Ed Harris: he's principled. He's honest. And he's not afraid to say it like he sees it

Interview, Oct, 2003 by David Furnish

DAVID FURNISH: As you know, the theme of this issue is "daring duos and daring doers," and we're putting you and Nicole on the cover because of your great, daring performances in last year's The Hours and this fall's The Human Stain. So, let me start by asking you, do you consider yourself daring?

ED HARRIS: If I'm daring at all, I guess it would be emotionally. I try to keep things interesting for myself and to do things that challenge me. It's really about being open to the moment of creation, not manipulating it, and trusting that you may not know where to go, while at the same time recognizing that seeing what happens when you rip yourself open is what your job is all about.

DF: It sounds like a fairly organic process.

EH: There's a lot of intellectual work that goes into preparing for a role then it becomes a much more intuitive exploration.

DF: Who do you think is a daring person in our world today?

EH: Well, you look at a guy like Lance Armstrong, and you have to be inspired. I sat next to Kirk Douglas the other day at this Hollywood Foreign Press thing, and he's pretty inspiring for fighting through his stroke, and staying alive inside, and still working and being positive.

DF: When you were starting out, you wanted to be a professional ball player, didn't you?

EH: When I was in my early teens, yeah. But by the time I was a senior in high school, I knew I wasn't big enough or fast enough and couldn't hit a curve ball. So after a season of playing freshman ball [in college], I realized I had to think of something else to do.

DF: I picked up a quote in which you supposedly said that acting was the closest thing you could think of to scoring a touchdown.

EH: Yeah, I said that. i meant in terms of the attention and the applause--there was a certain need to be recognized that I got in athletics, which gave me self-esteem and made me feel like I had a place in the world; that was the initial attraction with acting for me. I had seen some theater and really loved it, and I remember this one actor who was really funny and great in two roles [in the same play], and the audience loved him and applauded him. So I began studying acting at the University of Oklahoma, and then I went on to CalArts for a couple of years. After that I just studied as I was doing plays in L.A.

DF: Did becoming an actor feel like a daring decision at the time?

EH: Well, no, because I wasn't concerned so much with making a living at it. I was concerned about filling my life up with something that was important to me. It could seem courageous or daring to some people, but to me it was just necessary. I think most people that are looked upon as doing something daring don't necessarily think of it that way--they do what they have to do.

DF: So often society conditions us to have a safety net, and I think that sometimes tends to squelch instinct.

EH: Pollock [2000] was an exercise in that for me. I didn't consider my decision to make the movie daring necessarily, but it was certainly a new deal for me--especially when I decided to direct it, never having done that before. But setting off on that journey is something I'm very proud of.

DF: I think it was an extremely daring thing to do, given how precious the art world can be about subjects like that. Your big breakout came with The Right Stuff in 1983. Were there a lot of lean, hungry times leading up to that?

EH: Pretty much, but I was happy as a clam. I was doing what I loved to do, learning about what I really wanted to learn about, painting houses to support myself. I had my little terrier with me, and that was about all the friends I needed. I was pretty isolated, just working away, doing a little theater in Pasadena and North Hollywood, wherever I could get a gig.

DF: And when you were doing The Right Stuff, did you feel like this was the sort of film that could really change things for you?

EH: Well, I knew it was the most high-profile picture I'd been in up to that point. It was a pretty exciting time, but even after that film I made career decisions that came from the part of me who wanted to shun the limelight. I chose films being made by people I wanted to work with, about subject matter I thought was intriguing.

DF: One of the great things about you as an actor is that you seem to be able to take on so many types of roles.

EH: Well, I try not to get locked in. I've played a number of bad guys, a number of military guys, and a number of other kinds of parts.

DF: How have you managed to avoid being pigeonholed?

EH: I've never been that kind of box-office person. I'm 52 now, I've been doing this for 20-plus years, and I still feel like my career--as well as my ability as an actor--is still growing. I feel like I'm getting better and that my place in this industry is still progressing.

DF: Are there people who have been pivotal to your development?

EH: My first acting coach at Oklahoma, Bob Greenwood, who's up in Calgary now--he was probably the most influential. One of the first things he said to me was, "This is not fun-and-games time; this is a way of looking at the world, this is opening yourself up to music and dance and art and your senses, and this is looking at things in a different way." So for a guy like me--a pretty good student who was fairly bright, but who was this jock playing football and baseball for 20 years and had virtually no aesthetic development--it was very interesting to start thinking about things in those terms.