ANTHONY BREZNICAN

Indiana Jones always finds what he's looking for in faraway places, and the same could be said of Harrison Ford. The leading man of Star Wars, The Fugitive and Air Force One - and of course Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - is happiest in the private 800-acre woodlands around his Wyoming home, or soaring over the American landscape in one of his private aircraft.

But he also sees the pleasure in a simple hike. Today, he's tackling the trailways of Temescal Canyon, a public park tucked into the mountains just outside Santa Monica. The 65-year-old actor is eager to get started, although he says: "There'd better be a bar and restaurant at the end."

No such luck. The trail is a loop that winds up into rolling mountains. Passing around a hairpin turn on the trail, Ford mentions he hasn't yet seen the finished cut of Crystal Skull, but is sure that he will before it premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18.

The plot is still secret, but according to Ford, the movie will give new perspectives on his globe-trotting archaeologist. Jones is among the actor's favourite characters, and he has put a lot of his own curmudgeonly qualities into him. "He's a guy that is clear from the beginning," Ford says. "He has not changed so much between films, but we've learned more about him, through various plot devices, such as the introduction of his father. And we'll learn something more about him in this film. If you're going to bring back a character, you'll have to supply the audience with something more and different. The adventure is very important. But it's interesting to discover a facet of the character that perhaps you hadn't explored before."

One of those things is age, which is apt, considering some wonder if the actor is getting too old to play the action hero. "I think it's an interesting element to take advantage of," Ford says. "Clearly, it's another challenge that he faces."

It has been almost 20 years since 1989's Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and nearly 27 years since Ford first played Jones in 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark. But getting back was really easy, he says. "It's as though you put on that hat, the leather jacket, the bag, the whip, the gun - or even the schoolteacher's suit - and it comes back to you."

As he ascends the hills, assorted day-hikers come stomping down from the trail ahead. Most appear stunned to see him, and Ford grins and says hello to each one. He regards his stardom with the attitude of a blue-collar worker. "It's my job," he says. "I think it's the best job in the world. Where else can you go to play with such big toys?" His children were never too dazzled that their old man got to, say, fly spaceships in Star Wars. "I think they grew up in the store, disabused of the potential for anything more than the understanding that it's the job I do."

His four children (from two marriages that ended in divorce) are grown up now, and his two grandchildren are 14 and seven. "They know me as grandpa first," he says. "They know the reality of the business I'm in." Even from a young age, "they knew Chewbacca was a fiction".

Ford is back to being a dad to seven-year-old Liam, the son of his partner, Calista Flockhart. The Indiana Jones movies can be frightening for young children (America's PG-13 rating was partly a response to Temple of Doom), and Liam hasn't seen them yet. He is looking forward to that someday, though. "The pleasure of making something is always sharing it, especially with people who are close to you," he says.

The path ahead is levelling out along a bluff. At the base, Ford rests his elbows on a bridge railing and watches a thin waterfall spilling down its face. "There are tons of these," he says. "When you fly around here, you see so much more open land. There are waterfalls everywhere."

Piloting his own light aircraft is a passion for the star, and he maintains several small planes at a hangar in Santa Monica. "A commercial airliner is so unlike flying. You're in a huge machine and you're at 35,000ft looking out. You don't have the same kind of emotional contact of what's happening around you." After a while, he looks up the ascending path. "Carry on?", he asks.

Ford's fondness for wilderness came at an early age. Growing up in and around Chicago, he was often sent for week-long visits to farms and campsites. He lives mainly in Los Angeles these days, close to family. But it's clear he has a deep affection for his woodland home. At this point in his career and with $3.1 billion in box-office revenue, the actor doesn't need to prove anything any more, but he also hasn't been very prolific lately, making only two movies in six years: the crime comedy Hollywood Homicide and the techno-thriller Firewall. Neither was well reviewed. After the new Indiana Jones movie, he has a role in the ensemble Crossing Over as an immigration agent who tries to help a woman who has crossed the border illegally to be reunited with her child. It's an experiment for Ford, dabbling in art-house fare. "I wanted to do a film where I didn't take responsibility for the film, and just played a role in an ensemble."

Some actors of his stature simply decide not to do it any more. Sean Connery, 77, who played Jones's father in The Last Crusade, said he wouldn't return for a fourth film because he had given up acting. Does Ford ever think of retiring? "Kick back and work for Scotland's freedom?" Ford jokes, referring to Connery's pet cause. "I don't think I'll make that same choice. But sure. I think I might decide to do other things, but I think it's way down the line. I'm still having as much fun and taking as much pleasure, and I'm as intellectually stimulated by the process as I ever was."

The actor doesn't rule out working on a film with Flockhart, either. "We might do that, but it's not something we're actively seeking." He also might consider a fifth instalment of Indiana Jones, though he hopes it wouldn't take 20 years to pull together.

On the way back down the trail, Ford seems to soften his stance about the differences between his own personality and that of his most famous character: "I think I'm as curious as he is, but much less an academic. I'm less likely to get myself into dramatic situations." He might be referring to the incident in summer 2001, when a boy scout went missing overnight in Yellowstone National Park. Ford, like many local pilots, volunteered his services. He happened to find the boy while patrolling the Wyoming wilderness in his helicopter, and the incident made headlines - not because it was especially dramatic, but because Ford was the rescuer.

As the Temescal Canyon path winds down to flat land under the cool cover of towering trees, the actor grimaces at the memory. He says it was just a good deed and hardly matinee-style theatrics. "What annoyed me about it all was that I'd pick somebody up off the mountain one day, and two days later they'd be on Good Morning America," Ford says. "I thought, It doesn't give credit to all the other people involved.' Suddenly, I'm swanning around as some kind of hero." He shakes his head and walks on down the trail.