I need a challenge. I need the intellectual stimulation. I'm a member of a community on each film, working in concert to try to bring an idea to life. It's a great job.
Harrison FordThe only ambition I ever had going into and committing to wanting to be an actor was to live my life.
Harrison FordThe thing I always guard against when I'm talking to people I'm working with about a script is that there's a thing I don't like and it's called "talk story." It's when you're talking about the story; the characters are tasked with talking about the story instead of allowing the audience to experience the story.
Harrison FordA bad guy in a movie has a lot of latitude for acting. He can walk up the wall, crawl across the ceiling, go piss in the corner and everybody will say, "Fantastic!" But somebody's going to have to catch that sucker. Somebody's going to have to play the guy who gets him in the end. And that's a better part.
Harrison FordSome actors couldn't figure out how to withstand the constant rejection. They couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Harrison FordThat [film What's My Line] was very useful to me because it had Branch Rickey in a social situation. Every other bit of film [42] that I had was him making a speech.
Harrison FordNo one wants to see a hero have to pick up his cane to hit someone, but I'm still quite fit enough to fake it.
Harrison FordChadwick Boseman work as an actor, I think, is truly remarkable, and I had a great time working with him.
Harrison FordWork 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.
Harrison FordWhat I think is important for a young person is to figure out how to be useful and not be so concentrated on themselves, but to see what they can do to make the overall collaboration with all the other people involved in a movie work better.
Harrison FordSometimes I try to improve the language, the lines, or the delivery, but I don't ad-lib because I think that makes it really hard for everybody else involved.
Harrison FordBikes and planes arenโt about going fast or having fun; theyโre toys, but serious ones.
Harrison FordI realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you.
Harrison FordMy character is meant to know nothing about rap, and not to like it very much, but I know about it, because my kids make me listen to it. There's some rap I do like very much. I like Eminem, Blackalicious.
Harrison FordI don't want to be a slave to electronic devices. I don't want to be connected to my friends. I don't want to send snapshots of my dog and cute pictures of my family life to my friends and family. I don't want to be liked, by pushing a button. I use all of this technology to basically replace devices that I had in the past which worked just fine.
Harrison FordWhat I found was an emotional consistency with him. The words, the scenes, the situations - I wasn't mimicking what I thought Branch Rickey's emotional reality would have been.
Harrison FordLos Angeles is where you have to be if you want to be an actor. You have no choice. You go there or New York. I flipped a coin about it. It came up New York, so I flipped again. When you're starting out to be an actor, who wants to go where it's cold and miserable and be poor there?
Harrison FordAll 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.
Harrison Ford[Jimmy] Breslin's [write] really great book on Branch Rickey. And Branch Rickey himself wrote quite a lot. There's some film and kinescope from television.
Harrison FordMy ambition from the very beginning was to make a good part for myself, something differently to what lately I've been doing.
Harrison FordI'm ambitious for is to not get caught 'acting'. I want to really feel the role and not let people see the process, or to let them stand back and admire it, because I think that does finally get in the way.
Harrison FordI 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.
Harrison FordNever claim credit for anything. 'Cause you can't righteously do that. There's luck and grace and accident.
Harrison FordActing is not about competing. Acting is about cooperating. Acting is about collaboration. It's about your utility, your usefulness, your capacity to add to the work that has already been done and will be done. You're just part of a team. I never feel competitive about acting.
Harrison FordActing 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 FordI wanted to live the life, a different life. I didn't want to go to the same place every day and see the same people and do the same job. I wanted interesting challenges.
Harrison FordIt's always nice to anticipate working in something that you know people will have an appetite for.
Harrison FordI haven't purposefully set out to play heroes. I'm interested in playing the character who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances. But he's really either just saving himself or acting in the service of something that's important to him.
Harrison FordI 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.
Harrison FordThe 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.
Harrison FordThe only thing hard about being an actor is being out of work. So, when you get a job - that part ain't hard at all.
Harrison Ford