To Harrison Ford, "Acting is basically like carpentry - if you know your craft, you figure out the logic of a particular job and submit yourself to it. It all comes down to detail." In either acting or carpentry, Ford knows what he's talking about. An intense, rough-hewn thirtynine year old, he's done both for a living: his bookshelves are still stacked with carpentry reference books, his garage workroom is full of tools. And when I talked to him three months ago, when he was on the verge of his biggest acting break, he looked as if he'd rather be turning a lathe than discuss his career. "When I started carpentry," Ford said, "I like it so much partly becuase it was such a relief from what I'd been doing before. Shortly after I got out here in 1965, I signed a contract with Columbia Pictures for $150 a week. I was pretty happy. I had a wife and two kids - I still have the kids - and the rent wasn't much then, seventy-five dollars a month. For a while it was fun. I earned my money by romping on the beach at Malibu with other contract actors, and these photos would appear in places like Argosy. The captions would read 'Harrison Ford et al, on the beach, courtesy Columbia Pictures.' It was less sophisticated than modeling but it was a way of being acknowledged as an actor while I learned to act. They did have some good classes. The worst thing was that in those days, you had to be properly dressed - jackets, no Jeans.

"I made my movie debut in a thing called Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round. It was not an uplifting-experience. I jumped from Columbia to Universal. I did tons of television - Gunsmoke, The Virginian, The FBI - always playing the same part: 'the guy who didn't do it.'

"I wasn't learning anything. But around that time, I bought a house near the Hollywood Bowl and decided to take out everything I didn't like about it. I'd never done carpentry before, but I got the books from the library, got the tools and did it - for about eight years, late Sixties, early Seventies. I did cabinets, furniture, remodeling - it was great. I could see my accomplishments. So I decided not to do more acting unless the job had a clear career advantage."

The first role he took after making this decision was hell-raising hot-rodder Bob Falfa in American Graffiti. "It paid half of what I could have made in the same period as a carpenter. But Fred Roos, who I knew from Universal, was casting, so I knew the people and the circumstances would be right. And even though l didn't have too big a part, it was the first time I felt I was making a contribution to a movie. It was my first artistic experience. That's just the way George Lucas works; he even rectified the money part later."

Fred Roos also helped cast Ford in Francis Coppola's The Conversation, as a "young man." "That was a great experience too," said Ford, "because there was no role until we made it. I decided he'd be a homosexual, so Dean Tavoularis, Coppola's designer, filled the character's office with lemons and a Lucite sawhorse. That did it. I hardly worked for five years. I did do Dynasty on TV and a Stanley Kramer TV show about Lieutenant Calley. I played 'the witness who cries.'"

Then came Star Wars. "I didn't think consciously if getting into the swashbuckling thing, and I didn't know from science fiction. I knew George. The movie sounded a little nuts, but I didn't give a shit about whether it'd be successful or not. I always thought it was an accessible, human story. I'm not an athlete - I'm a notorious powder puff. I'm one of those founding members of that chaotic underground of anti-joggers. I don't train, I just say I'm gonna do it. Actually, when I started acting, I had drawing-room comedy in mind."

In the first Star Wars movie, Ford's Han Solo had a youthful gung-ho spirit underneath his snarl; in The Empire Strikes Back, he had a more sardonic, adult tone. Ford attributed much of this evolution to "Irvin Kershner, a terrific director - make that a direct quote!" He took account of the changes in the actors and the characters." When I said that Ford seemed to be developing a persona somewhere between John Wayne's and Humphrey Bogart's, he replied, "If so, I'm not conscious of it. I'm not much of a movie buff; I've never even seen Casablanca." And when I suggested that Ford always brought a distinctive deadpan humor to his parts, even in Force 10 From Navarone, he said, "I never want to appear guilty of making fun of what I'm doing, and with some of the movies I've done, I've had to be careful."

Harrison Ford knows that he wasn't Spielberg's or Lucas' first selection for Indiana Jones; a more conventional macho actor, Magnum P.I.'s Tom Selleck, was their pick. Spielberg explained that he and Lucas just didn't see the obvious when it was right in front of them. Before Ford signed on, he and Spielberg discussed how different the character had be from Han Solo. "Solo could never look like this." said Ford as he threw over a still of Jones in his professorial garb. "Indy and Han wear totally different clothes; they couldn't possibly be the same person."

When I remember that Spielberg gave Ford credit for coming up with seven new ideas to his own five Ford smiled. "Steven had seven too but two of them would be so outrageous that we'd just collapse laughing. It was a very open piece of work. Everyone worked very fast. It was a tough schedule; lots of movie to make. And after a couple of weeks in Tunisia, I matched Steven's enthusiasm to get out. I try not to say bad things about entire nations but parts of Tunisia made me sick.

"I'm stuck for funny stories about the filming - partly because I have such a bad memory and partly because I don't want to give too much away. But there's one point when you think that Indiana Jones has finally met his match; he's up against a guy with a sword who could slice a side of beef with a single thwack. Well I'd already done every damn useless thing in the world. I was into my fifth week of dysentery, and I was riding in at 5 30 a.m. with nothing to do but submit to wild imaginings. So I stormed Steven with the idea of just dismissing this maniac. I'd never unholstered my gun in the whole movie so I said, "Let's just shoot the fucker." And we did. That's getting character in action."

by Michael Sragow
Rolling Stone
1981