Harrison Ford, hovering hero

Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford is gazing out the window, having a moment.

"Oh ... that's nice" he rumbles, pulling out his specs to get a better look.

The object of his affection is below us on Sydney Harbour. It's a sleek black helicopter which has touched down on a helipad a kilometre or two away, its rotors still spinning.

You have to ask: Is it a bit like your one?

"Yeah, but it's got no horizontal stabilisers. That's an A-Star."

Hey, we're chopper-spotting with Indiana Jones, talkin' horizontal whatsits with Han Solo. For many a guy of a certain generation, this would be pretty darn cool.

Having started taking lessons in his early 50s, Ford flies helicopters and planes. Being of a certain income bracket, he owns a small squadron. Ford - with fiance Calista Flockhart - is in Sydney to promote his latest thriller, Firewall. The previous night they had autographed their way up a red carpet which weaved its way through a Bondi Junction shopping mall to the film's Australian premiere in the multiplex above.

Behind the barricades there were many guys of a certain generation proffering Indiana Jones and Star Wars DVD box sets to be signed - which Ford inscribes with an efficient whisk of the pen and a wry grin.

The next day Ford presents in one of the hotel suites being used for interviews. Unlike many film stars, he's as tall as you imagine he should be. He's certainly more rumpled of face and grayer of hair than the space swashbuckler or the whip-cracking archaeologist of the 80s. But he still looks younger than his 63 years. Or than he does on screen in Firewall, where he gets to ruin yet another suit and tie in yet another fight to save his loved ones/country/all of the above from men with exotic accents.

Once again he's called "Jack" (See also the Tom Clancy thrillers, Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games). Once again he does most of his own stunts and fight scenes. ("I'd rather see into the eyes of a character under that kind of pressure than the back of a stuntman's head.")

Only this time, he's a bank security expert whose family is kidnapped to force him to co-operate in a cyber-robbery. Which sounds modern but isn't.

If the film comes with a creeping sense of deja vu, Ford isn't worried. Thrillers like these - the cinematic equivalent of airport novels and, hey, Ford pretty much owns an airport - allows him to do the very occasional film outside his usual genres.

And, though Firewall has had a sluggish start at the US box office, there will always be an audience who want to see the dependable Ford slugging it out.

"And they might do that because they might have had a sense of satisfaction about having spent their money at my store before," he smiles, "and I am very grateful for that. I take that as a responsibility."

"But being dependable can be tedious, I hope to tend to the responsibilities and to try to extend the scope and range of the thing to at least the level of engagement it requires."

With the opportunity and, you would think, financial freedom that he found post-Star Wars and Indiana Jones, did he ever want to reach his audience in other ways - challenge? educate? surprise? - rather than just engage?

"Like K19? Like Mosquito Coast?"

Well it's true that in both films he played characters that weren't exactly out to win audience sympathies. Not many people saw those films.

"That doesn't bother me at all. It's not my money. When people invest in a film I feel responsible for using their money wisely and working as hard as I can."

Ford has been working as an actor since the 1960s. The short version of his career goes: struggling actor starts out in television westerns but keeps up a sideline in carpentry and gets cast by George Lucas in 1973's American Graffiti which leads to a couple of franchises named Star Wars and Indiana Jones. With films like Blade Runner and Witness showing he was capable of deeper darker roles, by the 90s his pay cheques had risen to the $US20 million mark.

Along the way he's been through two divorces with two children from each and now he's a dad again to Flockhart's adopted 5-year-old Liam.

He's been largely untroubled by awards - just the one Oscar nomination for Witness and now, a mounting number of lifetime achievement awards. And those double trilogies make him the biggest box office star of all time - as well as giving him not one but two characters he can never escape. Not that he minds the fanboy ardour which will follow him forever.

"I find it gratifying. They are good films. They are the work of good film-makers. I am glad I had the opportunity to be involved. I have taken advantage of the success of those films to do other things. That's all I could have asked for.

"One of the great lucky aspects of my career is those films are introduced to each succeeding generation of film-goers because they are classic and so that helps to hopefully sustain my career."

And he's not as attached to the films as those guys of a certain generation.

"I don't relate to them the way the fans do. It's just a totally different experience for me.

"I have no problem with it at all."

From what can be gleaned, the fourth Indiana Jones has already been through a couple of writers while producer George Lucas finished his second Star Wars trilogy and director Steven Spielberg got on with other movies. It will be set in the 1950s and have a supernatural element.

Ford isn't exactly expansive on other details about the film, due for release next year - "We have a script that we have a degree of agreement on ... it's a great script and it can only get better."

Neither will Ford expand much on his feelings about reviving a character that some might think better consigned to a movie museum. After all, the Smithsonian Institution holds Indy's famous hat and jacket. Will they have to ask for them back?

"There is more than one, I hate to tell the Smithsonian."

Might the good Dr Jones have acquired better flying skills than he displayed in previous instalments?

"Flying perhaps, landing probably not. I don't know what is going to happen in the next one, we haven't quite sorted it out. I'm just one of the responsible parties. There's a clearly defined process here after having done this three times. It's a process I look forward to."

That journeyman take-it-as-it-comes attitude has often been likened to his time as a carpenter - Ford as film tradesman.

He was a pretty good carpenter in his day, though as his profile grew so, he says, did the number of Hollywood homes he supposedly renovated.

"Happily some houses I have worked on have survived.... it was my eventual ambition to make a living as an actor but I wanted to protect against doing things that I wasn't happy to be doing. So that is why I set out to develop another skill."

These days he says he's not much use in his old job: "I lost my chops." But hey, he gained a chopper.

What is it with film stars and wanting to fly? Is it because they want to prove something to themselves after a day's work of pretending to be derring-doer? Or just that they just have the money and the time?

"I think the last two are more likely to give you some clues. For me what was interesting was I was fiftysomething years old and I didn't know whether I could learn something that was as complicated as I imagined it was.

"I did find it very fulfilling because of the practice of skills, the continuing necessity to keeps your skills honed."

So, a different side of the brain to acting?

"I think it engages both sides of the brain ... I love the focus that it obtains when you are contemplating a little short dirt strip up in the mountains where you have to fly between two trees and down a gully to get there, and there is no way out. I am trying to make it sound dangerous but it's not. It's all about the mitigation of risk, not engaging it."

We close with some small talk about his own movie tastes and whether Firewall reflects that.

"Not entirely. My taste is eclectic.I'm not a big movie-goer so I hardly qualify for the question."

Yes, funnily enough, the actor who has probably made the most money out of movies isn't a big movie-goer.

He prefers going to the cinema, he says, to watching a DVD.

But that getting to the theatre thing, the driving and the parking he says puts him off - he doesn't mention that being one of the most recognisable faces on Earth can have its drawbacks when queuing for popcorn.

Interview over, we look for the helicopter again, but it has gone.

You get the feeling that Ford prefers watching A-Stars - of the hovering kind - to being one. 
 

Lowdown

* Who: Harrison Ford, acting's all-time box-office champ
* Born: July 13, 1942, Chicago
* Key roles: American Graffiti (1973), The Conversation (1974), Star Wars (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Blade Runner (1982), Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Witness (1985), The Mosquito Coast (1986), Frantic (1988), Working Girl (1988), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Presumed Innocent (1990), Regarding Henry (1991), Patriot Games (1992), The Fugitive (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), Sabrina (1995), The Devil's Own (1997), Air Force One (1997), Six Days Seven Nights (1998), Random Hearts (1999), What Lies Beneath (2000), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002).

Latest: Firewall opens Thursday. Next year: Manhunt (he plays the colonel charged with finding Lincoln's assassin); and Indiana Jones 4.