Harrison Ford’s recurring habit of angering international governments: “If necessary, we will deport him”
Ideally, no actor wants to be at the heart of an international incident. That said, Harrison Ford has become embroiled in several, in one way or another, adding a curious footnote to one of modern Hollywood’s most indelible legacies.
For the last three decades, Ford has been persona non grata in China. He’s still a well-known celebrity in the country, and people clearly have no issues showing up to his movies, based on how well Star Wars: The Force Awakens performed in 2015, but he wouldn’t be allowed past the borders to promote it – or any of his other roles – even if he wanted to.
It’s all to do with a production he was only tangentially involved in, too, with Ford’s then-wife Melissa Mathison penning the screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s Kundun. She was a supporter of Tibetan independence, Ford was friendly with the Dalai Lama, he testified in front of the United States Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee in 1995, and he hasn’t been welcome in China since.
Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was ultimately banned after the local government vehemently opposed the script’s content and denied permission to shoot in India, so it wasn’t as if Ford didn’t have previous for ruffling governmental feathers when attaching himself to movies helmed by an icon of the ‘New Hollywood’ era.
Still, he waded into choppy political waters once again in 2013 when his passion for environmentalism caught the attention of those in Indonesia’s corridors of power. In the country filming climate change docuseries Years of Living Dangerously, the actor scored an interview with the forestry minister and was promptly accused of political harassment for his combative line of questioning.
He even got a chance to speak to then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, only for the leader to quickly change his tune on how welcoming he was going to be. “There’s no privilege for him, although he is a great actor,” said the leader’s official spokesman. “His crew and those who were helping him in Indonesia must be questioned to find out their motives for harassing a state institution.”
Signing off with a final flourish, Indonesia’s official stance was, “If necessary, we will deport him.” A lot of people would be beside themselves with glee to get some one-on-one time with a star of Ford’s magnitude, calibre, standing, and reputation unless, of course, he starts asking about illegal logging operations and what’s being done to stop the devastation of the natural landscape.
As the minister of forestry, perhaps Zulkifli Hasan should have expected Ford to ask about the illicit side of the industry, considering it’s something he was intending to clamp down on. Instead, he was so taken aback that he contemplated deporting the erstwhile Indy and Han Solo from Indonesia to teach him a lesson, not that it would be the first time the actor had been declared an enemy of the state.
