That line from The First Wives Club about the three ages of women in Hollywood -- "babe, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy" -- has been quoted so often as to be rather hoary. Of course, the reason that clichés have any currency is that they are, to some degree, true. Between her years as an ingénue and her years as a crone, rare is the lucky actress in Hollywood who does get to play mature women who are still sexually viable to men in their own age range. And since the foremost leading man in that age range is Harrison Ford, eventually every old/sexy actress worth her Oil of Olay will, at some point in her career, portray Harrison Ford's wife. Here are our favourites:

Anne Archer

If there were a Fictional Mrs. Harrison Ford Hall of Fame -- and hey, folks, don't you think there should be? -- not only would Anne Archer be its first inductee; she would appear in TV ads inviting tourists to visit the Hall of Fame, a simplified pictogram of her face would mark roadside signs directing visitors to the correct highway exit to get to the Hall of Fame, and the Hall of Fame would operate out of a special addition onto her private residence. That's how firmly Anne Archer has entrenched herself as Harrison Ford's fictional bride. And yet she's only actually played Mrs. Fictional Ford twice -- in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, both adaptations of Tom Clancy novels. Perhaps it seems like she's done it more often because she's done basically the same thing -- strong yet vulnerable brunette wife -- in non-Ford-starrers like Rules of Engagement (as Mrs. Fictional Ben Kingsley) and Fatal Attraction (as Mrs. Fictional Michael Douglas). Anne Archer wasn't the first Mrs. Fictional Ford; she was just the most memorable. We don't think it's a coincidence that so many of the Mrs. Fictional Fords who followed Archer look and act so much like her. Most shameless of these is...

Wendy Crewson

Wendy Crewson played Mrs. Fictional Ford in Air Force One. As many moviegoers as thought Ford's President Jim Marshall was actually Jack Ryan -- the CIA agent Clancy hero Ford played in the above-named Games and Danger -- probably also mistook Crewson in One for Anne Archer. Like Archer, Crewson is a tall, slender, maternal brunette, swaddled in earth-toned cashmere pullovers and sensible loafers and standing by her man even though he's chosen such a dangerous career. Like Archer, Crewson protects her cub like a lioness would, defiantly stands up to tyrants and terrorists, and suffers no more than a dainty cut on her cheekbone for her troubles. Basically, Crewson is Archer Jr. As a result, she's gone on to star in Anne Archer's rejects, such as the role of Mrs. Fictional Schwarzenegger in The Sixth Day. In addition to being the poor man's Anne Archer, Wendy Crewson is Canadian, which means that her career is marked by her roles in many Canadian TV movies and mini-series - a.k.a. the poor man's "drama."

Sela Ward

Sela Ward's turn as Mrs. Fictional Ford was brief, though memorable: she played Mrs. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive, and though she only enjoyed a few minutes' worth of screen time, her role is pivotal; if not for her murder, there would be no thrilling suspense. (The politics of introducing a female character for no reason other than to murder her in a particularly brutal fashion is a separate issue to be debated in feminist film classes across this great nation.) Ward accomplishes everything she needs to do as the movie's sacrificial lamb -- she looks pretty, and because she's a respectable...er...fourteen years younger than Ford (as opposed to, say, twenty-seven years younger, as Anne Heche was in Six Days, Seven Nights), the audience doesn't regard Ford's Kimble as somewhat pervy, and therefore the notion of Ward's and Ford's fictional marriage is legitimate and honorable enough that the audience can support Ford's quest to avenge her death; if Ford were married to some twenty-two-year-old chippy, the audience might not be so firmly on his side. While Ward hasn't played a Mrs. Fictional Ford since The Fugitive, she went on to star in the love-after-forty TV drama Once & Again, landing no less a paramour than The Rocketeer, and is now arguably the preeminent old/sexy actress of her generation. Currently, she is playing the hero's estranged wife in a Roland Emmerich film (The Day After Tomorrow), as did...

Margaret Colin

As Crewson is to Archer, so Margaret Colin is to Ward. Colin already had solid old/sexy cred -- earned in the trenches playing arm candy for the likes of Tom Selleck (in Three Men and a Baby) and Jeff Goldblum (in Emmerich's Independence Day) -- when she played Mrs. Fictional Ford in The Devil's Own. Like all the best Mrs. Fictional Fords, Colin is wry, sensible, and a brunette. And like Ward, Colin played a mature woman looking for love the second time around on an embattled TV series. And -- get this. Ward's show? Once & Again. Colin's show? Now & Again. They even both premiered in 1999. Of course, whereas Ward's role as a sexy divorcée in a thoughtful, realistic, critically acclaimed drama earned her Golden Globe and Emmy awards, Colin's role as the quasi-widow of a man whose body was destroyed in an accident but whose brain was salvaged and placed in the body of a super-engineered perfect male human form ended when Now & Again was cancelled at the end of its first season. Too bad the role of Ward's fictional TV sister is already cast.

Bonnie Bedelia

Sure, Bonnie Bedelia has a legitimate slot here among the Mrs. Fictional Fords, having played the role in Presumed Innocent. But she's a bit of an anomaly among the other Five Wives represented here. While certainly a lovely woman by any standard, and while she's decidedly a brunette, she'd stick out like a sore thumb if the Six were lined up on a dais in some kind of ceremony to crown the all-time greatest Mrs. Fictional Ford. She's short. Her hair is curly, not straight. She's less wry or rueful than she is soulful and sensitive. And frankly, playing Mrs. Fictional Ford is not her iconic role: just admit that you know her best as Mrs. Estranged Fictional Willis in the first two Die Hard movies. Bedelia and Ford make an odd on-screen couple, since they're both so steely and squinty. Just as Ford needs a sassy Colin to balance his laconic slow burn, so does Bedelia need the spark of a Willis to counter her exhausted resignation. Frankly, she's a better fictional match for Bruce Willis than she is for Harrison Ford.

Annette Bening

Before she was Mrs. Real-Life Beatty, Annette Bening was Mrs. Fictional Ford in Regarding Henry, one of the few movies on Ford's CV in which he doesn't play an action hero. Instead, Ford is an amnesiac -- who, before his accident was a bit of a jerk -- trying to piece his life back together, and Bening his long-suffering wife. Henry was the victim of market confusion, as a result of being released awfully close to The Doctor, in which William Hurt plays a cancer victim -- who, before being diagnosed with the disease was a bit of a jerk -- trying to come to terms with his own mortality. Bening, who was not well known back then, was probably frequently confused with Doctor star Elizabeth Perkins. Of course, Elizabeth Perkins didn't marry someone who's ever received a Thalberg award; people now know Bening as something other than just another notch on Ford's fictional wedding ring.