Harrison Ford admitted to clashing with Brad Pitt over creative differences on the set of their 1997 movie “The Devil’s Own.”
Over the years, the 80-year-old actor has alluded to experiencing difficulties while filming the Alan J. Pakula-directed action thriller. In a new interview with Esquire, the “1923” star was asked if he recalled why the movie was hard for him to shoot.
“Heh. Yeah, I remember why,” Ford told the outlet. “Brad developed the script. Then they offered me the part. I saved my comments about the character and the construction of the thing — I admired Brad. First of all, I admire Brad. I think he’s a wonderful actor. He’s a really decent guy. But we couldn’t agree on a director until we came to Alan Pakula, who I had worked with before but Brad had not.”
Pakula was the director and co-writer of Ford’s 1990 legal thriller “Presumed Innocent.” “The Devil’s Own” would become Pakula’s last directorial project before he died in a 1998 car accident at the age of 70.
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In “The Devil’s Own,” Ford played Irish-American NYPD Sergeant Tom O’Meara while the “Babylon” star portrayed Frankie McGuire, an IRA terrorist who comes to the United States to procure anti-aircraft missiles.
While posing as an immigrant construction worker, McGuire moves in with O’Meara and his family. McGuire later discovers McGuire’s plans and becomes determined to stop him.
“Brad had this complicated character, and I wanted a complication on my side so that it wasn’t just a good-and-evil battle,” Ford remembered. “And that’s when I came up with the bad-shooting thing.”
During the movie, Ford’s character is caught in a moral quandary after witnessing his partner shoot an unarmed thief in the back. After lying to protect his partner, he decides to resign from the NYPD.
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Ford told Esquire that the two A-Listers also didn’t see eye to eye when it came to the film’s script.
“I worked with a writer — but then all the sudden we’re shooting and we didn’t have a script that Brad and I agreed on,” the “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” actor said.
He continued, “Each of us had different ideas about it. I understand why he wanted to stay with his point of view, and I wanted to stay with my point of view — or I was imposing my point of view, and it’s fair to say that that’s what Brad felt. It was complicated. I like the movie very much. Very much.”
Despite Ford and Pitt’s on-set conflicts, “The Devil’s Own” became a hit. The movie raked in over $140 million at the global box office, though critics’ reviews were mixed.
