Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford is an American actor whose six-decade career has made him one of the most-commercially-successful film actors in cinema history — with films he has starred in earning over $9.3 billion worldwide. He was born Harrison Ford on July 13, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of an advertising executive and a former radio actress. He attended Ripon College in Wisconsin before moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, where he worked as a professional carpenter for nearly a decade between sporadic acting jobs.

His breakthrough came as Han Solo in George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) and its sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). The original Star Wars trilogy made him an instant international star and established the Han Solo persona — sardonic, charming, reluctantly heroic — that would shape his subsequent screen career. Three years after the original Star Wars he played the title character in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), launching the Indiana Jones franchise that has continued through five films across forty years (the most recent being Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 2023).

Beyond his two franchise roles, Ford built a substantial second career in serious dramatic and thriller leads: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), Peter Weir's Witness (1985, his only Best Actor Oscar nomination), The Mosquito Coast (1986), Working Girl (1988), Presumed Innocent (1990), The Fugitive (1993), Air Force One (1997), and the Yellowstone prequel 1923 (Paramount+, 2022–2025) opposite Helen Mirren.

Ford was the highest-grossing actor at the US box office in 1998 and held that ranking through the 2000s. He has continued to take on substantial film and TV roles into his eighties, including the 2023 Apple TV+ comedy Shrinking, for which he received his first lead-actor Emmy nomination at age 81. He has been a licensed pilot since the 1990s and is a major aviation philanthropist and search-and-rescue volunteer.

His name Harrison is the English patronymic surname meaning "son of Harry" (Harry being a casual short form of Henry, from the Old Germanic Heimirich meaning "home ruler"). Harrison has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since the 1980s.