Harrison Ford Quotes

Acting was a way out at first. A way out of not knowing what to do, a way of focusing ambitions. And the ambition wasn't for fame. The ambition was to do an interesting job.

Harrison Ford may be getting old, but he can fight like a 28 year old man.

As a matter of fact, that was a bit of a problem for me at the beginning of my career - the problem of identification. In The Conversation I played a character who was gay, so nobody recognised me from American Graffiti. When I did Apocalypse Now, after Star Wars, I played an intelligence officer of the American army. George Lucas saw the footage I had done and didn't recognise me until halfway through the scene.

You have to have the darkness for the dawn to come.

I was 35 when I first hit with Star Wars. I had some degree of maturity and some degree of experience, yet physically I still looked young. That had been an impediment early on in my career, but then it turned out to be an advantage.

I never followed baseball very much. As a kid, I never followed sports.

I enjoyed carpentry, and it was very good to me for 12 years.

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

I don't do celebrity endorsements. My work with Conservation International is a good use of whatever celebrity I might have to draw attention to important problems. I have the same responsibility as everyone to reduce consumption and to teach children to respect the environment.

I believe that the racial injustice which existed such a short time ago probably would have persisted longer if the color barrier had not been broken in baseball.

That's always my ambition is to create a character out of what will help tell the story. I've never been an actor to say my character wouldn't do that, because he should do that in order to help tell the story.

The capacity to create [visual] effects in the computer has made the job easier, but it has also introduced the complexity that you can with a few more keystrokes generate such a busy canvas that the eye doesn't know where to go. You lose human scale on an event and you're just wowed by the kinetics and the visualization. But, often in those cases I feel you lose touch with the human characters and what it is that they would feel and how they might feel, and that's still the most important part.

I've always wanted to be bald. I mean it, completely bald. Wouldn't it be great to be bald in the rain?

What I observed about my fellow actors was that most gave up very easily.

I don't do nostalgia. It just doesn't occur to me. I'm living in the moment, and I don't have that gene.

The job's always the same. It involves helping to tell the story and creating an alloy between character and story that serves the film.

I don't mind doing interviews. I don't mind answering thoughtful questions. But I'm not thrilled about answering questions like, 'If you were being mugged, and you had a lightsaber in one pocket and a whip in the other, which would you use?'

Hard work and a proper frame of mind prepare you for the lucky breaks that come along
or don't.

I was never that much a focus of interest in my career. I'm aware of that now, which doesn't give me a lot of pleasure.

I am my age. I'm not making any effort to change it.

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.

I'm not a poster boy for Conservation International. I'm a working member of the board.

There are a lot of different paths through the jungle, but ... the simplest thing you can do is make yourself useful. Be easy to work with, be a hard worker and help people get the job done. And do it with as much passion and quality as you can.

It doesn't matter to me whether I go back to outer space or not [while acting]. The job's the same and I don't have any sort of genre preferences. I'm looking for a good story and a good character, whether earthbound or not.

There is no child left within me, none whatsoever.

I don't do stunts - I do running, jumping and falling down. After 25 years I know exactly what I'm doing.

I'm still interested in perfecting whatever talents I have and continuing to grow as an actor and continuing to be useful to the telling of the story.

I was desperately unhappy with it [Blade Runner]. I was compelled by contract to record five or six different versions of the narration, each of which was found wanting on a storytelling basis. The final version was something that I was completely unhappy with. The movie obviously has a very strong following, but it could have been more than a cult picture.

There comes a point when you've exhausted your opportunities playing good guys. I've been around long enough, I think I'm entitled to explore a bit. But what I saw there was an opportunity to play a character different from what the audience's expectation was. A chance to take their crude experience of me - of my iconography, if you will - and turn it on its ear at an appropriate juncture in the film to be useful to the process of telling the story.

I had a very strong feeling about the Vietnam War, and I had a strong feeling about participating in it. The military draft was in place, I was summoned for a physical exam, and I was either going to be classified as fit for military service or make my objection to it. So I made my objection to it.

Arabs are dirtier creatures than animals and we Jews are the chosen people, there is no comparison.

Whoever decided that Indiana Jones should wear a felt hat and a leather jacket in the jungles should have been shot.

I saw what luck and success I had as an opportunity to twist it up and do something different, so I've always sought out different genres and different kinds of characters.

You may get real tired watching me, but I'm not going to quit.

I am Irish as a person, but I feel Jewish as an actor.

I think you have to be very careful with effects that they don't overpower the story with the visual element.

I actually like snakes! When I was young, I was a boy scout nature camp counselor, and one of our projects was collecting snakes and creating an environment for them, so I'm quite familiar with snakes and think they're fantastic creatures.

I retire every time I'm done with a movie. Then I go back. You know, I enjoy sleep. But I love to work; it's fun for me. As long as it continues to be fun, and I'm tolerated by the people around me, I will do it.

The basic skill of an actor is, in fact, empathy, and that's maybe not a skill, it's a disposition. I am an assistant storyteller. I enjoy feeling useful to a team effort. It's my way of finding a use for myself, a utility in this world.

I'm addicted to Altoids. I call them 'acting pills.'

I think 'Indiana Jones' was a lot of fun to do because of the places we went to and the adventures and the action. But Han Solo was also a huge part of my life.

I think parenting is a huge responsibility. It was in my time when I was growing up and there still continues to be that responsibility.

If I were a serious person, I'd probably have a real job.

There is no barrier to Indiana Jones growing older. It's not an age-based character. We can't bang him up as much as we used to, maybe. But I guess I can pretend to have the capacity as well as I pretended before.

An actor only has his own understanding and experience to work with.

When I met scientists, I found them to be as various as any other group of people.

I don't think nostalgia is very useful to me. There is a story to be told, there's behaviour to create or to bring to the screen that will help tell that story, and nostalgia is just not really a big part of my emotional package.

I do not go to the gym. I do not train. I am not that careful about what I eat. I cannot give you any advice about keeping fit. The best advice I can give is choose your parents wisely.

The trick of this thing and the beauty of this thing is that it's a cowboy movie first and then stuff happens. Even after stuff happens it doesn't change - it hasn't suddenly changed into another kind of movie. It's still a cowboy movie. And that's what's incredible about it because nobody has done that before, that's new territory.

I was always very grateful I was never hot. In the entire length of my career, I haven't been the most adored.

Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist.

It's important not to base your ambition on anybody else's history, but to figure out how best to use your own particular personality and understanding of yourself to help tell other people's stories.

When we protect the places where the processes of life can flourish, we strengthen not only the future of medicine, agriculture and industry, but also the essential conditions for peace and prosperity.

I get an opportunity to communicate with the audience about the movie that I've made. I get the chance to bring attention to the film that I've made. I care a lot about the movies that I make. I want them to reach an audience, and I want them to be successful. I promote nearly everything that I do, unless I've got some bad taste in my mouth.

I have children. I have other concerns. I have other focuses. I really feel very sympathetic and I would love to be able to help but I don't see this as the opportunity, having done 'Extraordinary measures', for me to suddenly leap on a soap box and begin to talk about the pharmaceutical industry or the desperate plight of sick children. I do what I can in my world but I don't have the bona fides to do that right now.

My work has always been important to me. The reason I continue to do it is because it's so much fun for me. I love my work and so that's what keeps me in the game.

I've always been somewhere down from the top, so I've never had to suffer being knocked off the top.

Everything I do, I'm sort of half in, half out.

It's a privilege to be able to be involved with people as talented as the people I've had the luck to work with, and it's just been a great experience for me, and I'm glad that so many of the films I've had the luck to do were films that could be enjoyed by families together.

I think I did have a reputation for being grumpy. I don't think I'm grumpy. I have opinions. I have an independent vision. I am a purposeful person. But on a daily basis, I think I'm other than grumpy. I think it is a case where I am coming to do business and not there just to be flattered and cajoled and used.

All I would tell people is to hold onto what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You've got to find it on your own terms.

I could take Sean Connery in a fight ... I could definitely take him.

My older kids are fantastic people. It can't be the result of my influence on them.

You get a sense of reference there. You feel part of something that's got order and balance and harmony to it. All the distraction and noise, all the confusion of misplaced, misdirected energy just don't happen there.

To me, success is choice and opportunity.

'Years of Living Dangerously' is a wonderful opportunity to reach a lot of people with the story and importance of climate change in our lives; in recent history, there's no bigger threat to the quality of human life than what is taking place right now in respect of climate change.

I played maybe one and a half games of Little League. The whole atmosphere of anxious parents and more anxious children was just too much for me.

Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.

I had no expectation of the level of adulation that would come my way. I just wanted to make a living with a regular role in a television series.

I think of myself as an assistant storyteller.

Work hard and figure out how to be useful and don't try to imitate anybody else's success. Figure out how to do it for yourself with yourself.

I just don't think of age and time in respect of years. I have too much experience of people in their seventies who are vigorous and useful and people who are thirty-five who are in lousy physical shape and can't think straight. I don't think age has that much to do with it.

You know you're getting old when all the names in your black book have M. D. after them.

Starring in a science-fiction film doesn't mean you have to act science fiction.

I try to preserve a certain amount of time away from the movies, so I don't allow time to do those smaller parts that might give me an opportunity to do more seemingly 'artful' things. Although, having said that, I don't feel any lack of noble purpose if I do a film that's commercial.

I found out that drama was a fascinating exercise as a way to get out of my self and into somebody else's head.

We have to understand in value what the services of nature are so that we can understand that degrading them is an irreplaceable resource that no amount of money or human ingenuity can replace.

I accrued anger from people's low opinion of me and my work, and for the work I might be capable of.

You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.

I don't think I've mastered anything. I'm still wrestling with the same frustrations, the same issues, the same problems as I always did. That's what life is like.

I don't like baseball movies. I like movies about moral courage and people who are indomitable and courageous and right.

I continue to develop some things for myself and also take advantage of good parts as they come along.

I have relationships with people I'm working with, based on our combined interest. It doesn't make the relationship any less sincere, but it does give it a focus that may not last beyond the experience.

Money is really only important if you don't have any.

I don't do a huge amount of physical activity. I play tennis, I work out sporadically, and I eat well and take care of myself.

The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.

You always have to know what the ambition of the scene is, what the purpose of that scene is in the telling of the story overall, so that you're there to support the story.

I thought it was funny. I always thought Star Wars and Indiana Jones were basically comedies. The humour came out of their relationships; it came out of the fact that we were basically types.

I get mad when people call me an action movie star. Indiana Jones is an adventure film, a comic book, a fantasy.

I am not the first man who wanted to make changes in his life at 60 and I won't be the last. It is just that others can do it with anonymity.

My goal was just to work regularly. I didn't ever expect to be rich or famous. I wanted to be a working character actor.

Directing is too hard, it takes too much time, and it doesn't pay very well.

I love the comic opportunities that come up in the context of a father-son relationship.

I went down to Venezuela and ended up renting a helicopter and flew with my sons to the tops of the tepuis, these freestanding jungle mesas, 'lost worlds' as it were. In fact, it's almost impossible to access them without one. So we were able to land and spend some time there. We were trapped for about six hours by clouds that came in.

The set for 'Blade Runner' was maybe the hardest set I've ever worked on because I think we worked 50 nights in a row, and it was always raining.

J. J. Abrams is a director that I've admired for a long time, from the very first scripts he wrote - including 'Regarding Henry,' which I was in.

I'm like a fireman. When I go out on a call, I want to put out a big fire, I don't want to put out a fire in a dumpster.

An icon means nothing to me. I don't understand what it means to anybody actually. It seems like a word of convenience. It seems to attend to the huge success of certain kinds of movies that I did, but there's no personal utility in being an icon. I don't know what an icon does, except stand in a corner quietly accepting everyone's attention. I like to work, so there's no utility in being an icon.

It's not the years honey, it's the mileage.

It doesn't interest me to be Harrison Ford. It interests me to be Mike Pomeroy and Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan. I don't want to be in the Harrison Ford business. I take what I do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously.