The 1980s movie icon Harrison Ford couldn’t stand: “I called him an ugly little fuck”
Few actors ruled the 1980s like Harrison Ford, and there may well have been some lingering resentment behind his scathing comments on one of the decade’s most notable cinematic icons.
From the outside looking in, the actor didn’t have much competition to define the era. After all, he made two Star Wars sequels, an Indiana Jones trilogy, gave an Academy Award-nominated performance in Witness, anchored Blade Runner, and lent stellar support in Working Girl, which isn’t a bad ten-year stretch.
Admittedly, there were plenty of names competing for the spot, with Jack Nicholson continuing to win as much acclaim for his work in front of the cameras as he did for his antics away from them, while Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone cornered the market on vascular action heroes, with Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy rising to the top as the faces of the A-list’s next generation.
However, the ’80s-defining pop culture staple who got under Ford’s skin wasn’t an actor. In fact, they weren’t even a person. They weren’t even alive, either, but an animatronic alien who tore the box office a new one, played the title role in the biggest movie in cinema history, and dominated pop culture throughout 1982 and beyond.
Ironically, he almost appeared in Steven Spielberg’s ET the Extra-Terrestrial, which might have had something to do with the grudge. The film, scripted by his then-partner and eventual wife, Melissa Mathison, originally featured Ford as the principal of Elliott Taylor’s school.
He was instrumental in convincing Mathison to write the script in the first place after she was hesitant to accept the job, but because he was Harrison Ford, one of the most famous faces in the industry, Spielberg thought his cameo was too distracting and would take the focus away from the story, so he was left on the cutting room floor.
Had he stayed in the theatrical cut of ET, Ford would have become the first actor to star in two separate movies that became the highest-grossing releases of all time, but even if he’d stayed in, he wouldn’t have been sharing any scenes with the titular critter, which was just as well, from the sound of things.
Around the time of its big-screen bow, the erstwhile Han Solo was pressed for his personal thoughts on the crinkled visitor from another planet, and he wasn’t in the mood for holding back. “Two weekends ago, I called him an ugly little fuck,” Ford divulged. “And Steven went apeshit!”
An understandable response from Spielberg, since ET is his most personal picture and the one he’s always cherished the most, so you can see why he didn’t react too kindly to Ford calling the loveable little guy an ugly little fuck, but he’s never been one to do anything other than shoot from the hip.
