The difficult actor who got on the wrong side of Harrison Ford: “I think I told him he was a fucking idiot”
Even before he evolved into one of Hollywood’s most respected elder statesmen and a living legend of cinema, Harrison Ford was famous for being an actor who refused to take shit from anybody.
He was still largely unknown when he was cast in his breakthrough role as Han Solo in George Lucas’ Star Wars, which did nothing to prevent him from calling out the filmmaker for his screenwriting abilities, famously telling the director of his dialogue that “you can type this shit, George, but you can’t say it.”
When stardom had been secured, and he was firmly embedded as one of the industry’s marquee names, he continued fighting back against decisions he disagreed with. Whether it was continuing his trilogy-long arguments with Lucas over his lines in the Star Wars sequels or becoming so enraged he wanted to murder Ridley Scott on the set of Blade Runner, Ford has never backed down from anyone.
Being relentlessly grumpy has become a key part of his persona, although side effects do include remaining completely unaware that he’d irritated his co-stars, as he discovered when Hollywood Homicide counterpart Josh Hartnett went public with a feud that Ford had no idea he was even a part of.
With that in mind, one of his colleagues openly lambasting a film they’d worked on together would never sit well with the icon, especially when it revolved around a character so close to his heart. Nobody will go out on a limb and call Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a masterpiece, and that sentiment extends to the people who made it.
However, what the leading man couldn’t sanction was Shia LaBeouf not only criticising his own work on the blockbuster sequel but accusing director Steven Spielberg of being just as guilty. “When you drop the ball, you drop the ball,” he said of the filmmaker. “You get to the monkey-swinging and things like that, and you can blame it on the writer, and you can blame it on Steven.”
LaBeouf did accept his own fair share of the blame, but what really rubbed Ford the wrong way was when he dragged his name into it. The former claimed “he wasn’t happy with it either,” leading the latter to issue a strongly worded rebuttal to gently remind his younger co-star not to crap all over something hundreds of people had worked hard on for months, if not years.
“I think I told him he was a fucking idiot,” Ford recalled. “As an actor, I think it’s my obligation to support the film without making a complete ass of myself. Shia is ambitious, attentive, and talented, and he’s learning how to deal with a situation which is very unique and difficult.” Essentially, the fedora-wearing action hero was semi-politely telling LaBeouf to shut the fuck up.
That wouldn’t be the last time he found himself on the wrong end of some negative publicity, so he evidently took Ford’s advice to heart, either.
