MR. NICE GUY

profile I
In Gimli, school kids skipped class —
with their parents’ permission — to get a
snapshot of the Hollywood star who was
filming in their Manitoba town.
In Halifax, more than 1,000 shipyard
workers, students and regular folk
responded to a call for extras, even though
only a fraction of them had the slightest
chance of appearing on screen.
Harrison Ford in
K-19: The Widowmaker
On the Ford
FRONT
It’s been a long time since he outran the Empire at light speed or galloped
through the Egyptian desert on horseback. But, at 60, Harrison Ford is still
winning sexiest man alive contests and taking home $25-million paycheques.
We take a look back at the career of the Hollywood icon, and forward to
his new role as a Russian submarine captain in K-19: The Widowmaker
By Marni Weisz
A big American movie shooting north of
the border is certainly no rarity these days,
so shouldn’t these people be blasé about
it? Well, if the film stars Benjamin Bratt,
sure. Even David Duchovny. But this was
the Russian sub epic K-19: The Widowmaker.
And when it opens across the continent
this month, the name atop the marquee
will be Harrison Ford. � �
famous 22 | july 2002
The same Harrison Ford who piloted the
Millennium Falcon that rescued Princess
Leia from the evil empire in Star Wars. The
Harrison Ford who single-handedly wrested
the holy Ark of the Covenant from the
clutches of the Nazi regime in Raiders of the
Lost Ark. The Harrison Ford who is considered
the elder statesman of Hollywood’s
leading men. The Harrison Ford who, in
1998 (at age 56) was chosen as People’s
Sexiest Man Alive. And the Harrison Ford
who the 2001 Guinness Book of Records
named the world’s richest male actor.
“I’m so star-stricken,” Debbie Johnson,
front desk clerk at the Gimli hotel where
Ford stayed, told The Winnipeg Sun.
“Usually I’d go up to him, but he’s just so
damn handsome I don’t know what to say.”
Odds are, neither would Ford.
The 60-year-old actor has never liked
attention, often coming off as bashful and
uncomfortable in TV interviews. Sure, he
does his fair share of press when it comes
to promoting his films, but he draws a solid
line between his personal and professional
lives, and rarely talks about his marriages or
kids. As he told USA Weekend in 1998, fame
is “like having a limp. You live with it.”
But when you’ve been in the business as
long as he has (his first credited film role
was as a lieutenant in 1967’s A Time for
Killing) there’s a fair bit that seeps out.
Born in 1942 Chicago to an Irish father
who worked as an ad exec, and a Jewish
homemaker mother, young Harrison didn’t
exactly excel as a child. Never better than a
C student, he was also no standout as an
athlete. He did, however, become involved
with his high school’s startup radio station,
and when WMTH FM hit the airwaves in
1960, Ford was its first voice on air.
Summerstock theatre and student productions
at Wisconsin’s Ripon College followed,
and Ford realized acting was a better way to
spend his life than behind a desk.
In the mid-’60s Ford was doing a play in
Laguna Beach when he was invited to meet
with a Columbia Pictures casting director.
The interview went okay. Ford answered
questions about his height, weight, whether
he could ride a horse. Then he was
thanked for his time.
But on the way to the elevator he took a
detour to the washroom. When he
emerged, the casting director’s assistant
was running down the hall, shouting for
him to come back and sign a contract. “I
have no idea why the guy sent that guy