The ultimatum Guy Hamilton gave Harrison Ford during dinner: “Going to send you home”
It’s been a long time since Harrison Ford has felt like his job on a movie was under threat, with Star Wars turning him into an overnight sensation in 1977 before Raiders of the Lost Ark cemented his place on the A-list for years later.
However, he was far from the made man he would become between those two points. Before his breakthrough performance in George Lucas’ sci-fi spectacular, Ford was just one of many jobbing actors trying to wedge their foot in Hollywood’s door, although his roles in ‘Best Picture’ nominees American Graffiti and The Conversation helped gain some early attention.
The most difficult part of his period by far was in the immediate aftermath of Star Wars, though, where the actor could either succumb to typecasting or try and branch out. He opted to do the latter, even if his first picture post-Han Solo saw him star in the sequel to a hit movie that was missing most of its original cast.
1961’s The Guns of Navarone drafted in Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, and more for a rousing World War II adventure, but it was hardly crying out for a second chapter. Still, almost two decades later, the decision was made to mount Force 10 from Navarone, which served as Ford’s first wide release since Star Wars.
Evidently, his name wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to draw in a crowd despite his prominent positioning in the highest-grossing film ever made because the follow-up flopped at the box office after failing to recoup even a third of its production budget. It wasn’t the best way to capitalise on his nascent stardom, even if Ford could have been fired entirely before the end of production.
Director and James Bond veteran Guy Hamilton wanted to make sure the freshly minted star didn’t take things too easy or let his head get too big from Star Wars, so he did what any reasonable filmmaker would do and invited Ford out for a meal expressly to threaten him with his job.
“I call us actors just a trick-talking piece of meat,” he mused to Esquire. “‘Stand there! Say this! Shut the fuck up! I’m the director!’ The guy who directed Force 10 from Navarone invited me to go for dinner the second night. I thought that was really nice. But the first thing he said was, ‘If you don’t start doing something, I’m going to send you home’. I was a trick-talking piece of meat.”
Two days into shooting, Hamilton was convinced that Ford was either a bad actor or he wasn’t trying hard enough, so he issued an ultimatum. Seeing as he wasn’t fired, it clearly worked, even if Force 10 from Navarone was a commercial disaster that didn’t get the actor’s career outside of Star Wars off to the strongest start.
