Orange Coast Magazine

Mark Harmon

March 2006 issue

Dec. 1, 2005

By Kyra Kirkwood

Mark Harmon may have a disgruntled airplane passenger to thank for his fruitful career.

Just a few years out of college, Harmon toiled away at a thankless job, all the while striving for a way to act full time. On the flight home from a business trip, Harmon sat next to a job-hating man not too much older than himself, but decades more bitter, sucking down highballs at 10:30 in the morning.

"I'm looking at this guy going, wow, I hate my job. Hey, I feel different than you," he says during a break in the filming of his popular weekly television drama, "NCIS." "I think I know what I want to try to do, but I'm scared to do it."

By the time the plane landed, Harmon no longer felt paralyzed by fear. He drove to his office, quit his perk-laden and paycheck-secure job, then in quick succession sold his car, home and just about any other possession that could earn him payment. And then he began searching for work as a struggling actor.

"There was nobody who thought that was a good idea," says Harmon, 54. "I look back on that [flight] and go, you know what, that was fateful. That was important. I might have been still been [messing] around, trying to think if this was the right time to do it."

It's hard to imagine this boyishly handsome actor didn't have agents beating down his door way back when. With mischievous blue eyes and a playboy grin that always seems itching to break through, Harmon looks, even now, every inch the all-star athlete he was in college. Witty, blunt, refreshingly open and friendly, even a touch philosophical, all wrapped up in a Sexiest Man Alive exterior (thanks to the title from "People Magazine"). But underneath it all, Harmon is a regular family guy, loving his wife of 19 years, his two teen sons and his job.

The road to this current crest wasn't easy, or overnight. There were stints in forgettable television shows, auditions for classes where he had not the first clue of what to do, minor roles in films, some stage work in Canada. But he kept tackling each new obstacle just as he did the gridiron when he quarterbacked for UCLA in the 1970s: He took risks, and he learned from his struggles and losses.

"The edge of the razor blade is where you learn the most," says Harmon. "Certainly [it's] where there is the most to fail. But that's also where you have the opportunity to gain the most."

Harmon patterned his career path after his first mentors, people like Karl Malden and Michael Caine. Back in the late 1970s, Harmon played a bit part on a star-packed movie and endured the wrath of a fiery-tempered director who couldnπt find any bigger players at which to vent. After a few days of this, a figure stepped between Harmon and the director.

"He put his hand right in the chest of the director and he said, 'From now on, if you have anything to say to the kid, you say it to me first. You understand?'"

The director huffed away, and the man turned around. It was Karl Malden.

"He said, 'I've been watching you. You look like you like to learnäI like to teach. How about if I'm your teacher?' So Karl Malden was my master class for 16 weeks every day from that point on. What a lesson!"

Decades after that fateful meeting, Harmon is still honing the skills taught to him. He walks his talk, too: never take things for granted, don't stop learning.

Even though this Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated actor has an impressive resume laden with hit shows like "Chicago Hope" and "St. Elsewhere," as well as films such as "Summer School," "The Presidio" and "Freaky Friday" with his old pal Jamie Lee Curtis, Harmon still finds it hard to admit he's "made it" in this business. Not even being named "People Magazine's" Sexiest Man Alive in 1986 convinced Harmon of his stardom.

"I just thought it was silly," he says of the title. Adding with a chuckle, "And I can't imagine taking it seriously."

Instead of gripping his past glories, he focuses on how much more he can learn in the industry.

"I've never gone on any set without taking something from it," he says. "I'm there to find out something I don't know today that I will know tomorrow. From the very, very beginning, it's always been trying to maintain some sort of longevity. That's the idea, to try and keep learning, to try and keep growing and adding to your bag of tricks."

And adding he does. His most recent career addition, "NCIS," is nothing short of a CBS gem, ranking in the top tier among prime-time shows last fall. Harmon is like a proud papa, pleased that a series so close to his heart is making an imprint on the viewing public. In "NCIS," special agents investigate any crime that may possibly be connected to Navy and Marine Corps personnel. Comparisons to "JAG" and "CSI" once fluttered around, but today, this drama can stand on its own.

"I think we're doing it better now than we were doing it last year or the year before," Harmon says. "There's no one on this crew or cast who doesn't want to be there. This is as talented of an ensemble group as I've ever been around."

Also starring Lauren Holly and Michael Weatherly, "NCIS" was created as a character-driven, humor-peppered series from "JAG" executive producer Donald P. Bellisario. This premise originally drew Harmon into the fold, and has kept him excited ever since. Having a tight-knit group of actors to spend 16-hours a day with, starting at 6:30 a.m., doesn't hurt, either.

"Listen, if we're going to spend that kind of time, we better like each other," he chuckles. "And [we] better have some fun doing itäBut from the very first day, it's always been about the work. The style of what we do is different and unusual. Actors want to work this show. They've heard about this show. The reputation precedes this show."

Harmon's ever-present attitude of gratitude could come from his years spent as a heralded collegiate football star, or from his close-knit upbringing in Los Angeles by his All-American running-back father, Tom Harmon, and his mother, Hollywood beauty Elyse Knox. One of Harmon's treasured memories involves helping his father with his weekly football broadcasts from the Los Angeles Coliseum, running copy to the press box and then sneaking off to the field down below.

"I'd run down some tunnel—I use to love to get out of the other end of it, where there was nobody else in the stadium, and you could just look at the beauty of the field," he says. "All the colors and the smell of the grass, all of it. I used to say, 'Wow! Someday, wouldn't that be something to come out of there as a player?'"

When he was 19 years old, he stood, clad in UCLA gold and blue, right there in that same tunnel, in front of 90,000 screaming fans during the game against Nebraska in 1972.

"In many ways, playing at UCLA was, for me, a complete dream come true. A fantasy. [It also brought] my dad and I extremely close together," says Harmon. "I just appreciate having had him as long as we did here, and me having the opportunity to be his son as long as I had that opportunityäSo I'll always be appreciative of that, win, loss, doesn't matter."

This strong athletic background from a self-termed "jock" helps Harmon today focus on a game plan during his jobs on set and stage. He aims for perfection, learns from his errors and takes notes on how to improve his game. But he's also big on living in the moment.

As a father of two teen-age sons with actress Pam Dawber (from "Mork & Mindy" with Robin Williams), Harmon keeps an unobtrusive, yet constantly there, boundary between his work and family lives.

"I don't know if either one of us confuses what is the work part of what we do and what is the family part of what we do. And that's been from the beginning," Harmon says. "This is a job, and I try to do it well. And it's important that there's a perspective kept on that. I don't think what I do or what my wife does is any different from any other job. There are different ways that people look at it. But the work ethic is the same."

Inevitably, people ask Harmon when and if he and Dawber will combine their work ethics and star on the small or big screen together. Will Dawber find her way onto the "NCIS" set? Well, if she does, it's all up to her, Harmon says.

"The truth is, if you line 10 scripts up on the table and said, 'Which ones to you want to do,' 9.999 out of 10, we would choose different material," he says. "When the day is done, she's from the Midwest and I'm from Burbank."

They've shared the stage before, as well as credits on one independent film. Adds Harmon with a laugh, "I don't think either one of are looking forward to visiting that again any time soon."

But they must know something many other Hollywood couples don't, because after nearly two decades together, they're still going strong. The couple knew of each other before they met through a friend, and Harmon had also seen Dawber on stage in "The Pirates of Penzance" when it came off Broadway. So what's the secret to marital success?

"I think you've got to be lucky," he says. "You don't always make strong choices, you don't always make right choices. You do your best."

Harmon and Dawber prioritize their family time and try to keep it as "normal" as possible. Although "NCIS" shoots for 10 months of the year, Harmon isn't always keen to jump right into another project during the show's hiatus. At times, he'll try to fulfill his love of stage acting by joining a production, but other times, he'll schedule that three-week family vacation.

"When you're a parent, everything from school conferences, to plays, to first Little League games, to what you're doing on Saturday, those are moments," he says. "And it's a collection of moments. How many did you see? How many did you witness?"

A few years ago, Harmon witnessed a near-fatal moment for two teen drivers, and his quick thinking gave those boys' parents the gift of more moments with their children.

It all began with a shattering crunch that Harmon and Dawber heard inside their Los Angeles area house. While Harmon went to check on their sons, Dawber ventured outside to find the source of the disturbance. Two boys had crashed their car. Flames threatened to not only overtake the vehicle, but also those trapped inside. Dawber called 911 while Harmon ran for his sledgehammer in the garage. He smashed out the windows, yanking burning bodies from the wreckage and pulling the boys to safety mere minutes before a Hollywood-esque explosion rocked the night.

"During those moments in the middle of that, it was like everything slowed down. I had an inordinate amount of time," he recalls. "When in reality, I didn't. There was no time to spare in any of this. There was not three seconds on either side to spare."

The next morning, as he left to take his boys to school, an enormous swarm of reporters hovered around his house, looking for the story about Harmon's heroics. But all he wanted to know was information about the boys' health. He had no idea if they were dead or alive.

Turns out, they both survived their trauma and burns. Harmon even keeps in touch with them now; one is a successful landscaper. But from the accident right up until this very moment, Harmon has yet to label what he and Dawber did as heroic.

"We were lucky to help. We stepped up and we helped," he says. "Which is different than most people. Some people don't do that. And you know what? That's fine. That's their thing. Not my thing. We reacted. We did it. And these two kids have a life because of that.

"It changed people. That experience that night changed anyone who was involved."

SIDEBAR:

In "Summer School," Harmon played Freddy Shoop, the dream teacher many high school girls pray to have during their dreaded summer-school sentences: good looking, easy going, always ready for an outing to the beach. Perhaps Harmon's own years spent as a lifeguard in Orange County helped prep him for such a role.

During school in the 1970s, Harmon would vacation with his parents at their Laguna beach house, driving back and forth to football practice and lifeguarding duties.

"It's not a glorious a job as you grew up thinking it is," he says. "Every part of your body is fried. No one ever says thank you after you rescue them."

But did he enjoy his time here? You bet.

"I always thought Laguna was kind of like this little gem, this artist town. It still is to some degree."