Harrison Ford: Still Sane After All These Years

Q: People do become fascinated with the person they see playing characters they like.

A: When you've been around for 20 years, and there' s been this person Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast and this Harrison Ford in Witness and this Harrison Ford in Clear and Present Danger, the aggregate experience over time gives them a lot more information about who that person is than a person who appears in two movies and turns out to be a drug addict or a person who... I'm not going to say, picks up a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard.

Q: For a time, you pointedly refrained from revealing what state you lived in--and then you had journalists interviewing you there! What happened in between?

A: It became fruitless. People would write a whole fuckin' article about how they weren't allowed to say where I was. Forget it. Let's get to the work.

Q: Are there any places in the world where you can go and not be recognized?

A: I remember when I was in Fez, Morocco, during a break from one of the Indiana Jones movies, there were two movie theaters in town and both were playing movies / was in. And I realized, this is the end, this is the end of privacy. I could walk down the street though, because people' s recognition is totally based on anticipation. You walk down Madison Avenue and they' re expecting to see you. But after this much time, I don't have the expectation I' m going to be recognized or care if I'm recognized. It's just a fact of life. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. It's great when they don't. It' s inevitably positive when they do. Because these people are customers of mine, and by virtue of the fact that they're engaging me, most of them are satisfied customers, so the exchange is, for me, usually based on that relation-ship. I don't know what it' s based on for them. For me. this is a person who's supporting my career and it's very little trouble for me to accommodate [my fans], unless I' m actually taking a pee at the time.

Q: Do you make any effort to look anonymous or do you figure it' s not worth the effort?

A: It' s not. I never did it full Michael Jackson. The most I ever did was try to behave anonymously, and I still do that. There's a difference between the head held high and the proud step and the walk of the average citizen.

Q: It seems from everything writ-ten about you, and all of your visible life, that you have quite a lot of common sense. Or uncommon good sense. Do you agree?

A: Common sense is all I have.

Q: Have you had it all along?

A: I've always had a pragmatic attitude. I' m not blessed with a great intellect, but I am blessed by having a certain common sense.

Q: In a place like the movie business, common sense comes off as an absolute mystique.

A: [Laughs] Well, I have met others who have it.

Q: Who?

A: Sydney Pollack, for one.

Q: But see? You can actually name the people who have it.

A: Yeah. I can name them.

Q: If you had become successful at a much earlier age, how would you have handled it?

A: Less well. I was 35 when I did Star Wars, and I' d been an actor and a carpenter and then an actor again, so I was pretty much inured and also experienced by the time it happened. By that time the only use I had for fame was to gainer opportunity.

Q: How did it come about last year that you were named the "Star of the Century"?

A: [Snorts] Well, it was a total setup. Some statistical construction of the National Association of Theater Owners. I know it had to do with money, and nothing else. The reason I was there was to promote Clear and Present Danger and in aid of that, to accept the award was not a disadvantage. I said to them, "I know why you're giving me this award in 1994, six years before the end of the century. It's because if you wait any longer, you' ll have to give it to Macaulay Culkin." It was a joke, but...

Q: And now Macaulay Culkin has disappeared from the face of the earth.

A: Yeah, but it was a good joke [at the time].

Q: I read that the college you flunked out of--Ripon--wanted you to come back for an honorary degree. Is that not a terrible idea?

A: Why, don't they all do that? Invite those flunkies who've become notably successful--and most likely well-off--to return, with the very firm belief that such an honor would loosen the purse strings? Is that not the reality of such situations?

Q: So you're not going to give into this temptation?

A: I'm not. It was a perfectly OK school. I didn't have a real good time there, but I don' t blame them for that. I don' t aspire to have an honorary degree. If they could give me the knowledge I should have gained when I was there and instead pissed away...

Q: Couldn't you learn now what you would have learned there? Haven't you?

A: No, I haven't. There are big holes in my knowledge.

Q: If you could lake a year off to study, what would you study?

A: I'm doing it. I'm studying to be a pilot.

Q: I mean stuff you would've learned in college, like physics.

A: That's one of the key things I didn't learn in college. I dunked a science survey course that had equal parts chemistry, biology and physics. I flunked it the first time because of a complete failure in chemistry and physics--I was good in biology--and I flunked it the second time. I flunked logic two times as well.

Q: When you worked with River Phoenix--on The Mosquito Coast, and he also played the young Indiana Jones--did you fear for him at all?

A: Nope. He was strong, quick, happy, well-adjusted. He had a great relationship with his family. He was a terrific person. I' m really... very sad about what happened.

Q: It seems to have been a matter of drugs.

A: I don' t think there' s any way you can say that River had the kind of personality that becomes drug-dependent. But I think he was a person who became interested in everything and excited by everything and loved to get into any kind of shit just for the knowledge and experience. I don' t think he sought fun through drugs. The quest wasn't for a high, but for an opening up and engagement in the world. He was a sweet, wonderful boy.

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