Ford: the true Quiet Man

LOS ANGELES -- In normal conversation, Harrison Ford speaks so softly that you sometimes have to strain to hear him.

He once commented -- only half-jokingly -- that his close encounters with snakes and rats on the "Indiana Jones" sets did not bother him at all. "It's people I'm scared of," he says.

Would Han Solo or Indiana Jones ever talk that way? Probably not.

For an actor whose films have sold more tickets than any other star's, Ford remains a remarkably modest man.

He lives as quietly as a $20 million-per-picture star can. He submits to interviews not to further his own image but to help sell the movies he is so handsomely paid to make. Unlike many ego-driven stars of his caliber, he harbors no desire to direct or produce his own films.

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As he sat for an interview recently, Ford was facing a new challenge for which he had mixed feelings. He had been selected as the 28th recipient of the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute, joining such august company as Bette Davis, James Cagney, Elizabeth Taylor, James Stewart, Fred Astaire and Sidney Poitier, as well as a pantheon of film directors.

"It's a mystery to me how I happened to get invited to join that list," he remarked. "But I'm very flattered by it."

He viewed the award dinner, which will be broadcast by CBS this spring, as "a mixed bag of terror and anxiety." The reason a lifelong fear of public speaking.

"Even when I'm acting as a character in a film and I have to make a speech, I get that same nervousness," he admitted. "It's very weird. I think that if I had to go on the live stage again, I would have (that feeling). I prefer the comfort of having some control of the environment that one has on a film set."

Ford was interviewed at one of his three homes -- a traditional, English-style house behind an iron gate in the hills above Brentwood. He bought the property 18 years ago, spent two years rebuilding it, then never lived in it. He kept it for occasional visits to L.A., and he and his second wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathison ("E.T."), moved to a ranch at Jackson Hole, Wyo.

For the past four years, the couple have made their regular home in Manhattan, where their children, Malcolm 12, and Georgia, 9, go to school. They spend summers in Montana. Ford has two other sons from his first marriage, Benjamin, 33, and Willard, 30, and a 6-year-old grandson.

At 57, Ford retains the boyish look that makes him so engaging as a film hero. His cobalt eyes are clear, squinting when he is deep in thought -- which seems to be often.

With blue jeans and a black T-shirt, spiked blond hair and a small gold dot in his left ear lobe, he might be able to pass for a senior member of the Pitt-DiCaprio-Damon generation.

Ford admits to a rather undistinguished childhood in suburban Chicago.

"I was a kid who never found a niche," he recalled. "I wasn't an athlete, I wasn't a student leader, I wasn't anything. I was a late bloomer, I think." He was repeatedly beaten up by the school bullies and ignored by the girls.

At Ripon College in Wisconsin, Ford enrolled in the drama class, perhaps influenced genetically -- his grandfather had appeared in vaudeville as a blackface comedian, his father had done some radio acting.

"I did a couple of plays, and people encouraged me," he recalled. "It was the only thing I had found in college where I felt a sense of community and utility." He did a little summer theater work, then headed for Hollywood.

"I started at Columbia Pictures at $150 a week," he said, "and I enjoyed all the respect that it implies. I think mail clerks were making more money. I wasn't worth more than $150 a week, to tell you the truth."

His film debut came in 1966 as a bellboy in "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round." His line "Paging Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones. Paging Mr. Jones." The head of the new talent department told him afterward that he had no future in the movie business.

After a year and a half, he walked away from a seven-year contract and was hired at Universal Pictures for $250 a week. He spent a year and a half at Universal, working mostly in TV shows such as "Gunsmoke" and "The Virginian."

Finding himself "slowly starving to death" as a freelance actor, he quit acting to build houses as a carpenter.

Then came a call from producers Fred Roos and Gary Kurtz, who asked him to join the ensemble cast of "American Graffiti," to be directed by an unknown, George Lucas. The salary $485 a week, Guild scale.

"Are you kidding?" Ford replied. "I have a wife and two kids to support. As a carpenter, I bring home $700-$800 a week. And I need every bit of that."

Three hours later, Roos called back to say they had squeezed the budget to allow him more money.

"How much?" Ford asked.

"Five hundred dollars a week."

"You're joking. I'll take it."

"American Graffiti" led to Lucas' "Star Wars," the biggest hit of the 1970s. Although Ford was rewarded handsomely when Lucas gave him -- as well as fellow cast members Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Alec Guinness -- a share of the huge profits, the film didn't necessarily further Ford's career.

"I was in the neighborhood of a success," he explained, "but it was not a personal triumph. It was so clearly George's movie."

He needed to establish himself as a film actor who could do more than pilot space vehicles through dazzling special effects. He made two so-so films to establish his price "and to get my name above the title." "Force 10 From Navarone" accomplished both goals, and "Hanover Street" showed that he could handle romance.

But with the continuation of the "Star Wars" saga and the advent of the Indiana Jones trilogy, Ford remained locked in the image of a star of high-speed, hugely successful action-adventures.

"Witness" in 1985 provided the breakthrough. His role as a big-city cop hiding from crooks in an Amish community showed the human side of Harrison Ford and brought his only Academy nomination as best actor. He has since demonstrated his versatility in such films as "Working Girl," "Presumed Innocent," "The Fugitive" and "Air Force One."

Ford is scheduled to appear before students of the Actors Studio this spring, having run out of excuses why he couldn't attend.

"I don't have much of a theory about acting at all," he insisted. "I have a theory about storytelling, I suppose. I don't know if I have ever cogently expressed it. And I don't know if I even want to.

"In my case, (acting) almost always proceeds from asking questions about the story. Not so much about the character, but the story. Why did the writer write it this way? What does it mean? It's sort of a practical look at the way the thing is made.

"If I can develop full confidence in the material, then I know what the purpose is, and the acting comes easily. ... These are conversations that are normally just between the director and myself. When I don't have any more questions, I'm ready to go to work."

Unlike other stars of his stature, Ford has no desire to direct -- "I always thought of directing as trading the best job in the world for the hardest." Nor does he yearn to produce.

"I like the collaborative atmosphere, being part of the team," he explained. "I don't want to be the boss.

"It's a question of how I want to live my life. Now I make one movie a year, then I go away and do other things. I see so many of my friends in the business disappear down that hole, the 'development' hole. It's a full-time job. I have a life."