Harrison Ford was a working carpenter when George Lucas came calling
Fed up with bit parts, Harrison Ford taught himself carpentry to support his wife and two sons, building for clients such as Joan Didion. He landed Han Solo almost sideways: George Lucas hired him merely to read lines opposite auditioning actors, then decided the reader was the man he wanted.
Ford was born in Chicago on 13 July 1942 to an Irish Catholic father, an advertising man who had once acted in vaudeville and radio, and a Jewish mother whose parents came from Minsk. Asked about his upbringing, he once joked that he was raised Democrat, and he has said that as a man he feels Irish while as an actor he feels Jewish. As a teenager he reached Life Scout, a detail later written into young Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade.
He was shy, studied philosophy at Ripon College in Wisconsin and only took a drama class in his final term to overcome it. Four days before graduation he was expelled for plagiarism. By 1964 he was in Los Angeles on a Columbia Pictures new-talent contract, starting with an uncredited bellhop part. He irritated a producer who said Tony Curtis carried groceries like a star; Ford answered that a real actor would carry them like a bellhop, and was reportedly let go soon after.
Early credits read Harrison J. Ford, although he has no middle name. The initial avoided confusion with a silent-era actor of the same name who made more than 80 films, a man Ford only learned about when he found a Walk of Fame star bearing his name. Columbia's chief blocked Jacques Demy from casting him as a lead, saying he had no future.
Carpentry kept the family going until casting director Fred Roos got him an audition for American Graffiti in 1973. Francis Ford Coppola hired him to enlarge his office and gave him small parts, including a colonel named G. Lucas in Apocalypse Now. Then came Star Wars in 1977, followed by Indiana Jones, Rick Deckard and Jack Ryan. His only Best Actor Oscar nomination came for Witness. Off screen he flies as a licensed pilot and has helped rescue services near his Wyoming home.
Source: Harrison Ford
