When Harrison met Calista
When two big showbiz stars get together as a couple there’s bound to be a media frenzy – and that was certainly the reaction when Calista Flockhart and Harrison Ford stepped out together at the American premiere of his film K-19: The Widowmaker.
The pair have been seeing each other for around four months but the glitzy do was a rare official public appearance together. Each a star in their own right, they could be the new Hollywood power couple.
Now magazine’s Tim Ewbank believes they may even rival that other great celebrated movie star couple of recent years, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones.
“They’re both certainly very powerful,” he says. “He’s possibly the biggest box office star ever and she is one of the hottest things on TV. Together they make a pretty potent coupling.”
And he points to a long tradition of stars joining forces to increase their might. “Hollywood has always had this thing with couples, the whole Burton-Taylor thing.”
Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are a more recent union made in celebrity heaven while Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton as well as Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman demonstrated the allure of the Hollywood celebrity coupling while they were together.
Such relationships may not last but they give both partners an increased profile and greater prestige. “Hollywood is all about beating the drum, putting yourself up there and being noticed and talked about,” says Ewbank.
“The great criteria for the success of Ford and Flockhart as a power couple is that they are both liked by men and women.
“Harrison Ford is a screen idol to women but men also respect and admire him, and Calista is a sexy figure for men but is also very much admired by women for her role in Ally McBeal as an independent woman.”
Their relationship will only add to their allure, he says. This is perhaps particularly true in the case of 60-year-old Ford, whose 18-year marriage to ET writer Melissa Mathison ended 19 months ago.
“Showing his virility will do him absolutely no harm whatsoever,” Ewbank says. Flockhart is just 37. In professional terms however, he thinks the less famous of the two stars stands to benefit most.“
Flockhart possibly has more to gain. Ford's standing and credentials as a movie actor are huge.
“For her, coming out of a series where she’s been widely acclaimed she’s presumably thinking she needs to do something as good or better and to have someone with his experience and know-how of the industry would be a tremendous help for her.”
Recent reports have suggested Ford has even demanded that a role for her as a love interest be written into the fourth Indiana Jones movie, in which he is set to return as the eponymous hero.
Not everyone is as quick to envisage Ford and Flockhart as the new King and Queen of Hollywood, however.
Victoria White, deputy editor of Company magazine, says they are too publicity shy attitude to be the new Douglas and Zeta Jones.
“Michael and Catherine love the limelight and feed off each other’s fame but both Flockhart and Ford are very private people,” she says. “It’s been very difficult for them to come to terms with how interested people are in their relationship.”
While the Douglases are keen to be seen doing things as a couple, she says, Ford and Flockhart almost looked embarrassed at the premiere.
The other contrast between the two couples, according to White, is the difference in status between Ford and Flockhart.
“He has an awful lot of power in Hollywood, but she hasn’t really had any huge success,” she says. “She’s certainly a smaller fish than Catherine Zeta Jones who, even before she met Michael Douglas, was inching her way up the A-list quite substantially.
“Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were also both very powerful in their own rights. I don’t think Ford and Flockhart have the same clout.”
What White and Ewbank agree on is that the relationship appears genuine and as such could have a future. Since splitting with Mathison, Ford has dated several women, including British actress Minnie Driver.
According to reports, the relationship ended when he grew tired of her demands they make the romance more public, a problem he does not seem to have with Flockhart.
“He’s had his sort of ‘I’m single again’ feelings and this looks to be something more substantial and serious,” says Ewbank.
And White believes the unlikeliness of the coupling is testament to its integrity.
“Both of them could probably do better if they were doing it to become a power couple,” she says. “She would have been better off with someone closer to her own age and he could have had his pick really.
“Some people are very driven by money and power, but Harrison Ford is too old to care about that sort of thing any more, and he doesn’t really need to be part of a famous couple.
“I think it’s such an odd coupling that chances are it really is a very intense relationship.”
