Sears in Canoga Park, thanking me for all my purchases. [Lanughs] I guess someone ripped the card off and went to town. Good battery, though.

hollywood's vagabond mystic deconstructs the trench, explains why he sinks his teeth into his work and defends the art of pissing in the wind

"Then she goes to this tent show because she reads in a tabloid that Jesus is going to come down in a UFO."