Harrison Ford

Did You Know?

• Ford's younger brother Terence was born in 1945.
• Ford has been married three times and has four biological children and one adopted child.

Career

Harrison Ford’s path into acting started in 1964, after a summer with Wisconsin’s Belfry Players, when he headed to Los Angeles and joined Columbia Pictures’ new talent program. His first on-screen appearance was an uncredited bellhop in 1966’s Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round. He managed to rub producer Jerry Tokofsky the wrong way; Tokofsky once told Ford that Tony Curtis could deliver groceries like a star, while Ford couldn’t. Ford shot back that if Curtis were truly talented, he’d have delivered them like a bellhop.

He was fired soon after. In 1970 he met Patricia McQueeney, who later became his agent and manager. Ford had an uncredited speaking part in Luv (1967), then got his first credit as “Harrison J. Ford” in the 1967 Western A Time for Killing. The “J” was made up—he has no middle name—to set him apart from a silent-film actor named Harrison Ford who died in 1957.

Ford didn’t know about that other actor until he spotted a star with his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He soon dropped the “J” and took minor TV roles for Universal, appearing on shows like Gunsmoke, Ironside, The Virginian, The F.B.I., Love, American Style, and Kung Fu. He also acted in the western Journey to Shiloh (1968) and had an uncredited, non-speaking part as a student protester in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970). In 1968 he worked as a camera operator for a Doors tour.

French director Jacques Demy picked Ford for the lead in his first American film, Model Shop (1969), but Columbia’s head said Ford had “no future” and told Demy to hire someone more seasoned; Gary Lockwood got the role. Ford later called it a positive experience because Demy was the first person to show real faith in him.

Aviation

Ford is a licensed pilot of both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. He has provided emergency helicopter services at the request of local authorities in Wyoming, including airlifting an EMT to a dehydrated hiker on Table Mountain in 2000 and being flagged down by a lost 13-year-old Boy Scout near Yellowstone National Park in 2001. Ford began flight training in the 1960s in a Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer at Wild Rose Idlewild Airport in Wisconsin but could not afford the $15 per hour cost.

In the mid-1990s he bought a used Gulfstream II and asked pilot Terry Bender for lessons; they started flying a Cessna 182 Skylane out of Jackson, Wyoming, later switching to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey in a Cessna 206, in which he made his first solo flight. His aircraft are kept at Santa Monica Airport, and his Bell 407 helicopter is often hangered at Jackson and used in two mountain rescues with Teton County Search and Rescue. During one rescue, a lost hiker boarded his helicopter and vomited into a rescuer's cap, unaware of who the pilot was until later.

Ford flies his de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver (registration N28S) more than any other aircraft and has said he likes its Pratt & Whitney R-985 radial engine; the aircraft had been flown in the CIA's Air America operations and was riddled with bullet holes that had to be patched.

Activism

Ford serves as vice-chair of Conservation International, a nonprofit based in Arlington, Virginia, focused on protecting nature. Since 1992, he has recorded public service announcements for EarthShare, a coalition of environmental charities, and has been a spokesperson for Restore Hetch Hetchy, a group working to return Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley to its natural state. He also appears in the documentary series Years of Living Dangerously, which covers climate change impacts and solutions.

In 1993, spider species Calponia harrisonfordi was named after him by arachnologist Norman Platnick, and in 2002, entomologist Edward O. Wilson named ant species Pheidole harrisonfordi for his conservation work; a Peruvian snake, Tachymenoides harrisonfordi, was named for him in 2023. At the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, Ford spoke for Conservation International about Amazon rainforest destruction, urging listeners to step aside for “angry young people” working for change.

In 2025, the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation awarded him its first E.O. Wilson Legacy Award for Transformative Conservation Leadership.

Acting credits and accolades

Ford was nominated for Best Actor at the 58th Academy Awards for Witness (1985), a role that also earned him BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. He received three additional Golden Globe nominations for The Mosquito Coast (1987), The Fugitive (1994) and Sabrina (1996). In 2000 the American Film Institute gave him the AFI Life Achievement Award, presented by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. He received the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the 59th Golden Globe Awards in 2002.

On May 30, 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2006 he received the Jules Verne Award for encouraging the spirit of adventure and imagination. He was presented with the first-ever Hero Award at the 2007 Scream Awards for his iconic roles, and in 2008 he received Spike TV's Guy's Choice Award for "Brass Balls". In 2015 he received the Albert R. Broccoli Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Entertainment from BAFTA Los Angeles. In 2018 the SAG-AFTRA Foundation honored him with the Artists Inspiration Award alongside Lady Gaga.