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expressed himself, and to the quality of his relationship to Jackie Robinson. There were complicated motivations that led him to bring Jackie Robinson into major league baseball, and I thought the film addressed those in a way that I wanted to honor. When I read the script, I thought it was a well-wrought story about something significant, a character different than any I���d played before. It was an opportunity to work with a director I admired, Brian Helgeland, who was passionate about the story, and not the least interested in me for the role. I pestered him to the point where he relented. MA: Do you think the relationship between Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson helped change America? HF: I think what happened in baseball was an important precursor and foundation for the Civil Rights Movement. In this country, there is an ambition for honorable relationships, and there is an ambition for doing the right thing. It���s just, I think, something innate in American culture. We often violate this ambition in many ways, but 42 is a very powerful telling of a story in which we attended to a moral injustice in our culture and overcame and accrued to the welfare of baseball, America, and our history as a whole. MA: In the film, you���re made to look uncannily like Branch Rickey. What went into the transformation? HF: I wanted not to look like Harrison Ford. So I shaved my hairline up to where his started, wore a black wig, added a bit of nose, and covered the scar on my chin. I was motivated by a conversation with Sir Ben Kingsley. I was working with him on a movie, and I said, ���I���m thinking of really adopting the physical characteristics of this character. I���ve never really done that before. I hope I get away with it.��� And he said, ���If you give a man a mask, he���ll tell you the truth.��� That advice served me well all through the film. MA: What made you become so passionately involved with Conservation International? HF: I never wanted to be a celebrity spokesman. I just wanted to be involved in a process, to bring some meaningful energy, an application of intelligence and effort to an issue. The people who founded it were very much scientists and people who understood that science had to underpin the policies and strategies that they employed. What makes the work so palpable and powerful now is that people are seeing this geometric progression of the failure of nature to be able to support people in places where it���s been abused. Whereas they thought the destruction of the environment would take years and years, now they are seeing it right in their economic face. MA: What is Conservation International���s philosophy about the environment? HF: We want people to understand that nature doesn���t need people. People need nature. The human population could disappear completely, and nature would prosper and heal. But we need intact and vital nature in order to support ourselves. We cannot afford to provide for ourselves through our effort and financial means. All the free services our environment provides help us. Nature provides for humanity: fresh air, clean water, pollinators for our crops, renewable sources of food, and sources of future medicinals. We need to closet and preserve these resources. MA: You named a newly discovered butterfly after your daughter. That���s a very unique gift. HF: Well, I didn���t choose it. It was proposed that they name it after me, but I was already the namesake of an ant and a spider. MA: You didn���t want the entire animal kingdom named after you? HF: [Laughs] Yeah. So I proposed they name it after my daughter, Georgia. MA: Last summer, you turned 70. You���ve been a superstar for 40 years. You���re a grandfather. You���re a newlywed, and you have three movies coming out in 2013. I want what you���re having. HF: I���m very happy to still be working. When I imagined being an actor, I thought, Well, there are as many jobs for older people as for younger people. If you didn���t want to retire, you could work for as long as you were useful to the telling of a story. So I���m not worried about getting older. I���m fine with it. The kinds of roles that I���m playing now are as satisfying and interesting as anything I���ve done. MA: In Indiana Jones and Blade Runner, you did many of your own stunts. What���s that like? HF: I never accepted the notion that I was doing stunts���I was doing physical acting. I like rolling around on the ground as much as the next guy. And I like the work involved. I like work, and there���s physical work involved in that kind of stuff. It���s fun. MA: So many of the films you���ve starred in have been nominated for Best Picture, and many of the pictures you made in the ���70s and ���80s were box office blockbusters. HF: That was the heyday of filmmaking, when people went to films more than they ever had. Film had a great influence on the culture, and the business itself prospered. People were still going to theaters to see movies, rather than sitting at home alone and stopping the movie to get up and get potato chips. It was still a time when people went to a dark place with a bunch of strangers and felt something in common, which I think is the real value of film���to reinforce a sense of common humanity. MA ROLES OF A LIFETIME Harrison Ford weighs in on how his most iconic characters led their ���lms to cinema smash status. Star Wars Raiders of the Lost Ark The Fugitive HAN SOLO (Star Wars) ���Star Wars was successful because at the time there were a lot of innovations in visual storytelling. It was basically a fairy tale underpinned by the story of a youthful character, a beautiful princess, and a sage. Han Solo was a sardonic smart-ass, and I think he just appealed to the generation.��� INDIANA JONES (Raiders of the Lost Ark) ���I think audiences responded to the complexity of the character���a professor and an adventurer, a kind of a good guy with a touch of larceny. He was a character who worked his way out of situations���either by his wit or his physical capacity. What I was interested in at the time was creating a character where you could track his thoughts and behaviors. I wanted you to see the point of fear, the point of indecision, the urgency, the effort.��� JOHN BOOK (Witness) ���Great cross-cultural story, but really gritty. It���s a realistic police tale with a very warm relationship and a kid who has witnessed a murder���just a great piece of ���lmmaking by Peter Weir.��� RICK DECKARD (Blade Runner) ���Ridley Scott brought a visual imagination and a moral complexity to the character. I think the way we see technology in this ���lm is still relevant today.��� DR. RICHARD KIMBLE (The Fugitive) ���It���s a story of triumph of innocence over being wrongly accused. It was a very physical role for me, demonstrating the behaviors that were part of the character���s situation.��� JACK RYAN (Patriot Games) ���This is a look inside the intelligence community and the real world of the CIA. It���s a guy who got himself deep in the poop and worked his way out.��� MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 102-105_MA_FEAT_CoverStory_Spring13.indd 105 105 2/11/13 4:02 PM