Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is an American actor, perhaps best known for playing charismatic rogues in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film franchises.
Ford was born in Chicago and was raised in the city’s suburbs. After attending Ripon College in Wisconsin, he took minor acting roles in movies and television for Columbia and Universal studios but soon fell back on a sideline career in carpentry. His film career began in earnest with a bit part in the successful American Graffiti (1973), the first major work of director George Lucas. The movie was produced by Francis Ford Coppola, who later directed Ford in The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979).
Ford achieved real success as the opportunistic Han Solo in Lucas’s Star Wars (1977). The space-fantasy film became one of the highest-grossing motion pictures of all time. Ford’s fame was cemented with the Star Wars sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) and with the Indiana Jones series, in which he starred as an adventurer-archaeologist. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and its sequels Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) were produced by Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. They featured Ford as a swashbuckling 1930s action hero whose larger-than-life qualities were tempered with a charming vulnerability.
Ford expanded his repertoire in a series of movies that notably included the science-fiction classic Blade Runner (1982), which was directed by Ridley Scott; Peter Weir’s drama The Mosquito Coast (1986), about an inventor who moves to Central America; Frantic (1988), Roman Polanski’s thriller about a man searching for his wife; and Mike Nichols’s comedy Working Girl (1988), which also starred Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver. Ford reteamed with Weir for Witness (1985), and his performance as an urban homicide detective hiding out in an Amish community earned Ford an Academy Award nomination for best actor.
In the 1990s Ford accepted dramatic leading roles in Presumed Innocent (1990) and Regarding Henry (1991) and returned to romantic comedy with Sabrina (1995), but his fame rested with action-adventure movies. He portrayed CIA agent Jack Ryan in two popular films adapted from Tom Clancy novels—Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). In The Fugitive (1993), a film based on the 1960s television show, he portrayed the wrongly convicted Dr. Richard Kimble.
Subsequent films did not reach the blockbuster level of his previous works, but Ford enjoyed success with the summer hit Air Force One (1997) and the supernatural thriller What Lies Beneath (2000). Along with Lucas and Spielberg, Ford revived the dormant Indiana Jones franchise with a fourth installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). He followed it with roles in the drama Extraordinary Measures (2010), the comedy Morning Glory (2010), the science-fiction western Cowboys & Aliens (2011), and the corporate thriller Paranoia (2013). In the inspirational 42 (2013), about the life of Jackie Robinson, Ford portrayed the pioneering baseball executive Branch Rickey. In Ender’s Game (2013), an adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel of the same name, Ford played a military officer tasked with training adolescents to battle aliens.
After appearing in the action thriller The Expendables 3 (2014), Ford reprised his role as Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). He then starred in Blade Runner 2049 (2017), a sequel to the 1982 classic. Ford later lent his voice to the animated comedy The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019) and appeared in The Call of the Wild (2020), which was based on Jack London’s classic novel. He then costarred with Helen Mirren in the TV series 1923 (2022– ), a prequel to the hugely popular Yellowstone. It was Ford’s first major television role, and he portrayed the patriarch of a ranching family in Montana. He next appeared in the series Shrinking (2023– ), a dramedy that centres on a trio of therapists who are facing various issues; Ford’s character has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson disease.
Star Wars, space opera storytelling universe (created by George Lucas) that is one of the most successful and influential multimedia franchises in entertainment history. Begun in the 1970s and ’80s and resuscitated at the turn of the 21st century, Star Wars continually advanced the field of motion-picture special effects and developed into an enormously lucrative merchandising industry.
