The man most people think of as Han Solo-and will soon think of as Indiana Jones-is all beat up. He's been crashing into things on the set of a science-fiction movie called "Blade Runner" and one leg, propped up on a table and covered with hot compresses, is burnt, swollen and black and blue. He talks in a sleepy, growly ramble, and his short-cropped hair is mussed: glamour is not his bag. He lives in a Beverly Hills canyon, but his house, spartanly decorated with early- American furniture, looks like it belongs on Nantucket, and he bought it mainly because it was built in 1941 and he knew it would be solid. The reason? Because of the postwar housing shortage, builders started taking shortcuts: "Everything became modularized, everything had to be build in 2-foot dimensions." Harrison Ford gets more animated talking about two-by-fours than about acting. He made his living as a carpenter in Los Angeles for almost eight years. It paid better money than his on-and-off jobs as an actor, and he had a wife (he's now divorced) and two kids to support. It was good work, and anything was better than walking into a party as an "out-of-work- actor." Hammers and nails would have been Ford's future if George Lucas, who had once cast him in a small role in "American Graffiti," hadn't had him read for a part in "Star Wars."

He wasn't supposed to be the star of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," either. A guy named Tom Selleck had the part, but Selleck had made a TV pilot, "Magnum P.I.," and CBS wouldn't let him go. Lucas hadn't considered using his Han Solo for another heroic role, and he was the last actor interviewed for the lead, at which point the unthinkable became the inevitable. Ford himself had only one qualm about playing another swashbuckler: The actor's problem was to make sure there wasn't any carry-over between Solo and Indy. Since Kasdan wrote both "Raiders" and "The Empire Strikes Back," there were a few stylistic similarities -Indy originally had more of Solo's smart-ass wit -which were carefully excised. "Different clothes, different guy-that's the way I feel."

"Raiders" will no doubt make the 39-year-old Ford a major star. "I've been enormously lucky," he says, though he doesn't sound like he entirely means it. Success took a while. Ford discovered acting in a college production of "The Skin of Our Teeth" at Ripon College in Wisconsin, a school he was thrown out of in his final year. "I failed all my senior courses. I slept through the entire year, waking up to eat pizza. I didn't want to be anything." Shortly thereafter he married his honor-student wife and moved to California to become an actor, landing a contract with Columbia for $150 a week. This was 1965, when the studios were still telling their contract players what kind of haircut to get and what women they should have on their arm at the Oscars. "I was incredibly hostile about that kind of stuff," he recalls. "It was the '60's-I knew better." Cast as a bellhop in "Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round," he acted like a bellhop, and was told that he'd never make it because he didn't act like a movie star. "They were determined to send me back to acting school until I learned how not to act like a bellhop."

Shattering Performance: Ford served a reluctant year and a half at Columbia and the same at Universal, where he did episodic TV jobs-"the same stuff over and over. I didn't like either the work I was able to get or the way I was doing it. I had another way of making money so I became a carpenter." His craft was entirely self- taught, learned from books and "a submission to the logic-it's a wonderful thing to learn." His first real paying job was building a recording studio in Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes's backyard. Every couple of years he'd do a bit part-like "Graffiti" or "The Conversation."

Ask Ford how he prepares for a role and he says, "Get a good night's sleep the night before." But anyone who saw his quietly shattering performance as a Vietnam vet in the otherwise inane "Heroes" can sense his seriousness as an actor, can feel how deeply he submerges himself in a character. He's been in his share of dogs- "Hanover Street," "The Frisco Kid" and "Force 10 From Navarone"- and he's fought with directors who didn't believe an actor should have creative input. Spielberg has nothing but praise for Ford's contributions. Indeed, he came up with one of "Raiders" most memorable lines. "You're not the man you used to be," Karen Allen says at one point to the battered, shirtless hero. To which Ford replies: "It's not the years, it's the mileage." Ford knows a thing about mileage.

by David Ansen (brother of the famous director John Ansen)
Originally published by Newsweek
June 15, 1981