Playboy Interview: Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford has just returned from New Jersey, where he had been practicing take-offs and landings in his de Havilland Beaver airplane. Now back at his New York City apartment, Ford is hungry. Although he gets $25 million to act in a movie, the former master carpenter makes breakfast--eggs, cheese, bacon and buttered English muffins, and you're having some, too. Ford may get arguments from Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks about who is currently the biggest star, but it's doubtful that any of those guys has the skills to fly a plane, build a house and cook a meal.

It has been 25 years since the rogue pilot Han Solo sent Darth Vader's ship spinning into the cosmos, enabling Luke Skywalker to destroy the Death Star. Star Wars set Ford on a course of blockbusters that established him as a hitmaker. In between two more Solo turns, Ford became the whip-wielding archaeologist Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, a film that spawned two sequels (with a third in the offing). Ford also played CIA analyst Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and in Clear and Present Danger. His other hits include Witness, The Fugitive and Air Force One. He took a rare role as a bad guy in What Lies Beneath and also starred in Blade Runner, The Mosquito Coast, Working Girl, Presumed Innocent, The Devil's Own, Regarding Henry, Sabrina, Random Hearts, and Six Days, Seven Nights.

In the process Ford has carved out an unusual career. Women fawn over him. The 2001 Guinness Book of World Records claims that he's the highest-grossing actor, despite competition from Hanks, Cruise aria Gibson. He is the most natural movie hero since Clint Eastwood, and he has done it without the starmaking machinery that surrounds so many of his peers. He has no publicist and has employed the same manager, Patricia McQueeney, since he began acting. Only recently did he hire an agent. Some of his best films were first offered to other actors, but he had no reluctance about taking their discards.

Raiders f the Lost Ark was Tom Selleck's film until he couldn't free himself from his Magnum P.I. commitment. Alec Baldwin originated the Jack Ryan role in The Hunt for Red October and was long attached to The Fugitive before Ford stepped in. Air Force One was developed for Kevin Costner and Witness had been turned down by every name in Hollywood before Ford recognized its potential.

Raised in suburban Chicago, the son of an advertising executive, Ford had an undistinguished academic run before dropping out of it College and moving to Hollywood in 1964 to pursue an acting career. He quickly landed a seven-year contract at Columbia Pictures. But the $150 per week was hardly enough to feed his family (Ford's first wife was his college sweetheart, Mary Marquardt, with whom he had two sons, Benjamin, now a chef and restaurant owner, and Willard, a schoolteacher. The work consisted of auditions for parts like a one-line appearance as a bellboy in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round.

Frustrated and broke, Ford learned carpentry from a library book and soon became the favorite handyman among the Hollywood crowd. This proved to be his big break, because he could wait for showy roles in films like American Graffiti and The Conversation and because it put him in the right place at the right time--the front door of the studio George Lucas was using to cast Star Wars. Ford was on his hands knees carving the ornate entrance, when Lucas, who had used Ford in American Graffiti, asked the carpenter if he could sub for an AWOL actor who was supposed to read the part of Han Solo. Ford stood up, took off his toolbelt and headed inside, and the rest is history.

Playboy asked Daily Variety columnist and frequent contributor Michael Fleming (who most recently interviewed Will Smith) to catch up with Ford as he readies the launch of one of his riskiest ventures yet, starring as the commander of a Soviet nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine in K-19: The Widow maker. The drama is based on a historical crisis that happened in 1961. During a test run designed to shoe the U.S. that the Soviets could launch a nuke from sea, the cooling system of the sub's reactor failed. A meltdown and subsequent nuclear explosion was hours away, and since the sub was near a NATO base, the accident would have been viewed as a first strike against the U.S. The film details the crew's attempts to repair the reactor, even subjecting themselves to radiation they knew would kill them within days.

Fleming reports: "I was wary going in, because Ford has a reputation for guarding his privacy a tendency intensified by the dissolution of his marriage to Melissa Mathison, the E.T. screenwriter and mother of Ford's two youngest children, Malcolm and Georgia. Ford stays in New York to be near his kids, but his presence there has made him a target for the tabloids, which covered his marital breakup as well as his subsequent sightings with such women as Calista Flockhart. While I was free to ask any question I wanted, Ford warned me that he was not going to compound his family's pain by discussing that part of his life.

"Everything in Ford's apartment is white, even the dishes and coffee cups. It's not his preference; he sublet the place in a hurry after the breakup. An active art collector and student of interior design, Ford has tastes that run more to the traditional. That sensibility is evident is evident in some of the furnishings he hurriedly bought, and in an aged, framed print that just arrived, a front-view portrait of Ford's de Havilland Beaver--a shot that looks like it came out of an Indiana Jones film. The apartment is loaded with books on art and aviation, and several tables are the full of blueprints. They are the plans he and an architect designed for the loft he has purchased downtown, which, over the next six months, will be stripped to the brick walls and rebuilt. Ford has a reputation for being painstakingly involved in the development of movies he stars in, and it's an approach he also follows in his hobbies of carpentry, motorcycling and aviation. He warms to talk of the construction job ahead of him, and to the challenge of starting a new chapter of his life as a single guy just turning 60."

[Q] Playboy: We've noticed you're involved in every detail of remodeling your new loft. You're also noted for being hands-on when it comes to shaping your films. What's the difference, between being a master carpenter and developing a movie?

[A] Ford: There is a similarity between a blueprint and a script. You have to be able to imagine the whole from a one- or two-dimensional representation. You have to be able to imagine what it will feel like and look like.

[Q] Playboy: Most wannabe actors wait tables to make money. Why did you become a carpenter?

[A] Ford: I had been under contract at Columbia and Universal doing episodic television, which I didn't want to do anymore. I'd purchased a run-down home in the Hollywood Hills for my family and attempted to save money by doing the demolition myself. I ran out of money and there I was, living in this demolished house. Out of necessity, I invested in some tools and read several books about carpentry. Later, a friend of mine who was a recording engineer for Sergio Mendes came by and said that Sergio wanted to remodel a garage and turn it into a studio. By the time I got involved, the project had become a $100,000 recording studio. Sergio, much to my good luck, never asked me if I had done remodeling before. I walked the walk and talked the talk pretty well. And happily, he was satisfied enough to recommend me to some friends.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever think you'd end up being a carpenter for life?

[A} Ford I never gave up my ambition to become an actor. Carpentry was just something to put food on the table, so that I would not have to take those kinds of acting jobs I was being offered. It enabled me to hold out for film work and to be selective.

[Q] Playboy: You have built a career as a hero for the past two decades. In K-19: The Widowmaker, you play a Russian soldier who's supposed to test-launch a nuclear missile to scare the U.S. Are you concerned your audience won't like you in such a bad-guy role, complete with Russian accent?

[A] Ford: No, I didn't worry about that part of it. That was what I loved about this film. And I was convinced, against every opinion to the contrary, that using accents was absolutely necessary. We have English actors, an Irish co-star, several Russian actors and an American actor, and the Russian accent is to remind you that this is a Russian movie, not told with American jingoism. It disabuses the audience fairly early on that this is not a so-called Harrison Ford movie. This is a Russian movie about Russians, and the audience has to recognize the difference so they don't expect me to rip off my uniform and be revealed as an American spy or something.

[Q} Playboy: Since this isn't the usual Harrison Ford film, do the backers say, "Sure, you can do the accent, but it's going to cost you $5 million off your $25 million price"?

[A] Ford No, because they would find very quickly that they had the wrong number, both telephonically as well as financially.

[Q] Playboy: The other departure in this film is how long it takes to determine if you're a good or a bad guy. That's usually clear going in.

[A] Ford: It's not that the film conceals the elements of my character. It's that my character does not reveal himself, because a captain who explains himself is no captain at all. This guy had the unenviable task of serving the high command, understanding that the whole theory of the military is that men are expendable. The character who I play seems hardened to that reality in a way that makes him somewhat unsympathetic. But he learns, to the point where his command forces him to accept his responsibility to a higher moral authority. He does as much as he can to preserve the men's opportunity for survival, but there is something greater that makes for a more complicated story. This guy realizes that he might be the architect of World War III if he doesn't get this right.

[Q] Playboy: This is a story set during the Cold War, before many of today's moviegoers were born. How do you deal with that?

[A] Ford: There is an education curve here. The younger part of the audience does not really know or remember much about the Cold War or understand that the central theory of it all was mutually assured destruction. I remember the duck-and-dive drill in schools, where you had to duck under your desk. But I think the context of the story involves good surprises and very strong characters. It's a story that hasn't been told for 40 years. And I get to do something different, which is important to me. I can't do the same shit over and over again--take the money and run. It becomes harder to find something that has grace and a mission, and yet it's a delicate balance between the audience, the baggage the actor brings and the role.

[Q] Playboy: Survivors of the K-19 crew and the widow of your charactor complained they were portrayed as a bunch of undiscipline uneducated alcoholics.

[A} Ford: All that was eliminated from the original script. I never would have done the movie if it portrayed that point of view. We came to an agreement early on that we must maintain the Russian point of view at all costs.

[Q] Playboy: Given the scrutiny placed on fact-based films such as A Beautiful Mind, were you worried about altering facts?

[A] Ford: We didn't become necessarily less accurate, just clearer, among ourselves, about what was necessary to fully tell the story. The other stuff was just a sideshow.

[Q] Playboy: Have the people who complained seen the finished film?

[A] Ford: No. They felt we were obligated to tell their story. There is no such rule, in life, art or law. Russia is a country without intellectual property rights. We gave people money for their stories, but we are not compelled to tell the stories from their personal points of view. In fact, when we visited with survivors, no two of them had the same story. They were sitting six feet away from one another, all telling different stories. The suffering was compartmentalized. Nobody knew what was going on anyplace else in the submarine, and when you tried to put all these confusing stories together, they made no fucking sense.

[Q] Playboy You could have originated the Jack Ryan role in Hunt for Red October but turned it down, thinking that a movie in a submarine wouldn't be viable. Obviously, you've changed your mind about submarines.

[A] Ford: I thought, Wait a second, a submarine movie? You'd never get women to go. I had completely overlooked the charm and potential of Jack Ryan. Since then, there was U-571, another submarine movie that worked well.

[Q] Playboy: You went on to play Jack Ryan twice. Was it difficult turning down a third Ryan film, in Sum of All Fears, which stars Ben Affleck?

[A] Ford: No. I hated the script. Paramount said commit to the development of this and we'll write another script for you. I had never made that kind of long-term commitment, and I said, "Bye-bye."

[Q] Playboy: What was wrong with it?

[A] Ford: I just thought the story was dated and unworkable. The central event of the movie is the killing of thousands of people at the Super Bowl. How do you fucking recover from that? Emotionally, how do you care about one character when thousands have been killed? I'm sure that they changed it and made a good movie, but I just didn't want to go through that.

[Q] Playboy: Would you feel the same way if you didn't like where Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were taking the next Indiana Jones sequel and they said they would recast the role?

[A] Ford: First, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves, then I'd kill them. I'd kill them. But that's a different story. For one thing, it's not based on something written by Tom Clancy.

[Q] Playboy Why has it taken you, Lucas and Spielberg so long to do the fourth Indiana Jones?

[A] Ford: We've all been busy, that's most of it. Then there were concepts we didn't a;; agree on. It has to be the best damned Jones we ever made or it's going to get tarred and feathered.

[Q] Playboy: Given the time that has passed, will you make concessions for the fact that Indiana Jones is getting older?

[A] Ford: I'll make concessions for the fact that I'm 15 years older.

[Q] Playboy: How is Indiana Jones aging?

[A] Ford: As you can see, very well. I can still whip Sean Connery with one hand tied behind my back. We want to preserve the spirit of the original, but I hope we have some good jokes in there about it. The character is still Indiana Jones, and it was always as much fun for the audience to see me get beat up as it was to see me beat somebody up. That is kind of unique. Part of the appeal of Indiana Jones is that he was always in over his head. He always hurt. As the said in the first film, "It's not the years, it's the mileage."

[Q] Playboy: You've been famous since Star Wars and are extremely protective of your privacy. Is there anything you like about fame?

[A] Ford: Well, first, let me spend a moment on what I hate, which is loss of anonymity. What a burden that is for anybody. It was unanticipated. Nothing is good about being famous. You always think, If I'm successful, then I'll have opportunities. You never figure the cost being a total loss of privacy. That's incalculable.

[Q] Playboy: Did it hit you overnight--that suddenly you couldn't shop at the mall anymore?

[A] Ford: It was more cumulative than that. I was driving with Melissa through Morocco and we came to the edge of Fez, where there was a movie theater playing two of my films. I realized I couldn't go unnoticed even in the outer limits of the city of Fez, Morocco. It's terrifying to have no anonymity.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds like you haven't gotten used to it.

[A] Ford: No.

[Q] Playboy: It must have been particularly painful recently, with the breakup of your marriage, and the press covering your every move. Do you understand the media attention or does it make you angry?

[A] Ford: I totally understand it. Occasionally it makes me angry, the misinformation that is put out. But I also have no intention of adding to the pain of anybody involved by participating in it, even to straighten out the misinformation. I'm just not playing that game.

[Q] Playboy: Is there anything good about being famous?

[A] Ford: You can get the table you want in a restaurant. Not the best table right inside the front door or where everybody can see you, but the quieter table off to the side. It gets you doctors' appointments. But what is the worth of that? Nothing. The real coin of the realm is freedom. What is a great pleasure is the freedom to make choices, do the projects that you want to do with directors you want to work with, to have some control over the stories and the way a film is release and sold. And the freedom to explore, take chances and maybe talk people into doing something they don't think is such a good shot, because you really want to do it.

[Q] Playboy: You are one of the few stars who can get a project made just by saying yes, because your record indicates people will come see you.

[A] Ford: They think they have a better shot with me. That's bullshit, anyway. There is some insurance for a film by hiring a movie star, but it's not a good movie, it doesn't matter at all and it will be bad for the actor next time.

[Q] Playboy: You used to make a movie, do some press, then disappear to Wyoming. Your move to New York and your visibility on the social circuit seem to have ended that.

[A] Ford: I've always felt publicity was part of my responsibility and I've done it on every film I've worked on. I just didn't do any personal publicity. I sold movies. My theory was, people have only so much interest in anybody. Take advantage of that interest if you have something to sell and not at any other time. So I never had a publicist, I have never been interested in being involved in the publicity process other than selling a film, because that's taking advantage of the free advertising.

[Q] Playboy: How have you managed to hang in there so long, while other big stars have come and gone?

[A] Ford: I was never the hippest thing around, which means that I wasn't in the position to be replaced by the next hippest thing. I'm more like old shoes.

[Q] Playboy: So you don't go out of style.

[A] Ford: Yes. Exactly.

[Q] Playboy You turned 60 this year, and have managed to remain cool. There are others, such as Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood----

[A] Ford: Well, they're not 60. They're 70, and they're cool.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a reason why you have managed to remain relevant?

[A] Ford: It's just the product you're selling. And I'm selling what I hope is a kind of truth, that thing we all identify as emotional reality.

[Q] Playboy: Are you at all daunted by being a 60-year-old leading man?

[A] Ford: No.

[Q] Playboy: Because you're able to make the same kind of movies as before?

[A] Ford: No, not the same movies. I never make the same movies. They are all different. I decided for myself early on to appear in different kinds of characters. I played the bad guy for the first time in What Lies Beneath.

[Q] Playboy: You must have resisted a bunch of offers to play bad guys before taking that one.

[A] Ford: Actually, I hadn't gotten many offers at all. Nobody wanted to let me. When Marty Scorsese did Cape Fear, he had Robert De Niro call me to say, "I'm playing the bad guy, why don't you play this other part." I said, "The only fun in it for me would be to play your part and for you to play my part. That would be unexpected."

[Q] Playboy: Would you really have played that villain, who bit off a chunk of a victim's face in one scene?

[A] Ford: Sure, in a New York minute. But Marty didn't see it that way. I guess he knew what he had in De Niro for that part, and he was not about to take a crapshoot. In What Lies Beneath, I took advantage of the iconography by turning it on its tail. He was not a real bad guy, because that turn came so late in the movie. I still haven't played a really bad guy, a guy who's really interesting. And I don't mean in terms of party tricks or entertainment value, but interesting in an emotional way.

[Q] Playboy: Aside from a bad guy, would you like to stretch more in comedies? Could you do a Farrelly brothers film?

[A] Ford: Oh, I'd love it, just love it. Dumb and Dumber is one of my favorite movies. I just love to laugh and make people laugh. I'd love to work with them. I'd love to work with the Coen brothers. I'd love to work with all the brothers.

[Q] Playboy: You have two great passions: motorcycles and airplanes. What's the appeal of piloting your own plane?

[A] Ford: It's a combination of freedom and responsibility. It's anonymity. I'm not Harrison Ford, I'm November 1128 Sierra. That has its appeal. There is also an aesthetic appeal to flying, in the places you see and the way you see them. I fly cross-country at least four times a year. I take my airplanes from Wyoming out here, and then back again. My first flight was seven years ago, and I get 225, 250 hours a year, which is not much less than many commercial or corporate pilots. And I like to train. I have different kinds of airplanes that demand different skill sets, different types of finesse.

[Q] Playboy: Which would be your favorite?

[A] Ford: That would be like asking which is your favorite? No . They are all different.

[Q] Playboy: When did you first become interested in flying?

[A] Ford: Back in college in 1962, I took flying lessons. But the $13 or $15 an hour for the rental of a plane and instructor was killing me, so I had to give it up. I didn't really get a chance to think about it again until years later. I was flying on Gulfstreams, sitting up front and watching what the pilots were doing and I became intrigued by it again. After a while, I got a Gulfstreams, of my own, and I asked one of my pilots to go back and get his instructor's license and teach me. I remember on one of my first solo flights, my flight instructor got out of the airplane and was standing on the side of the runway. I went around the pattern, came back in for the approach. The approach was good, then I did that terrible thing you can do with the Cessna 206. I let the nosewheel bounce. And boy, I went porpoising down the runway like nothing I'd ever seen. I went sideways, over the grass, before I got the power to go around. It was ugly.

[Q] Playboy: Have you had any other close calls?

[A] Ford: I've had a couple of incidents that have been classified as incidents and for which I was not blamed by either an insurance company or a federal agency. They were more misadventures of a mechanical or weather-induced type. I got caught in a wind shear one time when I was landing. That was very dramatic and resulted in about $9000 damage to a Beechcraft Commander, which is chump change, like scraping your fender. But it was a very harried and troubling couple of minutes. With my first helicopter, I had an issue with fuel control once, which resulted in substantial damage to the helicopter prop but no injuries to the two souls aboard. So that ended well. You know, shit happens.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a kind of plane that you're itching to pilot?

[Q] Ford: I've had a chance to fly everything from an F-16 to a huge Russian biplane. One of the virtues of celebrity is these opportunities that come along every once in a while to do things like that.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do in the F-16?

[A] Ford: I went with the Thunderbirds, got to go nine gs in a tight inside turn. I got to fly the thing for 20 minutes.

[Q] Playboy: Was that exhilarating, or just scary?

[A] Ford: It was never scary. It was a real experience. A great, intense experience.

[Q] Playboy: How about your bikes? What's your best ride?

[A] Ford: I have nine, and they are all different. I don't have many bent-over bikes--my neck and backbone won't stand it. I have sport-touring bikes, which allow you to sit a bit more upright.

[Q] Playboy: Is that from the wear and tear of your films?

[A] Ford: Yeah. Let's just say I've had a lot of operations on my knees. My neck has degenerative disk disease. They're all the result of movies . I'm not talking about having done stunts that are unwise. They're just athletic injuries that come in the context of running, jumping and falling down. That's why I have the sport-touring bikes. One's a Honda VFR 750 that has been modified with a lot of stuff. I had the carburetor taken off, and changed to fuel injection. I took off 65 pounds of weight by going with carbonfiber rims. It's made a monster out of that bike, and it's a fun ride.

[Q] Playboy: How fast do you go?

[A] Ford: My heart won't allow me too that fast, but I go too fast most of the time. But I'm not...

[Q] Playboy: Reckless?

[A] Ford: That's why I didn't ride a motorcycle until then. And I didn't fly planes until I trusted my judgment. I trust myself now.

[Q] Playboy: What about yourself didn't you trust?

[A] Ford: I just didn't really have the ambition for the focus required for the focus required for these things. I was pulling myself in six different directions.

[Q] Playboy: What matured you? Fatherhood?

[A] Ford: It was one of the things that certainly changed my perspective and my focus. I'm sure it helped, but that didn't quite do it enough the first time.

[Q] Playboy: At what age did you first feel like you'd matured?

[A] Ford: You mean, when did I feel like a grown-up? What's today? I don't remember any epiphany. There are times I still don't feel much like a grown-up, or even care to. I'm grown up about what I do and I work in a grown-up world but I still think it's not important to get all grown up.

[Q] Playboy: Let's say you are on your ranch in Wyoming. What's your idea of a blissful day? Would it be fishing, watching TV, reading?

[A] Ford: All of that.

[Q] Playboy: And watching sports?

[A] Ford: I don't watch most sports. I've never really had the sports gene. I like to watch tennis, especially women's tennis. The game is just a little slower and the legs are better.

[Q] Playboy: You play a lot of tennis?

[A] Ford: Yes. I play tennis for an hour a in day when I'm in Wyoming. I have a court there and I play with a pro. I don't play competitively. It's the exercise I'm interested in.

[Q] Playboy: Rate yourself as a competitive player.

[A] Ford: On any given day I'm either fair or distinguished for my age.

[Q] Playboy: What's a good round for you on the golf course?

[A] Ford: I'm saving that for my old age. I have not yet developed a taste for plaied pants.

[Q] Playboy: A lot of the movie stars in your league, such as Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise, use their clout to start companies that develop and produce films. You have a reputation for being proactive in your films, but not as a producer. Yet you took executive produce credit on K-19.

[A] Ford: I participate in the process more often than I take credit, but this time I decided to take the credit. We had too many goddamned producers. I wanted to make it clear to them up front that I would be among them, that whole creative group, and there was a lot of work to be done. With all due respect and admiration for the original material, a lot had to be accomplished. I was the one person with script approval and I took responsibility to get what I wanted.

[Q] Playboy: So once again, you're the one holding the hammer.

[A] Ford: It comes down to script approval and traditionally how that works is, before you start shooting they say the script is finished and you approve. I never do that. I've never yet signed a piece of paper that says that I agree, because it doesn't work that way. I used to have a woman working for me who would say, "There is no limit for better," and that is how I feel. There is no limit for better," and that is how I feel. There is no limit for better and we are going to work on this until we have to go over the side of the trench and get it fucking right. I'm not arrogant; I'm interested in what other people have to say, except that if I don't think it's good enough I say it's not good enough. Pay the writer more money. Let's give it one more pass, then let's get another writer. Because the story is it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you find most people share your commitment or do they think, This guy's out of control?

[A] Ford: They're afraid the whole thing will dissolve into chaos. But it hasn't

[Q] Playboy: What's your management style?

[A] Ford: I'm nice--cajoling one moment, threatening next. Whatever it takes, but always in the service of the film. At every opportunity, you have to make sure the character serves the story and the story serves the characters growth.

[Q] Playboy: It's probably a wise self-preservation tactic. The blame for failure falls on you.

[A] Ford: That's the unexpected challenge of the leading man. I am going to get fucking blamed for this, so I might as well take the responsibility, in concert with the director. It's been my theory, that you first get rid of all the unnecessary dialogue, the beginnings and ends of scenes that aren't necessary in story-telling. That keeps this thing throbbing right through it all. And that's my job. That's what I get paid to do.

[Q] Playboy:Witness, for which you earned your lone Oscar nomination, has hardly any dialogue in many, of its key scenes. Didn't the original script have a lot more dialogue?

[A] Ford: Well, the guys who wrote it got an Academy Award, and they complained that e director and movie star fucked up the movie. Their script ended with the bad guy being undone by a prize mule. Danny Glover's character had the shit kicked out of him by a mule, I swear to God. It made no fucking sense what soever, and there were a lot of other things as well.

[Q] Playboy: It was a script that had been turned down by a lot of actors when you said yes. What did you see in it that others missed?

[A] Ford: I saw an opportun1ty for myself as an actor, and an opportunity for a good director. I saw a classic movie. Fish out of water, a character transported to a place in which none of his powers would work. I think Peter Weir is an extraordinary director and it was his first real American film and he did his job so well. But we had no ending. The whole silo thing, we made all of that up. The whole articulation of the scene between me and Glover, with the guy getting crushed by the falling corn and my character digging out his weapon, that was all made up in the last week. I remember we had to scour Pennsylvania to find a bottle of air and a respirator for the guy to wear under the corn.

[Q] Playboy: In Air For One, you actually hired a real presidential speechwriter to fix the script. Isn't that extreme?

[A] Ford: I thought the speech the president makes at the beginning of the film was critical to the success of the whole film, and I worked on it and I finally brought in Democratic speechwriter Pat Cadell, who works for West Wing today. That's where the work needed to be done in that film.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps, the most famous example of a scene change you suggested was in Raiders of the Lost Ark where a swordsman demonstrated his prowess, and you shrugged, pulled out your pistol and shot him. Was that improvisation really motivated by a bout of dysentery?

[A] Ford: Absolutely.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously Steven Spielberg was sympathetic. Does he take suggestions well?

[A] Ford: He took that one. He wanted to get out of there as badly as I did. We(continued on page 137)Harrison Ford(continued from page 64) were looking at a three-day scene. That one somehow became legend because, first of all, George Lucas went nuts when he heard we had strayed from his script. I remember what director Irvin Kershner let me do in the second Star Wars. As my character was about to be frozen, Princess Leia says, "I love you," and I was supposed to say "I love you" back. I argued against that, suggested the character instead say, I know." And George was crazed.

[Q] Playboy: Not a good kind of crazed?

[A] Ford: No, no. More like, "That's a horrible mistake!" [Laughter] And so I persuaded him to leave it in for one test screening. It was up in San Francisco and the line got what I would call a good laugh at an emotional moment. And you got the bonus of her sincerity and his in-character sincerity, which I thought was important.

[Q] Playboy: You first worked with Lucas on American Graffiti, which turned out to bean explosion of young talent, with actors like Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard. Was that a fun shoot?

[A] Ford: Lord, no. I almost got fired once for taking an extra doughnut. There was so little money to make that film and they were all so stressed out. They shot it all at night. I remember getting in trouble for staying up late on nights when I wasn't working. And I got blamed for everybody else's pranks. I'm not the guy who pissed in the ice machine. Swear to God.

[Q] Playboy: You starred with Brad Pitt in The Devil's Own, in which you played a cop who finds out that he's harboring an IRA terrorist. You two clashed over the script Why?

[A] Ford: I wanted my character to have the moral equivalence of the problem that Brad's character had. To me, the script was almost an apologia for the IRA, which Brad was very fond of. And anything that mitigated against his powerful expression of a case for the IRA was hard fought. And I quite understand.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why most movies have one big star and not two?

[A] Ford: Well, Brad was honestly fighting for the script he had, but that script was never going to get made. I came along and suddenly there was the potential to get it done--not because Brad wasn't a big enough star. There wasn't a strong enough secondary character so you could have a case for this political point of view, either. There needed to be dramatic tension. If the two of us could agree on a director, we'd get the movie made. We agreed on Alan Pakula, who went away and wrote his own version, which neither of us agreed to. But we had to go into production and there was much work done after we went to work. I was pleased actually. I like the movie very much.

[Q] Playboy: It was a conflict that got wide play in the press. But Brad blasted the film in a Newsweek article.

[A] Ford: I am not blaming him. He had a different movie in mind. There are a lot of movies that I feel terrible about because of the tortured process. I have enormous respect for him as an actor and as a man. He's a dear, gentle soul and I really, like him. And it was rougher on him than it was on me, because I was fighting for what I wanted to do and he was just trying to hold on to what he had, this object that was slipping out of his hands. I think the lesson that he learned is, you can never let the mother-fuckers in the media know what you're really thinking. They'll kill you for it. And they did.

[Q] Playboy: When profiled Ridley Scott, he said you didn't much care for Blade Runner, which has become a classic. Your performance was so spirited, but. ...

[A] Ford: But you hated the narration.

[Q] Playboy: Did you deliberately read it badly, hoping they'd drop it?

[A] Ford: I was compelled by my contract to do the narration. When I first agreed to do the film, I told Ridley there was too much information given to the audience in narration. I said, "Let's take it out and put it into scenes and let the audience acquire this information in a narrative fashion without being told it. "And he said it was a good idea. We sat around the kitchen table and we did it. When we got done, the studio said nobody will understand this fucking movie. We have to create a narrative. They had already thrown Ridley off the movie--they were over budget. So I was compelled by my contract to record this narration, which I did five or six different times. Finally, I show up to do it for the last time and there's this old Hollywood writer sitting there, pipe sticking out of his mouth, pounding away at this portable typewriter in one of the studios. I stuck my head in and said, "Hi, I'm Harrison Ford." he kind of waves me off.

He came to hand me his pages. To this day I still don't remember who he was, and so I said, "Look, I've done this five times before. I'm not going to argue with you about anything. I've argued and I've never won, so I'm just going to read this 10 times, and you guys do with it what you will." I did that. Did I deliberately do it badly? No. I delivered it to the best of my ability given that I had no input. I never thought they'd use it. But I didn't try and sandbag it. It was simply bad narration.

[Q] Playboy: Scott expressed regrets about the film to Playboy, mainly that he didn't stand up for it more. He said he was a young English, chap who felt compelled to please, when he should have told them all to fuck off.

[A] Ford: Well, me included, probably. Ridley and I have made our peace. I had a great time making the movie--most of the time. He had one idea that he didn't reveal to me, which he thought was fair game and I didn't. All of our contentions are about whether my character was a replicant or not. And I was convinced, and still am, that for the audience to participate, they have to feel that there was one person on-screen who was their emotional representative, and that person had to be a real person. Ridley turned that on its ass at the last minute, saying maybe he is a replicant. I said, "How dare you?" We still kick it around, but I am eager to work with him again.

[Q] Playboy:Traffic was a movie you helped develop but didn't star in. Any regrets you didn't play the drug czar who was ultimately portrayed by Michael Douglas?

[A] Ford: The main reason I didn't do it was this is a guy who learned in the first couple of scenes that his 16-year-old daughter is a crack whore. And what are you going to wear on your face? You'd have to wear the same face that I had just worn in Random Hearts, where my wife dies at the beginning. it is grief that paints your face into a corner, and I had just done that. i couldn't wear that face again right away, and I didn't want to put the audience through this same experience with me. It was all about the audience and what was commercially viable for me to do at that time. But I told Steven Soderbergh, "Listen, if I were going to do it, these are the notes I would have."

[Q] Playboy: They must have been good, because Michael Douglas said he passed on the role but reread it after you made your suggestions and then agreed to do the movie. What did you suggest?

[A] Ford: I think my notes spoke to making the character accessible, to clarifying what his objective was, making you aware of where this guy was coming from before being forced into a dilemma. There were clarity issues. I don't even remember all of them.

[Q] Playboy: For years, you've relied on one person--your manager--to makedeals. But recently, you signed with an agency. Why?

[A] Ford: I now realize that the best stuff is never getting out of the agencies, which is why I got an agency after years of never having one. These guys represent the writers. I want access to this material before it goes into the studios. See, I'm not the youngest or prettiest guy anymore. So to ensure myself a stream of material of interest to me, I've decided to involve myself more in the movie process.

[Q] Playboy: When you were younger, you had a reputation for being angry. Russell Crowe didn't help his Oscar chances on A Beautiful Mind when he threatened an awards show producer in England. Mel Gibson also had a rep for being angry when he was young. Where does this anger come from?

[A] Ford: You have to stand up for what you believe. If you have to do it through whatever confirmation of personality resources you have, anger is one of them. Edge and steel are effective. I have less reason to be angry or pissed off now than I was when I was younger. With me, you're talking about situations where I was under contract to Columbia Pictures. They sent me to the barber with a photo of Elvis Presley so I'd come back looking like him. They wanted me to change my name and look like Elvis and do dog shit. I was angry.

[Q] Playboy: Because it was so demeaning?

[A] Ford: Yes, it was demeaning, but beyond that, it was just wrong. It was not a way to be successful.

[Q] Playboy: In retrospect, are you happy that success didn't come quickly for you?

[A] Ford: Absolutely. I was much better able to handle it. When I started, I didn't know how to act. I was getting $150 a week and worth every penny of it, and I didn't know a sweet fuck- all about acting or making movies or about life. Over the years, I have learned something. And it ain't over yet. I'm still learning.

They sent me to the barber with a photograph of Elvis Presley. They wanted me to change my name and look like Elvis and do dog shit. I was angry.