Harrison: “I saw this lady. I asked my agent: ‘Wow! Who’s that girl?’ He said, ‘That’s Calista Flockhart.’ I said, ‘Oh, what does she do?’ He says, ‘She’s Ally McBeal.’ I hadn’t really seen it. I said, ‘Well, could you introduce us?’ He said, ‘Yes.’”

Calista: “Harrison came over to say hi. When he left, I said: ‘Ugh, what a lascivious old man. What is he doing?’ After the show, we started talking. Then I was really charmed by him.”

Harrison: “I had this thing, the award, in my hand, and it was easier to hold upside down.”

Calista: “I joked: ‘Oh, what’s that? A place for me to put my red wine?’ Then, of course, because he’s who he is and he can’t hold still, he went, ‘Ugh,’ and then the red wine went everywhere. It didn’t land on me. I was safe. It was all over him, maybe. Maybe on the floor, mostly.”

Harrison: “She spilled wine on me, or I spilled wine on her or something, and that sort of sealed the deal. I said, ‘Where do you live?’ She said, ‘I live in Brentwood.’ I said: ‘So do I. Would you want to have a drink?’ She said, ‘Well, maybe, but I have to bring my agent.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll bring my agent, too.’ We went to the old Brentwood Bar and Grill and had a drink. I lured her up to my house and we danced, and then I took her home. Make sure you put that in the story. And we’ve sort of been together ever since.”

Mr. Ford was not daunted by the idea of dating a new mother. “Didn’t scare me off,” he said. “When I met Liam, he was just beginning to walk, and it just didn’t matter to me. I had four children already, and I can’t count that well, so it didn’t make that much difference.”