Harrison Ford on ‘Shrinking’, Future of Moviegoing: Awards Chatter Pod

Harrison Ford, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, has, over the course of more than 50 years in Hollywood, arguably entertained more people than anyone else, and inarguably become a living legend.

Ford is, of course, best known for his work on the big screen. He played a trio of everymen-turned-heroes around whom some of the biggest film franchises in history were built: Han Solo of Star Wars, Indy of Indiana Jones and Deckard of Blade Runner. And he also showcased his chops and box-office appeal in a host of other classics including American Graffiti, The Conversation, Witness, Working Girl, The Fugitive, Air Force One and 42.

Collectively, his films have grossed more than $10 billion worldwide. The National Association of Theatre Owners selected him as the Star of the Century, Empire magazine placed him at No. 1 on its list of the top 100 movie stars of all time, the Wall Street Journal described him as “a living reminder of shared movie moments that perhaps billions of people across generations and continents hold deeply” and the New York Times described him as “one of the last true movie stars, a man whose name alone could sell tickets.”

Over the last five years, however, he has devoted much of his time and attention to the small screen — and has done some of his best work yet, particularly on Shrinking, the Apple TV comedy on which he plays Dr. Paul Rhoades, the acerbic senior member of a psychotherapy practice in Pasadena, who is battling Parkinson’s disease. Last year, the show’s second season brought him the first Emmy nomination of his career; this year, its third season — which just finished rolling out this week — might well bring him his first Emmy statuette.

Over the course of a 90-minute conversation at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, the 83-year-old reflected on how depression during college led him to acting; the fateful events that resulted in him moving to Hollywood, becoming a contract player at the tail-end of the studio system, and landing his life-changing role in Star Wars; why he quickly developed a desire to escape being a “leading man” and to instead play “character parts,” and what he made of the opportunity to do so in projects such as The Mosquito Coast, 42 and Shrinking; what it is about Shrinking that he finds so challenging and rewarding; how he feels about the future of moviegoing; plus much more.

Here are a few key excerpts of the conversation (lightly edited for clarity or brevity), which you can listen to in its entirety at the top of this post or via any major podcast app…

On how clinical depression led him to acting…

“I had a single room and I had classes to go to, but I rarely ventured out. I would get up out of my single bed, go to a phone, order a pizza, go back and lay down in bed until the pizza came. I would eat the pizza, throw the wrappers in the corner, go back to sleep. And on the rare occasion I did go to the classroom, I would often touch the door on the outside of the building, and turn around and walk back. I was more than depressed. I think I was ill. I was socially ill, psychologically not well. And I never found a community at college until I accidentally — in an attempt to get my grade-point-average up — took a class called ‘drama’ without reading the full description of the class. It started out in the description talking about reading and analyzing plays, but I didn’t read the part where it said that you had to actually be in them as well, so that was a surprise. I’d never done anything like that. And I was surprised that the people that I had considered to be fellow geeks and misfits were, in fact, some of the most interesting people I knew. They were doing something that I hadn’t really understood, and they were telling stories about life and life, and some of them were exceptional in their capacity to understand human behavior. And so I think I simply found my place amongst storytellers. It really changed my world, changed my life.”

On a fateful meeting — arranged by the man who wrote the incidental music for a play in which Ford was appearing, Ian Bernard — with a casting director at Columbia Pictures…

“He suggested that he had a friend or he knew somebody at Columbia Pictures who might help in my career, and so he made an appointment for me. I had not been a big movie fan, and really didn’t know the names of the major motion picture studios, so this was the first time I was ever in a studio. I was ushered into a waiting room with an English secretary and walnut walls and waited for about 45 minutes to be seen by a man who was sitting behind a desk on two telephones… I was ushered into the office for a minute or two while he went through this routine, and then he turned to me and he said, ‘Who sent you?’ I said, ‘Ian Bernard’… He didn’t know who it was. He took out a little three-by-five card and he said, ‘How tall are you?’ I said, ‘Six feet.’ ‘How much do you weigh?’ ‘175 pounds.’ ‘Can you ride a horse?’ ‘Oh yeah, I can ride a horse. Sure.’ And, ‘Can you speak Spanish?’ Which came out of nowhere. ‘No, I can’t speak Spanish.’ ‘Well, if we find anything, we’ll let you know.’ I was out of there in five minutes. I went down the hall, pressed the button for the elevator, realized I had to take a pee. The men’s room was right next to the elevator. I went into the men’s room, I did my business, and I came out of the room seconds later to the guy who had been behind the desk running down the hall saying, ‘Come on back, he wants to talk to you!’ And I went back and he said, ‘How would you like to be under contract?’ I didn’t know what that meant. I said, ‘What does that mean?’ He said, ‘It means $150 a week to start.’ ‘Oh, wow!’… Now I was under contract at Columbia Pictures for seven years.”

On how he wound up in two very different projects directed by George Lucas four years apart, American Graffiti and Star Wars…

“He [Lucas] had made it clear to the agents of all of the performers in American Graffiti that he would not be using anybody [again in Star Wars] — he was looking for new faces. [Post-American Graffiti] I was working at Francis Ford Coppola’s offices installing an elaborate millwork portico to his office, an entrance. I had been working there for a couple of weeks at night — I refused to work during the day, because I didn’t want to confuse people about who I was and what I was doing — and one morning I was sweeping up and finishing up for the day, and in walks George Lucas with Richard Dreyfuss, who figured quite prominently in American Graffiti, and he was there for the first interview for Star Wars, and there I was, with a broom in my hand and my carpenter’s tool belt! But fortune continued to smile on me. I was asked by Fred [Roos, the casting director] if I would do them a favor and read with the actors that were reading for the parts, without any indication that I might be under consideration, so I did that. People would come in and they’d be given two pieces of paper, some lines to read, and they’d read it, and they’d look at me and say, ‘What is this? What’s this about?’ And I would explain to them, in as few words as possible, because a lot of people were coming through. I mean, I read with everybody… And then at the end, they told me that they wanted me to do it.”

On wanting to escape ‘leading man’ roles and play character parts…

“When the part can be described as a ‘leading man,’ you have certain responsibilities. You have to make the audience happy to be with you. You usually end up supplying an easy answer to a difficult dilemma that’s been driving the film, and then you end up with a soft solution, as it were… I always wanted to be a character actor. I had never thought that I would be a leading man… I got to play leading parts because the films I was in had success, and that success carried me along.”

On the joy of making Shrinking…

“I find it really fulfilling doing what I do, and I enjoy it as much as I ever, ever could possibly have imagined. Now I’m doing something I never thought that I would be doing: a television show now in its fourth season, a comedy, playing a shrink? Come on!… There are a few things that really make it fun. You work faster, and that’s fun for me — I like getting there, getting the work done, and going home. I love the challenge. I love the danger, if you will, of the work that I’m able to do. And I like the company.”

On sharing scenes with Michael J. Fox during season three of Shrinking…

“Here I am now, playing a guy with Parkinson’s, and I’m sitting next to Michael J. Fox. This is serious shit, man. This is not insignificant for me.”

On the future of the theatrical moviegoing experience…

“I’m terribly concerned. I came up at a period of time when the movie business was at its zenith, when the movie business captured the zeitgeist of a culture, and there was a transference, a cross-feeding, and the culture captured the zeitgeist of the movies. There is no zeitgeist anymore. We’ve been disassociated. We’ve been purposefully disaggregated into serviceable political economic units. There is an empty center that needs to be filled, to bring the culture back together, to bring the culture and the movie business back together, for the movie business to be useful in the consciousness of an audience, a culture, a community.”