Harrison Ford Quotes

You know how a woman gets a man excited? She shows up.

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

When I first started out, I was a bad actor.

When we were making it [Star Wars], none of the effects were in. So the first time, I thought it was, you know, that - I mean, we were surrounded by English crew members that could hardly keep themselves together. They were, "Here comes the guy in the dog suit." They made fun of us, which was OK. But the first time I was sitting in a theater, and I saw all the effects in, and the big ship flew over the audience, and the sound rumbled, I pretty much thought we were close to home.

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.

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 had the idea that the film would be much better served by a Branch Rickey lookalike than a Harrison Ford lookalike. I didn't want the audience to go into the film thinking that they knew me from some previous experience in a movie.

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.

I think retirement's for old people. I'm still in the business, thank you. I have a young child of nine years old, and I want to live as long as I can to see him grow up. I'm enjoying my life and I want to stick around for as long as I can.

Our health relies entirely on the vitality of our fellow species on Earth.

[In relationships with a directors] I want to be able to give and take, and I can't name what it is: respect, energy, investment in the task, focus, humor, intelligence, but I always feel responsible for taking the money.

Really, what are the options? Levi's or Wranglers. And you just pick one. It's one of those life choices.

I wanted to be a forest ranger or a coal man. At a very early age, I knew I didn't want to do what my dad did, which was work in an office.

Whoever had the bright idea of putting Indiana Jones in a leather jacket and a fedora in the jungle ought to be dragged into the street and shot.

I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up.

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 think American films right now are suffering from an excess of scale. Lots of movies we're seeing now are more akin to video games than stories about human life and relationships. Twelve- to 20-year-olds are maybe the largest economic force in the US movie business. I'm not a very nostalgic person - but I enjoy a good story.

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

When I was a carpenter, I once worked with this Russian lady architect. I would tell her, ‘Look, I’m terribly sorry, but I want to change that a half inch,’ and she would say, ‘No limit for better.’ I think that is a worthy credo. You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.

[ Chadwick Boseman] was not a baseball player. He spent, I don't know, countless hours, many months, working two sessions a day with professional pro coaches to develop the baseball skills that he needed.

I think that the best movies are made, not from a point of view that depends on your personal history, whether it's the color of your skin or the politics that you had or the place that you come from, but from a point of view of an understanding of human nature, an understanding of history, and an understanding of what motivates people.

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

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.

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

I like working. It is where I feel useful. I have no plans to cut down. I am happy with what I do. There will be a lot more of me yet, that's for sure.

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

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

People need to see what's going on, and they have to be exposed to the mechanisms that can help make it right.

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.

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

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

What is news? It's hard to quantify. Certainly news has changed completely, and the morning shows are not really designed to bring you the news, except to tell you what happened overnight, and the rest of it is a kind of magazine mentality - a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's harder to be an educated and informed citizen.

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.

[After playing Indiana Jones and Han Solo] hero image concerns me a little, though not for my sake. All it means to me is that I have a responsibility not to get caught doing anything terrible and thereby jeopardise my credentials. Not that I do terrible things, like running over dogs or anything like that. It just makes you think twice before you say or do things in public.

There have been times in my life when I have felt I was lonely, but I don't think you want to live your life in order to mitigate against loneliness.

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.

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.

I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you've lost human scale.

I shaved my hairline back and dyed my hair and wore a little powder, a little paint, a fat suit, and I changed my voice, but the emotions were consistent with what the point of the scene [with Branch Rickey] was.

'May the Force be with you' is charming but it's not important. What's important is that you become the Force - for yourself and perhaps for other people.

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

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

What I think is really great about this movie [42], that young people who weren't there will have a chance to have the visceral experience of what Jackie Robinson went through.

I'm like old shoes, I've never been hip.

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

I've never been bothered by proximity to special effects and I've never felt disadvantaged by them. They're all part of a movie, and when the movie's under control I don't feel upstaged by them.

[ Chadwick Boseman] is a remarkable actor, and he's a remarkable person.

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