The first Harrison Ford movie he could actually bear watching: “I’m happy”
It’s not surprising that some actors hate watching themselves on screen. It’s one thing acting, but another thing entirely to have to sit back and analyse every frame – how you look, if you’ve performed to the best of your ability. Even the most acclaimed actors can’t do it.
Look at Emma Stone, for example. One of her biggest breakthroughs came when she starred in Easy A in 2010, but talking to Timothée Chalamet for Variety’s ‘Actors on Actors’, she revealed, “I went to a friend’s and family screening to see it, and I had to get up and walk out. Who wants to watch themselves for that long?”
From Reese Witherspoon to Jesse Eisenberg, Johnny Depp to Joaquin Phoenix, plenty of actors refuse to watch their movies, having only seen a select few, if any. But how can you improve your skills if you don’t know what your performances even look like? And what about simply enjoying the movie you put all that effort into? Look at Winona Ryder – she’ll watch Heathers every time it’s on TV.
For Harrison Ford, it took a while for him to be comfortable with watching himself on screen, but he finally found a sense of acceptance within himself as an actor when he watched back a certain smash hit.
The actor had spent the 1960s appearing in minor uncredited movie roles as he attempted to cut his teeth in the industry, but soon he gained the opportunity to appear in some more sizable parts, winding up in American Graffiti and The Conversation... Of course, it was 1977’s Star Wars that proved to be the key to his success – reuniting with George Lucas, he found himself playing Han Solo alongside the likes of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.
Calling it a big hit feels like an understatement – Star Wars was a mammoth cinematic phenomenon that changed everything for Hollywood… In a way, you can measure everything that has happened in the industry as pre and post-Star Wars, the blockbuster paving the way for huge franchises with massive special effects budgets. It was utterly consuming – a whole new fantastical world was laid out for children and adults alike to marvel at, and without it, who knows what modern cinema would look like?
But it wasn’t actually the first instalment in the Star Wars series that Ford didn’t mind watching. Rather, it wasn’t until he appeared in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, the direct sequel to Lucas’ blockbuster, that he felt comfortable seeing himself on screen.
Telling Rolling Stone that he hates watching himself on screen, he called The Empire Strikes Back “the first time I’ve ever seen anything I’ve done that I’m happy with”. Since then, Ford has appeared in many great movies, from Blade Runner to the Indiana Jones franchise – and that’s just scraping the surface, really – so I’m sure he can admit to liking a few other performances in his career besides the second (or fifth, if you want to be technical) Star Wars movie.
In fact, he has admitted to loving Blade Runner 2049, so clearly he managed to get past the barrier of watching himself on screen to see how well Denis Villeneuve tackled the long-awaited sequel.
