How Harrison Ford’s career almost ended before it began
Harrison Ford is a titan of blockbuster cinema and an absolute charisma machine who dominates every scene he’s in. Although he’s been appearing in fewer films during the 21st century, his ability to command the screen remains undiminished. He has reprised three of his most iconic roles in recent years – Indiana Jones, Han Solo and Deckard – and he’s proven just as great to watch as ever.
But, believe it or not, the career of one of Hollywood’s great superstars almost ended before it began. When Ford first moved to California, he signed up with Columbia Pictures, playing various uncredited extra roles and bit parts.
One of these roles was in 1966’s Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, in which he played a bellhop. Jerry Tokofsky, the head of talent at Columbia Pictures, was uncomplimentary towards Ford and felt he had no future in the acting world. He summoned Ford to his office and told him: “I want to tell you a story kid… first time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie, he delivered a bag of groceries, a bag of groceries, kid. And you took one look at that guy, and you knew that was a movie star.”
Ford, irritated, replied, “Well I thought I was supposed to be a bellboy!” Tokofsky angrily told him to go off and learn to act, and Ford was at the bottom of the hiring list for bit roles after that. This wasn’t the first time people in the industry underestimated Ford either.
On another occasion, he was cast as the lead of the 1969 film Model Shop, but the head of Columbia Pictures thought Ford had no future in the film industry, and he was replaced. Nonetheless, Ford took something positive away from this: the film’s director, Jacques Demy, had faith in him.
Ford deserves so much praise because even after all these rejections, he never gave up. Ford kept working steadily into the 1970s, doing small roles and also working as a carpenter to support his young family. In fact, he started doing carpentry for one Francis Ford Coppola in the early 1970s, which led to the director giving him small roles in The Conversation and Apocalypse Now.
Ford also became good friends with casting director Fred Roos, partly through doing carpentry work for him, and Roos soon introduced him to George Lucas. The rest, as they say, is history. Those predictions that Ford would never amount to anything certainly aged like milk.
