The Disney movie that “scared the shit” out of Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford is one of Hollywood’s last few remaining megastars. He’s that very special sort of actor who you can whack on a poster and guarantee bums on seats. Famous for portraying characters that have become cultural icons like Han Solo and Indiana Jones, Ford’s likeness is as ubiquitous as the Michelin Man or Ronald McDonald, only ruggedly handsome.
However, Ford needed to learn to walk before he could run. After playing minor parts throughout the 1960s, he got his big break in 1973 when George Lucas cast him as the lead in American Graffiti. It was the first time that Ford felt listened to by a director on set. Four years later, both the director and actor would be propelled into superstardom with the surprise box office smash of Star Wars: A New Hope.
At 83, Ford remains an active actor. In 2023, he starred in Shrinking, a heartfelt Apple TV+ comedy series where he portrays a therapist coping with an early Parkinson’s diagnosis. This role highlights a more tender aspect of Ford’s acting without losing his trademark grit and is one of the few departures from the ‘leading man’ roles that defined his career in the 1980s.
With a career that has spanned over six decades, Ford doesn’t just talk the talk. Offscreen, he has lived an exhilarating life not too dissimilar from his onscreen characters. In 2015, the action nearly caught up with him when he almost died in a plane crash. Of course, he was the pilot, and of course, it wasn’t his fault. In an interview with GQ, he set the record straight about the incident: “I didn’t crash. The fucking plane crashed!” Ford’s two-seater vintage plane clearly did not have the security features of the Millennium Falcon.
In addition to being a pilot, Ford is also a professional carpenter. Early into his acting career, he taught himself woodwork to give himself an extra source of income to support his wife and children. It may not come as a total surprise, then, that Ford did not have his heart set on becoming a movie star from a young age. He wasn’t a theatre kid, nor would he bunk school to sneak off to the movies.
He told GQ: “The dirty little secret is that I never went to the movies. I didn’t have any idols. I didn’t identify with any heroes or movie stars. I think people find this slightly offensive, but it’s just the facts.” Hollywood is an industry where the perception is that everyone is there because they simply love filmmaking. In many cases, that’s true, but Ford’s story is different.
Unlike the young fictionalised Steven Spielberg, whose eyes were lit up by the silver screen in his semi-autobiographical love letter to cinema, The Fabelmans, Ford has bad memories of going to one particular Sunday matinee as a child: “My parents took me to see Bambi, and it scared the shit out of me. I don’t have heroes.”
The great irony is that for most cinephiles and budding filmmakers, Ford is about as big a hero as they come. So, it seems funny that a film as twee as Walt Disney’s classic Bambi, albeit somewhat dark, would have the effect of putting him off cinema as a child. He certainly didn’t have posters of Marlon Brando or James Dean on his bedroom walls. But could you really imagine a young Harrison Ford idolising anyone? It seems that he’s far too cool for that, and that’s a huge part of his appeal.
