Harrison Ford turns 80 on Wednesday. This is an odd occasion for several reasons. The first is that Ford is our only remaining great movie star. Nicholson is a recluse. Pacino and De Niro have long since dissolved into self-parody. Everyone else is too young to qualify. But Ford still has it. Often, when movie stars reach their peak, all the characters they play have a habit of becoming an extension of their own persona. But not Ford. He is Han Solo. He is Indiana Jones. He’s Richard Kimball, Jack Ryan, Rick Deckard. To call it an amazing career would be a gross understatement.
The other reason this birthday is weird, and I promise I mean it with affection, is because it looks like he’s been 80 years old for decades. Because in an industry where everyone 25 and over is possessed by a strange desperation to hang on to their youth for dear life, distorting their faces with unnecessary surgeries to try to trick the world into thinking they’re somehow frozen over time, Ford has embraced the role of grizzled elder statesman like no other.
You don’t see him that much in his movies. On the rare occasions he does, he still tends to play sort of tough guys who throw themselves through windows (and then, as a trained carpenter, helps rebuild the window between takes). Even in his most recent film, 2020’s The Call of the Wild, Ford exudes the taciturn, lived-in charisma that most other actors can only dream of.
No, Ford’s true inner old man is more likely to come out to play in his television appearances. My favorite of these is his encounter with David Blaine. Although Blaine’s swagger often results in bouncy, sobbing artistry from his scores, his 2013 meeting with Ford couldn’t have been quieter. During their meeting, which appears to take place in Ford’s kitchen, Blaine’s terrible mystical nonsense is met with a wall of silence. At no point can you tell if Ford is amused, bored, or amazed by Blaine’s cunning. He only spoke once or twice, confirming details and announcing the name of the card he had chosen. When Blaine’s trick ends with the usual swing (the playing card was in a piece of fruit the whole time), Ford looks him straight in the eye and snarls, “Get the hell out of my house.” It’s perfect. It deserves to be the clip is remembered.
There’s also his cabbage joke. During an appearance on David Letterman at the beginning of the last decade, Ford made a long, shapeless joke about a man who wanted to buy half a cabbage. He rambles on for about a minute and a half, with Letterman looking — as Ford did with Blaine — like he doesn’t know whether to be amused or bothered, until he finally hits on what could be interpreted in some parts of the world as a punch line. The audience giggles politely, the band begins triumphantly, and Ford jumps to his feet in rage and starts chewing out the band leader because he’s not done with the joke yet. The actual point is grim, but that’s beside the point. Ford established himself as a grumpy old man, and that’s all that matters.
Part of that crushed persona is his ability to be two or three beats behind everyone else, as if he’s slowly catching up to a joke that everyone else laughed at long ago. My favorite example of this is when he and his Blade Runner co-star Ryan Gosling were interviewed by This Morning’s Alison Hammond. At first, Ford remains aloof and silent while Hammond jokes with Gosling. But then his ears perk up, he grins and – to everyone’s delight – he just starts wandering.
The minibar has been raided. At one point, Gosling goes to help the team. By the end of the interview, Ford is double laughing. It just goes to show that a worn-out personality is one thing, but even Harrison Ford isn’t immune to Alison Hammond. Happy birthday Harrison.
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