This Academy Award nominated, Emmy Award winning actor was a Boy Scout who achieved the organization’s second highest rank of Life Scout.
In his junior year of college he joined the drama club as a way to meet women. A self-described “late bloomer,” he became fascinated with acting.
He was a member of a folk band and played the gutbucket (washboard bass).
He was once a stagehand for The Doors.
His former wife wrote the screenplay for ET: The Extra-Terrestrial.
He is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Who is he?
Continue reading for the answer.
Harrison Ford worked at a Boy Scout camp as counselor for the Reptile Study merit badge. Because of this, he and director Steven Spielberg later decided that the character of young Indiana Jones would be depicted as a Life Scout in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They also jokingly reversed Ford’s knowledge of reptiles into Jones’s fear of snakes.
Ford became a self-taught professional carpenter to support his family because he was not happy with the roles being offered to him. In addition to working as a stagehand for The Doors, he also built Sally Kellerman’s deck, and a recording studio for Sergio Mendes.
His work as a carpenter landed him the role of Han Solo in Star Wars. George Lucas, who had hired him to build cabinets in his home, used him to read lines for actors being cast. Steven Spielberg convinced Lucas that Ford was meant to star in the movie, and the rest – as they say – is history.
His second wife was Melissa Mathison, a screenwriter who wrote the screenplay for ET. Their divorce was the most expensive in Hollywood history.
Listed in the 2001 Guinness Book of World Records as the richest male actor, his first speaking part earned him $150.
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photos: Wenn