Harrison Ford Biography

Actor

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Harrison Ford starred in two of the biggest box office successes of the 20th century: as Han Solo in George Lucas's Star Wars series and as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, directed by Steven Spielberg) and its three sequels. He also starred with Ron Howard in American Graffiti (1973), appeared in the Francis Ford Coppola films The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979), and played an android-hunting cop in Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Blade Runner (1982, based on a novel by Philip K. Dick). The remarkable string of hits made him the biggest movie star of his era. (In 1994 the National Association of Theater Owners named him the "Star of the Century.") Ford also played the heroic Jack Ryan in Patriot Games (1992) and A Clear and Present Danger (1994), action films based on novels by Tom Clancy. Although he has never won an Oscar, Ford was nominated for his performance in Witness (1985) and in 2000 was given a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Some of his other films are The Mosquito Coast (1996, with Helen Mirren), Six Days Seven Nights (1998, with Anne Heche), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002, with Liam Neeson), Hollywood Homicide (2003, co-starring Josh Hartnett), and Firewall (2006, with Virginia Madsen).

Extra credit: Ford's first marriage to Mary Marquardt ended in divorce in 1979. He married Melissa Mathison, the co-writer of Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, in 1983; the couple divorced in 2004. Ford has since been romantically linked with actress Calista Flockhart... The role of Jack Ryan was played by Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October (1990), the first film in the Clancy series; Ben Affleck took over the role from Ford for The Sum of All Fears (2002).

Harrison Ford joins Darth Vader and Natalie Portman in our loop on Star Wars.

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