Fredanded: Fred Ward and Ed Harris: two actors who give a damn

Ed Harris and Fred Ward played out a memorably macho pas de deux onstage at New York's Public Theater late last year. The occasion was Sam Shepard's diversely reviewed Simpatico, a noirish drama of two old friends who worked a racetrack scare before one betrayed the other and absconded with his wife and car. Themselves compadres and sometime movie co-stars (The Right Stuff, Swing Shift), the habitually intense Narris and the habitually crumpled Ward, who happen to be two of America's best and least-overpraised actors, were alternately jocular and reflective when we sent actress Brooke Smith to interview them shortly before the play ended its run.

BROOKE SMITH: How does working together on Simpatico differ from what you did on The RIght Stuff, apart from the fact that one's a play and one's a movie?

ED HARRIS: It's more out there. It's just me and him. There's nobody else around. When we were doing The Right Stuff, there were, you know, five other astronauts.

FRED WARD: Right - floating in outer space!

BS: Do you find that you have similar ways of working?

FW: I see stuff in Ed that I relate to. His physicality. I see him using the physical to pull stuff out. And he's quite meticulous about it, too.

BS: What's it like to play off each other?

EH: It's really fun. One thing I've grown to appreciate about Fred is that whatever he's giving me, I'll give him back, and it takes care of itself for the next forty minutes. I don't have to create something that's not there. A lot of times when you work with actors you find yourself almost shutting them out, because they're not giving you anything. They're not giving you what you need in terms of where your character is coming from.

FW: In this play we're dealing with relative truths - who's lying, who's telling the truth. But underneath that, Ed and I have hit this deeper level of intimacy between old friends that comes out in the play.

EH: The characters are coming from different directions. Carter, my guy, is very successful at this point. Vinnie, Fred's character, is pretty much down-and-out. He's actually called me to come help him out of a situation. And I ran off with his wife and his car fifteen years prior. They haven't seen each other in a long time. So I'm carrying a lot of baggage and guilt from that around with me. Which he tries to call me on.

FW: And all the bitterness comes out in me.

EH: BUt it'S tricky playing it. Sometimes I think I've been playing the subtext too much. Carter's such a liar to himself. I don't think he's conscious of it. And as an actor playing it, you can't help but be conscious of what's happening to him.

BS: Does he ever have a moment where he realizes -

EH: No. I asked Sam about that. He said, "Sorry. You know, this guy doesn't have a fuckin' clue." [both laugh]

FW: It feels like an existential Abbott and Costello at times, because they're dealing with these deep things in an almost slapstick manner.

EH: I think that last scene works on that level. Yeah.

FW: It has that brutality of comedy at times.

EH: These guys are fairly ruthless with each other.

FW: They slap each other around emotionally.

BS: Do you guys Support each other in terms of the business?

EH: I go see his movies. [laughs]

BS: That's good - you pay! But do you call each other up and say, "Did you read this script?"

EH: We turn each other on to something occasionally. There was a play I was doing a few years back, and I learned that Fred was interested in doing it. And he sent me this script that he's directing, and Amy [Madigan, Harris's actress wife] and I might do it. I think about Fred a lot more than I talk to him. I feel like he's been part of my life over the last twelve years, you know?

BS: What qualities in each other do you wish you had more of?

EH: Well, Fred's a great traveler and a great reader and very fascinated with other cultures and times and different kinds of people. He's had a very interesting life. There's this wanderlust thing that's part of his being. I wish that I had an instinct for that a little bit more. If I'm in Paris for three months, I'll be working or I'll be in my room, drinking wine. I might get out once in a while, but I don't explore the city. I don't get fascinated by all the wonderful things there are to see.

FW: I think Ed is real focused and centered. [EH makes a face] He sticks in there. And there's a real looseness in Ed, too, a spontaneity.

EH: Fred's been a boxer and a martial artist, and he's really on the ground - talk about stable! And his sense of humor is kind of the same, in the sense that it's a little dry. But there's a part of him that's, like, really out of his mind. [all laugh] He appreciates the absurdity of situations, the ridiculousness of things. There's some stuff that he does in the play that I think is just so hilarious, that people don't quite get.

BS: Ed, you recently said that you're trying to do less "male stuff." What did you mean?

EH: I was talking about women, just in terms of understanding them as much as we can ever understand the opposite sex. I'm trying to let go of certain male approaches to things that you inherit, that you grow up with. If some woman tells me how she feels about something, my immediate assumption is that she wants an answer, or that she wants me to solve her problem. In fact, all she wants to do is share, or show how she feels. It's like a prehistoric reflex, you know, going out and getting the meat and bringing it back to the cave. You feel you're supposed to make it better, but more than likely she's asking you to tell her how you feel. Also, as an actor, it's fun to play guys that aren't just locked into some kind of male pattern, but a lot of guys you're asked to play are fairly macho and have a certain rigid standard they're living by.