Harrison Ford was born on 13th July, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois (USA) and just celebrated his 78th birthday. He began his acting career in 1966 (54 years ago) and is best known in film industry as an action adventure hero. Ford openly admits he only took drama courses during his junior year of college in order to meet women. Much of Harrison Ford’s success has been attributed to his ability to make connections.
Early in his career, he was befriended by a director/producer named Steven Spielberg and later, by another, Francis Ford Coppola. With friends like these willing to put you in their films, you have to have talent. Oddly, he met both while doing carpentry work at their respective homes. Talented with a hammer and with a grin the camera loved, his film career began with a hit (American Grafitti in 1973) and the hits, for Ford, just kept coming.
Career Highlights
He started down that path with his swaggering portrayal of Hans Solo in the 1970s epic “Star Wars” trilogy. Unlike his co-stars, Ford went on to land the kinds of roles that allowed him to leave Hans behind. The role he is best known for is, the intrepid archaeologist, Indiana Jones. He is ranked amongst Empire’s Top 100 Film Stars and Ford’s films have, thus far, earned accumulative worldwide gross income of over six billion dollars.
Even superstars like Ford have down times. He went through a series of depressingly bad movies from 1998 – 2006 (Six Days/Seven Nights, Random Hearts, Hollywood Homicide, etc.). This led many to believe that he had used up his star power. But he came back with a sleeper hit in the film “What Lies Beneath” in 2000.
He followed that with a few better received films and a comeback as Indiana Jones in the fourth movie in that series, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. With the release of Extraordinary Measures in 2010 and still more work on tap, Ford shows no sign of being ready to retire. While Harrison Ford’s work has earned almost unbelievable sums of money at the box office, his fortune in the award market is less.
He did win the Saturn Award for Best Actor for his role in “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark”. He also managed People’s Choice Awards for Favourite Motion Picture Actor in 1998 for “Six Days/Seven Nights”, and for Favourite Movie Star for “Random Hearts” in 1999. He has received several nominations for major awards including Academy Awards, BAFTA, Golden Globes, etc.
Top Ten Movies of Harrison Ford:
- Star Wars
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
- Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
- Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- The Fugitive
- The Call of the Wild
- Clear and Present Danger
