Ron Howard’s miserable time being bullied by Harrison Ford: “More bottles came flying in my direction”
For as long as he’s been famous, which is a very long time, Harrison Ford has always come across as a stand-up kind of guy. Sure, he’s been growing increasingly curmudgeonly with age, but he’s entitled to feel that way when he’s always made it clear that being a movie star is his least favourite part of the job.
Of course, playing Han Solo in Star Wars wasn’t his first acting gig, and it turns out that Ford made life a misery for another performer who’d quickly be welcomed into George Lucas’ inner circle. Ron Howard goes way back with the plaid-wearing creator of a galaxy far, far away, and he walked right into a hazing he never asked for the first time they worked together.
Admittedly, it was all worth it in the end when the triumvirate of Lucas, Ford, and Howard all played their parts in making American Graffiti the most profitable release in cinema history when it hit cinemas in August 1973. The nostalgic coming-of-age drama would go on to earn five Academy Award nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
The ensemble cast was comprised largely of unknowns and inexperienced actors, which made Howard the veteran by default. He may not have been the oldest member of the ensemble, but because he’d risen to fame as a child in The Andy Griffith Show‘s Opie Taylor and notched dozens of film and television credits, he was the most experienced by far.
Unfortunately, some of his older co-stars, including Ford, used that name recognition against him. Howard had recently purchased a new car, and during production, his expensive purchase was parked perilously close to where Ford and Paul le Mat were sinking beers and then launching the empty bottles out of the window to laugh uproariously as they exploded in the parking lot.
“‘Harrison, Paul’, I said, ‘You can have your fun, but I have to go downstairs and move my car. Can you hold your fire while I do that?” Howard recalled to the Sydney Morning Herald. “As soon as I got to the parking lot, a bottle exploded at my feet. Harrison and Paul poked their heads out of the window. ‘Dance, Opie, dance!’ Paul shouted. Then more bottles came flying in my direction, accompanied by the sounds of nefarious cackling from above.”
On the plus side, Howard “somehow managed to pull away in my car before they did any damage.” Not only that, but he did describe the incident as “the only Opie-shaming that I experienced” during the shooting of American Graffiti, but nobody really wants to be in the position where their peers are launching glass bottles in their direction regardless of whether it was a one-time thing or not.
By the early 1970s, Howard had become accustomed to the ghost of Opie following him around wherever he went, not that he would have assumed a future superstar like Ford would take such great pleasure in lobbing beer bottles at him.
