The 1993 Harrison Ford movie that the cast struggled to believe in: “I’ll never work again”
In the 1990s, Hollywood was primed to make countless blockbuster films that redefined the modern action film.
The previous decade had set the standard, ambitiously moving cinema forward into wildly commercial territory, with the emerging presence of CGI, and the great blockbusters of the time, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and Star Wars, completely shifted the paradigm, making immersive action-packed storylines the new recipe for success.
Those three films were undoubtedly the biggest of the decade, and two of them featured the same man as the lead. Mr Harrison Ford was suddenly the face of ’80s cinema, and with studios greenlighting whatever action thriller they could into the ‘90s, a lucrative new phase awaited.
Early on in that era, the script for The Fugitive found its way onto Ford’s desk, and it had all the hallmarks of a great new action film: a gripping storyline that followed the protagonist’s pursuit for justice, plenty of car chase sequences and the underlying drama that this entire narrative was, in fact, inspired by a true story.
With Ford on board, there was seemingly nothing to fear about this film. But when filming started, its leading man, along with his supporting actors, all started to develop a stirring feeling of panic that this film might just be a career-ender for them.
Andrew Davis claimed that Tommy Lee Jones “thought this was going to end his career”, a point that Lee Jones himself corroborated, explaining, “I remember being in the giant basement of that hotel, surrounded by hanging bags of laundry”.
“I was standing there speaking out to Harrison’s character. And there was nothing there except big bags of laundry. And I remember thinking in the back of my mind, ‘I’ll never work again. This is never going to work. And the best thing I can do is be as clear, concise, and coherent as possible, deliver these lines as cleanly and dutifully as possible, and maybe I’ll get another job one day, somewhere down the line’.”
While Ford himself never outrightly expressed the same concerns, his castmate Jeb Stuart explained he felt the same, albeit slightly lighter about the whole thing, saying, “I remember laughing about it with Harrison a lot. We didn’t really think we were going to ever work again after this movie”.
Maybe things were slightly different for bona fide Hollywood star Harrison. At that point, he was still riding the wave of his ‘80s success, who would have to have the film become completely disastrous to ruin his career altogether. For the other, more supporting members of the cast, this was their first big break in Hollywood, and it felt as though it was ending just before it began.
But against their better judgment, the film was a success, and not just commercially, but critically too, even managing to please the famed Roger Ebert, who named it one of 1993’s best films. It just goes to show that nobody, not least actors, knows what is truly going to work in art, and the only thing you can control is the act of making it.
