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- With news of Harrison Ford joining the MCU as Thunderbolt Ross, it seems as though the legendary actor will be adding another huge role to his filmography. Of course, his performances as Han Solo and Indiana Jones still remain his most iconic, but Ford is a versatile actor who has delivered many great performances outside those famous franchises. With even more titles to add, fans can revisit some of his most acclaimed roles or ones that they might have overlooked.
If an actor is lucky, they’ll play one character in their career that ranks among cinema’s most beloved icons. If they’re really, really lucky, they’ll play two. Having played space pirate Han Solo in the Star Wars saga and archeology professor-turned-globetrotting badass Indiana Jones in his self-titled franchise, Harrison Ford is one of those actors.
The only downside to playing iconic characters is that they can supersede everything else, and their work outside of those roles can often be forgotten or disregarded.
Updated on November 4, 2022 by Colin McCormick:
With news of Harrison Ford joining the MCU as Thunderbolt Ross, it seems as though the legendary actor will be adding another huge role to his filmography. Of course, his performances as Han Solo and Indiana Jones still remain his most iconic, but Ford is a versatile actor who has delivered many great performances outside those famous franchises. With even more titles to add, fans can revisit some of his most acclaimed roles or ones that they might have overlooked.
The Mosquito Coast (1986)
- Available to rent on Apple TV
While Ford is great at playing the dashing hero, he is also very good with flawed characters. This helps fuel one of his most engaging performances in the drama The Mosquito Coast. The movie finds Ford playing an inventor who uproots his family to build a new life away from civilization in the jungles of South America.
Ford does an excellent job of juggling the family man character and a man overcome by the obsession that could end in catastrophe. It propels this fascinating and entertaining story.
Clear And Present Danger (1994)
- Available on Netflix and Netflix with ads
Though he didn't originate the role, Ford delivered some of the best moments in the Jack Ryan movies. Clear and Present Danger is an especially terrific entry in the franchise and shows why Ford was the best actor to play this role to date.
The movie finds Jack attempting to uncover a conspiracy linked between a dangerous drug cartel and the highest levels of government. It is fun seeing Ford play a more intellectual hero, though the movie does still deliver some thrilling action sequences.
Working Girl (1988)
- Available to rent on Apple TV
Seeing Ford starring in a romantic comedy is rare for fans, but his work in Working Girl shows that he has the charm and humor to excel in the genre. Melanie Griffith stars as a secretary struggling to grow in her profession who poses as her boss leading her to meet a charming executive, played by Ford.
Griffith is the real star of the show, giving a grounded and funny performance in the lead role. However, Ford is perfect as the love interest, playing on his movie star charisma while also having more fun than in his typical serious roles.
42 (2013)
- Available on HBO Max
Fans might be in the mood for a good baseball movie after the World Series, and 42 is certainly one that deserves to be seen. The late Chadwick Boseman gives a breakout performance in the movie as Jackie Robinson, the ground-breaking African-American who changed the sport forever.
While it is certainly Boseman's movie, Ford is there to deliver a solid supporting performance as Branch Rickley, the Brooklyn Dodgers owner who hired recruited Robinson as the first Black player in the major leagues.
Presumed Innocent (1990)
- Available to rent on Apple TV
While The Fugitive is the more famous movie featuring Ford playing a man fighting to clear his name in a murder case, Presumed Innocent is another thriller worth checking out. He plays a lawyer working a case about a murdered colleague, only to be accused of the murder himself.
Even with characters like Han Solo and Indiana Jones, Ford really excels at playing grounded characters who have their backs against the wall and need to find a way out.
Patriot Games (1992)
- Available on Paramount+, Epix and DIRECTV
In his first of two appearances as Tom Clancy’s most iconic character, Harrison Ford knocks the role of CIA analyst Jack Ryan out of the park. Patriot Games begins with Ryan foiling an I.R.A. assassination, after which he and his family become targets for revenge.
This was the movie that had future Ryanverse adapters promising to get back to the character’s analytical career, because Patriot Games was an action-packed thrill ride. But, faithful or not, moviegoers are more interested in action-packed thrill rides than analysis.
What Lies Beneath (2000)
- Available on HBO Max and DIRECTV
Directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by Agent Coulson actor Clark Gregg, What Lies Beneath is a rare appearance by Harrison Ford in a horror movie. It’s a supernatural chiller that stars Ford as a respected research scientist whose wife, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, begins to suspect that their house is haunted.
Naturally, her scientist husband doesn’t believe in ghosts, and instead fears that she might be losing her mind. With these dual conflicts, the film has a kind of double-edged approach. On the surface, it’s about ghosts, but really, it’s about marriage.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
- Available to rent on Apple TV
Harrison Ford only has a small role in Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now, but it’s a pivotal one. He’s part of the team that sends Captain Willard deep into the jungle to kill the deranged Colonel Kurtz in the movie’s wartime pastiche of Joseph Campbell’s Heart of Darkness.
Ford’s character, Colonel G. Lucas, was named after George Lucas, Coppola’s close friend who also gave Harrison Ford his arguably most famous role as Han Solo.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
- Available on HBO Max
Two years after he reprised his role as Han Solo for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Harrison Ford got back into the role of Rick Deckard for another acclaimed legacy sequel in Blade Runner 2049. Villeneuve managed to recapture the unique beauty of Ridley Scott’s original while still making what is unmistakably a Denis Villeneuve movie.
Ryan Gosling’s Officer K was the star of the story, and fortunately, Deckard wasn’t shoehorned in like a lot of familiar characters who are brought back for franchise reboots; he actually played a key role in the plot.
Air Force One (1997)
- Available on Peacock Premium
Alongside “Great, kid, don’t get cocky!” and “Why did it have to be snakes?,” Air Force One is responsible for one of Harrison Ford’s most quotable lines. That line is, of course, “Get off my plane!”
Ford stars as James Marshall, the most badass president in U.S. history, and he is brilliantly matched by Gary Oldman as the plane-hijacking villain, Egor Korshunov. Directed with a bold sense of gusto by Wolfgang Petersen, Air Force One is one of the defining action movies of the 90s.
The Fugitive (1993)
- Available on Hulu
Adapting TV shows into movies can be a tricky business because they’re completely different mediums. TV shows are ongoing stories where change and resolution are actively avoided, whereas movies are open-and-shut three-act structures about a character getting from point A to point B. In many ways, the premise of The Fugitive was actually better suited to a movie.
Harrison Ford plays Dr. Richard Kimble, who is wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and goes on the run. The Fugitive is a riveting cat-and-mouse thriller, with Tommy Lee Jones providing strong support as the U.S. Marshal on Kimble’s tail.
American Graffiti (1973)
- Available on Showtime, Tubi and DIRECTV
Harrison Ford’s longstanding working relationship with George Lucas (which eventually led to Ford landing the roles of Han Solo and Indiana Jones) began when he was plucked from obscurity to play a role in Lucas’ coming-of-age hangout comedy classic American Graffiti.
Lucas based the screenplay on his teenage years in Modesto in the 60s. In the role of Bob Falfa, Ford joins an ensemble cast, breathing life into this cinematic portrait of cruising culture.
Witness (1985)
- Available on Showtime and DIRECTV
In a unique take on the police thriller, Peter Weir’s Witness stars Harrison Ford as John Book, a detective who’s assigned to protect a young Amish boy who witnesses a murder.
The culture shock of a big-city cop moving into an Amish village provides a strong backdrop for a movie that ultimately becomes a love story as Book falls for the boy’s widowed mother, played by Kelly McGillis.
The Conversation (1974)
- Available on Showtime and DIRECTV
Throughout the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola made some of the best movies of all time. The most underrated of the bunch is easily this thriller, which stars Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who hears something he wasn’t supposed to, and spends the rest of the movie paranoid that the men in black are coming to get him.
Hackman steals the show as Harry Caul, and Harrison Ford only has a supporting role, but all the acting in this movie — in roles big and small — is phenomenal.
Blade Runner (1982)
- Available to rent on Apple TV
When he was offered the chance to adapt Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for the big screen, Ridley Scott saw the opportunity to do a Bogart-style film noir — complete with all the hard-boiled detective tropes, gorgeous lighting techniques, and narrative ambiguity — set in a sprawling, neon-lit, futuristic metropolis. And boy, did he deliver.
When Dick saw Harrison Ford in character as the titular “blade runner” Rick Deckard, he praised him as the living embodiment of the character he had in his head while he was writing the book.