“It was impossible to see him act”: the actor Harrison Ford called “remarkable”
Having been a permanent fixture of the Hollywood A-list for almost 50 years, there are now at least two generations of actors who have fantasised about emulating the career of Harrison Ford.
While he’s never been known as one of the greatest actors of his era in the conventional sense, there aren’t many people in the history of Tinseltown to have gained stardom and then maintained it for anywhere near as long as the former carpenter has.
A solitary Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’ in Peter Weir’s riveting dramatic thriller Witness hardly tells the story of an incredible life in front of the camera that stretches from American Graffiti, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now to The Fugitive, Air Force One, and Blade Runner via the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, with Ford remaining as popular as ever even into his 80s.
It was a level of fame and a period of longevity he could have never imagined in a time when acting wasn’t even his full-time occupation, but based on the film he named as being among his favourites and the actor who won an Oscar for playing the lead role, it’s clear where Ford’s stoic everyman qualities and the moral compass his most memorable characters have carried were at least partially derived from.
“If I had to pick just one film to which I had a very strong reaction and can remember vividly how I felt, it would be To Kill a Mockingbird,” he explained to the American Film Institute. “I think it had all of the elements of a great film. And it had such a strong moral register. I think that’s why I would say it’s very nearly my favourite film.”
Gregory Peck was already one of the biggest names and most respected talents of the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood long before Robert Mulligan’s adaptation of the Harper Lee novel was even released, but the classic legal drama saw him deliver arguably the best work of his career as upstanding litigator Atticus Finch, which finally secured him his Oscar at the fifth time of acting.
“I think Peck was remarkable,” Ford said. “It was impossible to see him act, he just didn’t do it. He brought truth and vivid storytelling to the screen but I don’t think he was so much interested in performance as he wan in storytelling. I admired him greatly.”
Ford never got the chance to work with his hero, but they did form a cinematic connection of sorts when he starred opposite Robert Shaw in 1978’s Force 10 from Navarone, which saw the Jaws veteran fill the part of Keith Mallory who was played by Peck in 1961 predecessor The Guns of Navarone.
