The only actors who intimidated Harrison Ford: “Tennyson Ford. Ellison? No!”
The idea of Harrison Ford, of all people, being intimidated by another actor sounds vaguely absurd. After all, Ford is a Hollywood icon who has been at the top of the business for five decades, and during that time, he has developed a reputation as someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. If anything, fellow actors should be intimidated by him. In this case, though, both things are true. Yes, Ford has intimidated plenty of his co-stars over the years, but he has also experienced that uncomfortable feeling a couple of times himself.
It all begs the question: Which stars had presences big enough to make Ford feel nervous?
Before getting to the stars who’ve made Ford break a sweat, it’s worth mentioning the ones he’s intimidated himself. Most recently, Anthony Mackie, who stars alongside Ford in Captain America: Brave New World, admitted he was so nervous on set that his mind went blank. “The first day was so intimidating,” Mackie told Inverse. “I was so fucking nervous I couldn’t remember my lines. He’s Harrison fucking Ford. There is this aura about him.”
To his credit, though, Mackie revealed that Ford knows his star status and overall demeanour can have that effect on people, so he works hard to poke holes in it. “He dispels that really quickly because he’s such a cool guy,” Mackie said. “He’s everything a movie star should be. He would say, ‘Let’s shoot this piece of shit.’ And everybody was like, ‘Yeah, let’s shoot this shit.'”
Jason Segel confessed that he felt the same butterflies when he started working with Ford on AppleTV’s Shrinking, even though he was technically meant to be the star of the show. “Well, to be totally honest, Harrison is a pretty intimidating presence,” Segel chuckled to Collider. “This guy you’ve idolised forever shows up on set and you’re acting with him, your initial thought actually isn’t, ‘God, I’d love to hang out with this guy.’ It’s more, ‘I hope that I’m pleasing to him.’ I felt awe.”
It isn’t just the generation of young male actors who grew up watching Ford as Indiana Jones and Han Solo that are intimidated by him, though. Helen Mirren, who first worked with Ford in 1986’s The Mosquito Coast, confessed she was “very intimidated” because “he was a huge movie star and I was like nobody”. Despite her claim that she was a newbie, Mirren had made 20 movies by that point, including Caligula, The Long Good Friday, and Excalibur – yet Ford still reduced her to a puddle of nerves.
In truth, though, Mackie, Segel, and Mirren would probably be relieved to hear that the shoe has been on the other foot a couple of times over the years. When Jimmy Kimmel asked Ford if he’d ever felt intimidated by a co-star, he replied, “Well, Alec Guinness. Sean Connery.” Amusingly, he said they didn’t attempt to put him at ease, either.
Indeed, while Ford revealed that he eventually developed a strong bond with both men as they worked on Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, those first few days and weeks were nerve-racking. Off-set, he said Guinness helped him find a flat in London when he first arrived to shoot the movie. Still, unearthed letters Guinness wrote to his friend Anne Kauffman reveal he didn’t exactly think much of the skinny young American actor he was tasked with acting alongside. In fact, he couldn’t even remember his name!
In one letter, Guinness wrote about needing to head back to set to work with “Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can’t be right) Ford. Ellison? No”. He then dubbed Ford “a rangy, languid man who is probably intelligent and amusing,” which is undeniably hilarious.
Thankfully, Ford’s relationship with Connery had a much happier outcome, as they struck up a firm friendship after the initial intimidation factor wore off. “It was just really great to work with an actor who doesn’t give a shit,” Ford marvelled. “I don’t mean about the craft, but about his ego. We just clicked.”
