Act Your Age

Harrison Ford stars as bank security expert Jack Stanfield in the action thriller Firewall. Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

As the first wave of baby boomers hits 60, there’s lots of talk about rethinking retirement. For the boomers’ parents, retirement meant stopping work and taking up carpet bowling. For the boomers, “the sixth age” involves some kind of synergistic spiritual expansion of potential and possibility.

These demographic trends — and their associated buzzwords — are hitting celebrities, too. And some Hollywood action stars, who have spent their careers shooting first and asking questions later, are having a tricky time “transitioning.” Take Firewall, the recent standard-issue thriller in which 63-year-old Harrison Ford plays Jack Stanfield, a security expert at a Seattle bank. The question is not “Can Jack rescue his family from cyber-extortionists?” (Of course, he can. He’s Harrison-freaking-Ford.) No, the urgent force that compels Jack to crash through windows and thrash men much younger than himself — and to do so with a thin-lipped determination that’s stiff even by Ford standards — is a much deeper, even existential uncertainty: in the face of time and change, what’s an aging action man to do?

So far, the clout of the Hollywood star system has trumped calls for mandatory retirement — though the doth-protest-too-much quality of Firewall’s publicity suggests that the “age is just a number” ploy is getting desperate. Junket-fed coverage of the movie obsessively notes that carpenter/Wyoming rancher/helicopter pilot/emergency rescuer Ford did almost all of his own stunts, and that hapless co-star Paul Bettany, despite being 29 years his junior, couldn’t keep up.

One gets the feeling that Ford is one $25-million paycheque away from becoming that crazy uncle who’s always bugging you to punch him in the stomach as hard as you can. But why wouldn’t he be having a tough time getting past his universe-saving youth? All told, Ford has grossed more money than any leading man in movie history — an estimated $3.18 billion at the U.S. box office — mostly for playing men of spare words and resolute deeds. It’s hard to learn new tricks. (Witness 2003’s Hollywood Homicide, with Ford’s “impromptu” Motown dance moves and madcap attempts to chase down a suspect while riding a little girl’s bike. Ouch.)

When he’s not playing an outsized hero, Ford is most comfortable in the fallback position of “the ordinary guy forced to do extraordinary things to save his family.” But this Average Joe act has become disingenuous — especially for a multimillionaire megastar. And there’s that thorny issue of age again: following through from Betty Buckley in Frantic to Bonnie Bedelia in Presumed Innocent, Anne Archer in Patriot Games, Sela Ward in The Fugitive, Wendy Crewson in Air Force One and now Virginia Madsen in Firewall, the wives tend to hold steady at a well-groomed 42 or 43, while Ford has advanced from a craggy 46 to an exhausted 63.

Of course, “60 is the new 50” — at least, that’s what all the 60-year-olds are saying. Boomers have always insisted that aging is an elastic concept — unless you’re an actress, in which case the process suddenly reverts to a stubborn biological determinism. (Has anyone seen Buckley, Bedelia or Archer lately? Meanwhile, Ford has announced plans to do a fourth Indy movie — Indiana Jones and the Lost Fountain of Youth?)

But Ford isn’t the only one with retirement issues. A cohort of his contemporaries is facing the unenviable dilemma of growing old on a 12-metre screen. For every graceful nod to the exigencies of age (Bruce Willis deconstructing his bullet-headed tough-guy persona as the weary cop with the bum ticker in Sin City), there’s an embarrassing misstep (Tommy Lee Jones attempting to reinvent himself with a grotesque, face-cracking foray into light comedy with Man of the House).

Sylvester Stallone waves during the filming of Rocky VI. (Photo Getty Images/Ethan Miller)

Sylvester Stallone experimented gingerly with vulnerability in Cop Land, playing a podgy New Jersey sheriff in awe of the New York detectives who live in his jurisdiction. Stallone’s work in this downbeat drama was his first bit of genuine palooka pathos since the original Rocky, but he quickly relapsed into playing hard-bellied and knuckleheaded. The 60-year-old is not only in pre-production for Rambo IV, he’s also shooting a sixth Rocky movie (Rocky vs. the Boxing Commission Neurologist?).

Is it the boomers’ persistent fear of becoming “the grown-ups” that keeps this group of guys locked into what are essentially adolescent fantasies of physical invulnerability? Or is it the result of an economic model — at least as it’s perceived by many people under 40 — in which the boomers have cushy jobs-for-life while their Gen X successors scramble with freelance gigs and contract work? Is that why Vin Diesel and Ice Cube are having a hard time cracking the action-hero job market?

Whatever the problem, the reluctant retirees should take lessons from 75-year-old Clint Eastwood, who is relaxing comfortably into his grizzled hair and crow’s feet. Though he made his name playing flinty, fireproof icons of machismo — think Dirty Harry, The Outlaw Josey Wales — he’s embraced the aches, pains and minor physical failings of an ordinary septuagenarian, playing an over-the-hill thief (Absolute Power), a burnt-out journalist (True Crime) and a clapped-out FBI profiler who needs to nap in the afternoon (Blood Work). 

It’s not just that Eastwood makes one hell of an old coot. He has become a much better actor. (Check out Million Dollar Baby.) Something similar has happened with Robert Redford. As a young actor with golden-boy good looks, Redford said that he was bothered by the notion that “there is a difference between the way I look and the way I feel inside.” Almost seven decades of living — and lots of Utah sun and wind — have closed that gap. His laconic byplay with Morgan Freeman in An Unfinished Life is a reminder of the rich, mellow, complicated pleasure that comes from watching good actors grow old.

Watching actors refuse to grow old, on the other hand — the backlit, soft-focus Warren Beatty in Town & Country, the stretchy, pneumatic Mickey Rourke in Domino — is depressing. Despite the boomers’ optimistic rhetoric about the aging process, many older actors are denying it with all the glittery-eyed madness of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Hollywood’s greying action men may be ready for their close-ups. But are they prepared to act their age?

Alison Gillmor is a writer based in Winnipeg.

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Letters:

Thank you, thank you to Alison Gillmor for speaking the minds of a good many movie watchers out there. I am so tired of seeing these ageing guys ungracefully doddle their way through action flicks, while romancing age-inappropriate female co-stars (you forgot to mention Harrison Ford's outing with Anne Heche). This perpetual double-standard for males and females in the film industry is insulting and wholly unattractive. And it makes the males look like Peter-Pannish adolescent/adults who don't know whether to have a facelift or blow up an enemy aircraft carrier. I've reached the point that I refuse to pay good money to support ageing males boost their egos in their misplaced belief that a) they can still get any woman they want, b) that they can still pull off the machoeseque posing of a 30 year old, and c) that the general audience actually buys into this crap. Frankly, I'll take a gracefully ageing George Clooney or Robert Redford any day over age-denying egoists like Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford. Which is sad, because I used to love Harrison Ford. These men should take a page from the books of Gena Rowlands, Meryl Streep, and Jamie Lee Curtis - beautiful women all, who moved beautifully with their bodies through the ageing process and have maintained their dignity in a dignity-dousing industry.



Doris Kieser
Edmonton, Alberta

To quote Rose Castorini in Moonstruck, "thank you for answering my question!" I'm glad to find someone who agrees with my private opinion that Harrison Ford needs to stop being Indiana Jones in every movie. I agree with your descriptions of aging hunks Warren Beatty and Mickey Rourke, and would add another: Sean Connery, who finally got the point when his hairpieces could no longer be made with the correct tensile strength to support violent movement. Harrison Ford has been a very consistent and bankable actor, but he needs to start a transition to "executive" roles, instead of "action" roles. Thanks for your commentary.


Derald Porter
Kirkland, Washington