Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is a BAFTA- and Academy Award-nominated, as well as Golden Globe-winning, American actor.
Biography
Ford was born on Monday, at 11:41 a.m. Central Time in Chicago, Illinois, at the Swedish Covenant Hospital.
His mother, Dorothy, was a homemaker and former radio actress, and his father, Christopher Ford, was an advertising executive and former actor.
Harrison Ford's maternal grandparents, Anna Lifschutz and Harry Nidelman, were Jewish immigrants from Minsk. His paternal grandparents, Florence Veronica Niehaus and John Fitzgerald Ford, were of German and Irish Catholic descent, respectively. When asked in which religion he was raised, Ford jokingly responded, "Democrat"; he has also said that he feels "Irish as a person but I feel Jewish as an actor".
Ford was active in the Boy Scouts of America, in which he achieved its second-highest rank, Life Scout, and worked at a Scout Camp as a Reptile Study merit badge counselor. In 1960, Ford graduated from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. He was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH-FM, and was its first sportscaster during his senior year, 1959–1960. The radio room still bears his graffiti. He attended Ripon College in Wisconsin, where he was a member of the Sigma Nu Fraternity. He took a drama class in his junior year, chiefly as a way to meet women. Ford, a self-described "late bloomer", became fascinated with acting. Toward the end of his college freshman year, he was a member of a folk band called The Brothers Gross, in which he played gutbucket. He did not graduate from Ripon.
In 1964, Ford travelled to Los Angeles, California to pursue a job in radio voice-overs. He did not get the job, but stayed in California, and eventually signed a $150/week contract with Columbia Pictures's New Talent program, playing bit roles in films. His first known speaking part was an uncredited role as a bellhop in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966).
Ford's work as a carpenter would land the actor his biggest role to date. In 1975, director George Lucas used him to read lines for actors being cast for parts in his upcoming space opera, Star Wars. At the reading, Steven Spielberg noticed that Ford was suited for the part of Han Solo and convinced Lucas to give Harrison the role that would eventually propel him to fame. Ford went on to star as Solo in the next two Star Wars sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as well as in The Star Wars Holiday Special. He wanted Lucas to write in the death of the iconic Han Solo character at the end of Return of the Jedi, saying "that would have given the whole film a bottom", but Lucas refused.
Despite being one of the most financially successful actors of his generation, Ford has received just one Oscar nomination, that of Best Actor for Witness. On June 2, 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On October 6, 2006, Ford was awarded the Jules Verne Spirit of Nature Award for his work in nature and wildlife preservation. The ceremony took place at the historic Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California.
Ford's star power has waned in recent years, the result of appearing in numerous critically derided and commercially disappointing movies, including Six Days Seven Nights (1998), Random Hearts (1999), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), Hollywood Homicide (2003), and Firewall (2006). Although 2000's What Lies Beneath ended up grossing over $155 million in the United States and $300 million world-wide.
In 2004, Ford declined a chance to star in the thriller Syriana, later commenting that "I didn't feel strongly enough about the truth of the material and I think I made a mistake." The role eventually went to George Clooney, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his work. Ford also turned down leading roles in the critically acclaimed films Traffic and A History of Violence as well as The Patriot.
Ford is one of Hollywood's most notoriously private actors, zealously guarding his personal life.
Ford has been married twice:
He married Mary Marquardt in 1964, and they divorced in 1979. He had two sons with her, Benjamin (born in 1967) and Willard (born in 1969).
He married again, to Melissa Mathison, screenwriter of The Black Stallion, Kundun, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, on March 14, 1983. They had two children: a son, Malcolm (born on March 10, 1987), and a daughter, Georgia (born on June 30, 1990).
Mathison filed for legal separation on August 23, 2001, and their subsequent divorce in January 2004 has become one of the most expensive in Hollywood history, as she was awarded a share of Ford's residual paychecks.
Ford has since been dating actress Calista Flockhart.
Ford is a private pilot of both planes and helicopters, and owns an 800-acre ranch in Jackson, Wyoming, approximately half of which he has donated as a nature reserve. On several occasions, Ford has personally provided emergency helicopter services at the behest of local authorities, in one instance rescuing a hiker overcome by dehydration. He is the current Chairman of the Experimental Aircraft Association's Young Eagles program, taking over after Chuck Yeager retired. On October 23, 1999, Harrison Ford was involved in the crash of a Bell 206-L4 helicopter (N36R). The NTSB accident report states that Ford was piloting the aircraft over the Lake Piru riverbed near Santa Clarita, California on a routine training flight. When asked about the incident by fellow pilot James Lipton in an interview on the TV show Inside the Actor's Studio Ford replied "I broke it."
He was ranked #1 in Empire magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
As of May 2007, the domestic box office grosses of Ford's films total about US$3.10 billion, with worldwide grosses approaching $6 billion, making Ford the No. 3 domestic box-office star behind Eddie Murphy and Tom Hanks.
