Harrison Ford is promoting the latest season of Shrinking, a TV show I have not been able to get into. It’s not because of Harrison, who I adore. It’s because Jason Segel is the lead and I’m just not into him. There are some people I don’t particularly like but I still think they have a watchable quality – Segel is not that. I cannot watch him in anything, he has an anti-watchable quality for me. Still, I enjoy hearing from Harrison, who is basically in IDGAF mode these days. I was surprised that he even chatted to Vanity Fair about how he enjoys working at his age and he’s always loved doing comedic work. Some highlights from VF:

He feels he’s always done comedies: “As far as I’m concerned, everything I’ve ever done is comedy….Finding the humor in the moment is what makes it survivable for us most of the time. I do like to invest characters that I play with their own personal sense of humor. I think everybody has one, even if they’re not funny.”

What he gets out of gigs like ‘Shrinking’: “Oh man, I get out of it essential human contact. I get to imagine with people that have great skill and experience…. It’s fun to work with these people.”

People like to watch him get beat up: “I did always feel that it served the characters I played well to take a beating before they dispensed one.”

What he thought about comedy & comedic acting as a kid: “I didn’t think much about it as an actor, but I did think about it as a person. I always enjoyed humor. I loved jokes. I loved the construction of jokes. My father was a joke teller. The wordsmithing and the ideas that lay behind a joke have always interested me. When I was thinking about becoming an actor, I was ambitious for both kinds of work—serious drama and comedy. I found myself doing both and not really distinguishing much between them. I think I think with the same actor’s head about a joke as I do about a serious or emotional scene.

The comedic acting with the fedora in Indiana Jones: “I like visual information. It’s normal to adjust the hat to match the condition of the head that’s under it. When he’s being lighthearted, then it can be pushed back a bit. When he’s being threatening, it should come down to nearly cover his eyes. But that’s just, I don’t know…hat acting, I guess.

Working with Ivan Reitman in Six Days, Seven Nights: “[Laughs] I love that movie. I think it is really funny, and Anne Heche was brilliant in it. And I really enjoyed working with Ivan and his bunch of merrymen.

Working with great comedic actors like Gene Wilder, Carrie Fisher & Will Ferrell: “I think comedy is not competitive. I love collaboration. Some people are easy to work with; some people are not easy to work with. Some people torture themselves to get comedy to come out. And I kind of felt that Gene was one of those people. He was always very serious about his jokes. And a very different personality to Carrie and a very different personality to Will. There are people that are funny that are very different from each other. And I guess there’s room for everybody.

He will do goofy things any time: “I don’t need any encouragement. I’m really quite goofy all on my own. But when I’m in the company of other people that I know to be goofy, there’s a certain relaxation of the rules. I like to have fun. I like to be around people that are having fun. I don’t like to get too serious.

[From Vanity Fair]

One of my favorite Harrison Ford movies gets a shout-out in the piece, which is Working Girl. I still believe that’s one of Harrison’s best roles, because he got the chance to really be a normal guy, the romantic lead, and he got to just be charming and funny in a normal way. One of the funniest scenes of all time is when Tess is passed out cold and he’s carrying her up the steps, telling an unconscious woman about how his apartment might be messy because his cleaning lady keeps changing days. And the scene in the Trask wedding is hilarious!! Anyway, I agree that Harrison is an underrated and underappreciated comedic actor. It’s still not enough to make me watch Shrinking though.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.