by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Harrison Ford once got a parking ticket because the traffic cop didn't like one of his films, he said.
"In New York I was walking to my car. I saw somebody begin to write a ticket. Like everybody else, I tried to talk them out of it," he said. "I said 'Hey' from the middle of the street as I approached. He turned around and looked at me and said two words - 'Mosquito Coast' - and snapped it onto the windshield."
You can't please everybody, Ford said, so as an actor you've got to please yourself in knowing you've done a good job.
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In his upcoming film, "Firewall," Ford plays a computer security specialist working at a bank whose comfortable family life is disrupted by a blackmailing criminal played by Paul Bettany.
Ford said there are no characteristic distinctions in portraying blue-collar and white-collar workers.
"I'm playing a character who has an occupation that I'm unfamiliar with," Ford said. "I research all of my roles. For this one I met with a number of banking professionals and computer software designers to get a keener idea of the details of their lives."
Paul Bettany said he looked inside himself to research his villain character.
"I tried to look for what I had in common with the character," Bettany said. "He wants $100 million dollars. I wouldn't mind $100 million. I sort of held that in mind. Obviously, there are obstacles in my way."
He doesn't mix work and home with this film, he said.
"If you are playing a psychopath and you're taking your work home with you, you really shouldn't be a father," he said, jokingly.
Bettany said he chose this film because he had never done a thriller and he wanted to work with Ford.
Some critics have said Bettany's character on paper was a conglomeration of villain roles with not much uniqueness.
In playing the villain, he said, "There are certain notes that you have to hit because it's genre - there are traditions and rules."
He said he tried to ground his character in reality so as not to undermine the audience's intelligence. He doesn't think it's necessary to play the villain in an over-the-top manner.
"If I sat there stroking a cat with a scar down my face I think people would kind of be alienated, and that's not what you want," he said. "We're asking people to believe this could happen to you. That's the conceit of how this sort of thriller works. Your family life could be turned upside down. How safe is your identity?"
In "Firewall," Bettany and Ford are both businessmen of sorts, but on different ethical grounds.
"Businessmen lay off human beings from work, businessmen decide to make shirts in Indonesia and use 8-year-old children to do it in order to turn a profit, businessmen make really cold decisions every day. Businessmen run diamond mines. They walk around in the legitimate world," Bettany said. "I try to play it more like that."
"Firewall" opens Friday.
