The one type of acting Harrison Ford deliberately avoided to remain “orthodox and pure”
You might think that Hollywood stars don’t ever have to worry about making money, but the film industry is hardly a stable place.
Think of all the once-successful stars who have gone bankrupt, either from their own doing (I’m looking at you, Gary Busey) or those who just seem to struggle to find the right opportunities.
So, what do you do when you need to make some quick cash? You do an advertisement, of course. For legendary actor Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones himself, commercials are something he once claimed he’d never stoop to, considering them far below his level of experience. That’s not something he can say he has stuck to, however.
Many actors give themselves over to the capitalistic world of advertising, often rather shamelessly. Look at Jamie Foxx promoting BetMGM Casino or Ray Winstone appearing in adverts for Bet365. While regulations have since been put on celebrities advertising gambling, it’s still sad to see how many actors would leap at the opportunity to promote harmful products for their own personal, monetary gain.
Of course, not every celebrity chooses to promote something problematic, but surely they don’t want to become known for being the ‘advert guy’, as is the case with Kevin Bacon and EE (which has somehow made him a bit of a British cultural icon) and George Clooney and Nespresso? If you’ve got the acting chops, why turn to advertising a mobile network operator for a country you’re not even from? I need answers, Mr Bacon.
Ford was initially keen to avoid doing adverts, which his former roommate, Bill Haljum, learned when he offered him a job in a commercial in the hopes of getting his friend some extra money and some greater exposure. He flat-out refused, knowing that this could be a slippery slope to go down that might take him far away from his preferred destination: Hollywood stardom.
In the book Harrison Ford: Imperfect Hero by Garry Jenkins, Haljum explained, “I was working on a mouthwash brand at Leo Burnett and we were shooting commercials. A couple of them Harry would have been terrific for. So I tracked him down and called him up and said, ‘Hey, come on out. You’ll make some money. You’ve only done these little TV shows’.”
He continued, “That’s when I found out how serious he was. He said, ‘No, they won’t take me seriously if I do commercials. I have got to stay orthodox and pure and only do acting stuff’. So he never showed up for them.”
Now that Ford is a star, it seems like he’s not as worried about ruining his image with commercials, although maybe he should be. In 2019, he appeared in a Super Bowl advert for Amazon, in which he gets into some ‘humorous’ scrapes with his dog, who wears a collar powered by everyone’s favourite robot assistant, Alexa (sorry, Siri), while he has more recently starred in Jeep commercials.
Clearly, advertising for massive conglomerates and capitalist pigs means nothing to Ford, because now that he’s famous, he’ll happily sell out, no longer worried about being “pure”.
