“He wished they had made that film”: how Harrison Ford made up for missing out on ‘Big’
Unless somebody is the Hollywood equivalent of a clairvoyant, no actor or filmmaker can tell from reading a script that a role is a guaranteed star-maker. Harrison Ford had already been a household name for a decade when Big was released, but he still regretted missing out.
He even had an inside man at the start, with Steven Spielberg the first director attached. However, with his sister, Anne, co-writing the screenplay alongside future Pleasantville and Seabiscuit helmer Gary Ross, Ford’s Indiana Jones collaborator dropped out because he didn’t want to take all the credit if the picture became a success, which it did.
Until Hanks was drafted in, the script was offered to several bigger names, including Robert De Niro and Kevin Costner, while John Travolta desperately wanted to play Josh Baskin. In the end, Big became its leading man’s coming-out party, transforming him from a promising comedy performer into a genuine star.
Penny Marshall’s fantasy caper earned over $150million at the box office, earned Hanks his first Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’, and won him a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’. It was the breakthrough he’d been waiting for, and from the sound of things, it left Ford feeling more than a little jealous that he hadn’t been the one to wake up as a kid trapped in an adult’s body.
Two years later, Ford signed on to reunite with his Working Girl director, Mike Nichols, in Regarding Henry. What does that have to do with Big? At first glance, nothing, but screenwriter JJ Abrams had the sneaking suspicion that part of what drew the duo to his sophomore script was that it allowed them the opportunity to tick some vaguely similar boxes to Marshall and Hanks’ blockbuster.
The overly sentimental slog follows Ford’s high-flying lawyer, who suffers from retrograde amnesia after being shot in the head during a convenience store robbery, forcing him to relearn how to move and speak, as well as learning some important lessons about life, love, and family along the way.
Again, it’s not very Big-like, but Abrams remained convinced that Nichols and Ford made Regarding Henry because they regretted not partnering up sooner on the body-swapping comedy. “He and Harrison wished they had made that film,” the eventual Mission: Impossible and Star Wars director suggested. “Well, here was another film about a man’s body that was essentially filled with a child.”
That’s a pretty crude way of putting it, but since he wrote the thing, Abrams can describe Regarding Henry however he wants. Couldn’t the actor have just used his star power and lobbied Marshall or the studio to hire him for Big, knowing his name would at the very least guarantee an audience? Seeing as she told The Washington Post in June 1988 that “Harrison Ford isn’t considered a laugh riot,” probably not.
The Star Wars icon isn’t the type of actor to admit that he regretted missing out on Big so much that he made Regarding Henry instead as a substitute, but Abrams was up close and personal with the production and came to that conclusion, even if the movies aren’t two peas in a filmic pod.
