Harrison Ford Details His Conflicts With Brad Pitt On ‘The Devil’s Own’ Film

Two major actors. Two egos. Two ideas of the director and the storyline. Add it up and you have drama, as Harrison Ford related in an Esquire interview.

Ford talked about the conflicts between him and Brad Pitt while shooting the 1997 film The Devil’s Own.

“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.”

Ford also said that he wanted to have a more complex storyline for his character in the film. Ford portrayed NYPD Sergeant Tom O’Meara, whose family takes in an Irish construction worker, Rory Devaney (Pitt). They soon discover that Devaney is an IRA operative seeking to buy missiles.

“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 said. “And that’s when I came up with the bad-shooting thing.” Ford is referring to his conflict over witnessing his partner’s bad shooting in the field

Working that subplot into the film while it was shooting was difficult.

“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,” Ford said. “Each of us had different ideas about it.”

With the passing of time, Ford now blames himself for any friction with Pitt.

“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,” he said. “It was complicated. I like the movie very much. Very much.”