The role that cost Harrison Ford several of his teeth: “Six months later they started to fall out”
Harrison Ford has played some of the most iconic heroes over the years, from the all-guns-blazing Indiana Jones to the eternal charm of Han Solo as he crushes the heart of Princess Leia in an effortlessly devastating way. As well as this, he’s worked with directors such as Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola and Agnes Varda with supporting roles in some of their most prolific films.
But in all his years of action-packed dramas, with extensive stunts and choreography, as he slides under boulders and fights his way through evil forces, you can only imagine the number of injuries the actor has sustained, with Ford describing one shoot that led to some painful dental work. After a little time working in the industry, Ford quickly came to be regarded as a cinematic icon, with his characters becoming ingrained within the cultural zeitgeist.
But the actor found his way to the top through a number of smaller roles, with non-speaking parts in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point and small parts in television shows such as Ironside, The Virginian and Love, American Style. But it was his work on Gunsmoke that proved to be most detrimental to his health.
Gunsmoke was a Western television show that ran for over 20 seasons from 1955, following a Marshal called Matt Dillon who lived in the Wild West and protected his town. Actors such as James Arness, Dennis Weaver and Ken Curtis starred in the show, but Ford didn’t make an appearance until 1973.
Ford played Hobey in the show, and he doesn’t have the most painless memories of this performance after one particular one in which he broke many of his teeth. During the scene, his character was shot and then slumped against the wall and fell to the ground. However, his gun then bounced up and knocked out his teeth.
Ford described the strange dental treatment that he was given, saying, “They sent me to their [the studio] company dentist, who put in these teeth. Well, not these teeth, because six months later, they started to fall out. And I went to a dentist, and he said, ‘How old are you?; And I said ,’What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘I haven’t seen this work since the nineteenth century.’ So I went back to the guy, I tried to find this guy, and his partner said ‘Who? No he’s gone. He’s not in the dentist business anymore.’ So, I had to pay for my own teeth.”
You’d think that the studio would have an endless budget for the accidents and mishaps on set that harmed their precious actors, but unfortunately, Ford was not yet a household name, and it seems as if it took a while for his teeth to be fixed.
However, it was perhaps a good learning experience for the actor, becoming accustomed to the pain of stunts that go wrong. The actor later built an entire career on action-packed sequences and violence, and it is a miracle that he wasn’t put off after his nightmare teeth incident.
