Ford's Wife Files for Separation

August 24, 2001 -- Only a few months after Harrison Ford reconciled with his wife of 18 years, the Oscar-nominated leading man is separated again.

Ford's wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathison, has filed for legal separation from Ford, seeking joint custody of the couple's two children, his spokesman, Pat McQueeney, said on Thursday.

McQueeney confirmed that Mathison filed her petition in Los Angeles Superior Court but said that the couple remains on good terms.

"The couple is very friendly and everything is very amicable," McQueeney said. She said Ford would have no comment on his wife's petition.

She also said Ford, who has homes in Los Angeles and Wyoming, was currently in Los Angeles with Mathison and their two children, 14-year-old son Malcolm and 11-year-old daughter Georgia.

Ford and Mathison, who met on the set of Apocalypse Now and were married in 1983, first announced their separation last November in a joint statement, saying that they were still trying to work out their differences. People magazine reported in May that Ford had patched things up with Mathison and had moved back into the family home.

During the couple's previous separation, McQueeney dismissed "silly" tabloid reports suggesting that the 59-year-old Ford was having an affair with Jack Nicholson's sometime squeeze Lara Flynn Boyle.

Reuters contributed to this story.