How Harrison Ford chooses his roles: ”I have never been interested in playing heroes”
Despite holding the rare distinction of playing not just one but two of the most iconic heroes in cinema history, Harrison Ford doesn’t want to be remembered as a beacon of heroism despite a large part of his filmography telling the opposite story.
Indiana Jones was a protagonist for the ages before Raiders of the Lost Ark had even finished its opening scene, with his five-film stint as the intrepid archaeologist being complimented by his seminal contributions to sci-fi as the roguish smuggler in George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy and J.J. Abrams’ legacy sequel The Force Awakens.
He went one better than compatriots Alec Baldwin, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine by becoming the only actor to play Jack Ryan in two movies after headlining Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games, while his career has also seen him prove his innocence in The Fugitive, take down terrorists as an ass-kicking president in Air Force One, and brave the elements with a faithful canine companion in The Call of the Wild.
Those are all very heroic roles, but that’s not what drew him to those parts in the first place. Not that villainy has ever been at the forefront of his thinking, either, with Ford very rarely breaking bad on-screen as an outright antagonist. Still, even though his back catalogue of credits and legacy would suggest otherwise, the star explained to The Gainesville Sun why he’d never dream of calling himself a performer drawn to blatant bouts of derring-do.
“I have never been interested in playing heroes,” he maintained. “I’ve certainly never been interested in playing a character that didn’t have a degree of complication, which I’ve always tried to bring even when they were meant to be, finally, heroic. I think that’s much more interesting than playing the sort of unvarnished hero.”
It’s a fair point, really, with casting directors and filmmakers tending to throw heroic parts at his feet, but the ones he has played have been more than empty vessels. Han Solo is a cynic, Indy became increasingly vulnerable as his adventures progressed, Richard Kimble was framed for a murder he didn’t commit, his Jack Ryan sought to protect his family and country at all costs, and White House incumbent James Marshall served much the same function.
On the other side of the coin, it’s clear that Ford doesn’t seem to find the villainous parts he’s been offered as being particularly enticing. After all, Robert Zemeckis’ supernatural psychological thriller What Lies Beneath is the only time he’s dived headlong into the dark side, which is just one film in a career that stretches back to the late 1960s.
Some actors prefer playing bad guys because, more often than not, it can be the juicier part, but clearly, that hasn’t been part of Ford’s thinking. Just don’t call him a hero.
